Combat Description

This is my shot at explaining what combat will look like based on the Twitter Space with game designers Ephi & Daikou. Stay tuned for their gitbook articles to be released with more information.

Combat will work in a 2x2 grid system. 2 pets in front row, 2 in the back row. Combat will require strategy in moving your pets around and aiming your attacks at your opponents' pets, anticipating their movements or even manipulating their movements.

Certain moves will only be usable from certain grid locations. Combat will be turn-based, but time allowed per move will be dynamic based on how quickly players move. You (or your opponent) will be able to force turns to be faster if you are making decisions faster.

Each element will have different specialties. Each element can do any kind of role, but the moves lean into certain archetypes: Earth - Defense / Tanking Fire - Damage /*Buffs (I'm intuiting this, not mentioned) Water - Healing / Counter-Strategies Air - Damage / Grid manipulation

The team discussed how moves (such as the fire move, Meteor) may not land until a turn or two have passed. In the meantime, the defending player may try to move pets around to try and minimize damage taken.

The attacking player might try to anticipate that response and use a move that forces or prevents movement. (The air move, Cyclone, was described as moving the opponents pets clockwise/counter clockwise within their grid).

So similar to Pokemon, it's turn-based combat with damage/utility/support moves. Unlike pokemon, we will have actions to take outside of our 4 moves that will add a lot of dynamism to the matches. The basics will be easy to learn, but the strategy will be difficult to master.

Stats: @Ephi_BL mentioned that there will be a few stats for each pet: hp, attack, speed, defense, & elemental resistance. In most turn based games, going first is overpowered. So high speed is a necessity. However, the team took some measures to balance this: Turn order will be determined by multiplying the speed of pets within a row (e.g front left x back left). So turn order can change mid-combat if the placement of your pets within the grid changes. This again will make matches more dynamic and bring balance to going first.

It sounds like the team has developed a game that is highly engaging and rewarding to learn. It really sounds like a fantastic system. Look to games like Fire Emblem & Final Fantasy Tactics for comparisons in grid-based combat. Also consider Pokemon & Digimon games as suitable comparisons.