Lets talk about Combat (Patreon)

Hello! This is gonna be a bit of a long one so strap in! Up until now I've mostly been sharing things related to the audio and visual upgrades that have been happening for the games final build. And with my video showcasing roughly 10 minutes of footage nearly done, it should be set for release this Friday or Saturday, I felt it was time to move on to another major aspect. The actual gameplay. Battles in particular.In the prototype versions that you may have played, battles were probably the one aspect I hadn't put much stock into. They were about as traditional a turn based RPG as it could get, with just some unique names here and there. In hindsight I wish I put more effort into things for those builds but, nothing we can do about that now. But I'd like to give you all a sneak peak at Combat 2.0 now.Weapons: Like in prior builds Red can equip a weapon that will boost her stats and each weapon will come with its own unique weapon skill that Red will have to master before she can use it with other weapons. What's changed is the nature of dual wielding. In prior builds Red could hold 2 weapons, both boosting her stats providing her with 2 skills and allowing her to make 2 attacks per turn which trivialized a lot of encounters and made the skills feel redundant. This will no longer be the case. The system has been replaced for Red to now have a weapon in her "Dominant hand" and a TOOL in her "off hand." These tools function like weapons, boosting stats and allowing for new skills but they will not allow Red to attack twice anymore. Your off hand will be used instead to hold onto things like Guns or a Torch, which also fixes the issue of being able to fire guns with your normal attack without expending ammo.Level Ups and Skills: Next I'd like to discuss levels and exp. If there's one thing I'm not fond of in RPG's its grinding. I hate having to grind because a game isn't balanced well or winding up over leveled because I did a few side quests. So I've sought to eliminate this from my game. Enemies will now be finite (kind of.). That is, if you kill it, it will stay dead even if you leave and come back. However enemies will respawn in maps as you progress through the story and the night moves forward. I'm debating allowing monsters to simply respawn every hour that goes by in story though that might have some unintended side effects. We'll see as I test it. For now though your level will be a lot less important. You will gain minor stat buffs with each level up, and of course you will get a free full heal without needing to rest or expend items. But it will no longer be the primary method for increasing your stats or learning new skills. Instead leveling up will net you skill points which you can spend on a variety of skill trees to further let you customize your Red and how she plays in combat. Please look forward to more details on this at a later date!Tarot Cards: And the big one that you'll see in the images above is the inclusion of Tarot Cards in combat. You can see a prototype of The Fool card and some other in game screen shots. Cards are the real reward from combat. Every time you defeat a new enemy you will be allowed to draw a random card from the Tarot deck, and once owned you can equip these cards into 1 of 3 Card Slots. These cards are the real way to gain power in Project Red, with each card granting a variety of buffs and debuffs depending on if you use them in the Upright or Reversed positions. You'll also be awarded special cards for clearing certain side quests or objectives, as well as progressing through the story. These cards will be fixed so randomness can't just give you exclusively "weak" cards. There are a lot more details to this system and how it interacts with enemies as well, but again I'll wait until a later date so that I can SHOW you rather than tell you. Please look forward to a combat experience that will be uniquely Project Red.Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to look forward to the game! More to share soon!