Well, here we are! It's the first dev log for State Route 52! (Formerly Ohio RPG). This isn't the first time I've been sharing anything about this game's development. If you're reading this, there's a very good chance you've already been watching this game's development since I've been posting progress on the MSE Discord. Still, I felt like I wanted to have stuff about the game in one more centralized location, as well as just having it on my website so that people can find it easier. I don't use social media in any public capacity so this is kind of the closest thing to that lol.

If you're not familiar with the game, go read the blurb on the home page ya silly goose. If you've done that though, then you can check out the rest of this page to see everything that I've done for the game so far. This won't be any new information if you've been keeping up on Discord, just a compilation of where all the game's features currently stand. It's very early days and a lot of stuff is very bare bones, but almost all of the basic building blocks of narrative and combat and pretty much good to go.

With that out of the way, here's quick looks at every feature implmented into the game! Bear in mind that all of the assets in these examples are placeholders, visuals are a priority for later so I'm just using a bunch of PMD sprites and default fonts and stuff for now.

Battle

• Menus for selecting actions and playing cards and using other actions.
• HUD for memory (mana), spark, and health.
• Interface for selecting slots to play cards or target with effects.
• Battle flavor text that can update based on the actions you take and the cards you play.
• Check menu that displays information of the creatures in play, as well as a second page that shows any modifications those creatures have received and damage they've taken.
• A log that lets you see every action that's happened in the game.
• Icons for keywords and "summoning sickness".
• Spark actions: You have one Spark each turn and you can use it to attack any slot for 1 damage, gain 2 shield (which has its own HUD element), or discard the top card of your hand to draw a new one.
• Creatures can attack while they're not "summoning sick" which plays a little animation. There's also a little placeholder particle effect when a creature's stats are increased and a graphic that shows up when transitioning between turns.
• Opponents with unique AI that can prioritize different things. Ability to assess threats to make decisions on where to play what cards on any given turn.
• Opponent can play any card in the game just like the Player can, in addition to attack slots directly (A UI element appears on the opponent's turn, then the damage actually happens at the start of their next turn).
• 15 unique cards, including interfaces for selecting cards from a list and targetting the player's or opponent's creatures, creatures that can modify their stats when certain game actions occur, creatures that can dynamically increase or decrease their stats to match certain game variables, and creatures with effects when they enter or get knocked out.
• Three keywords: Sneaky, which allows the creature to always hit the opponent directly through anything in its way. Trample, which allows excess damage to pierce through to the opponent when it attacks and knocks out a creature. And Grit, which allows a creature with it to stay standing at 1 health if it would be dealt lethal damage, in exchange for losing the ability.
• A fairly robust "stack" system to handle resolution of effects in a linear order.

Deck Builder

• Menu that can be opened and closed from the Overworld, and which pauses the game.
• A collection view on the left that organizes cards into multiple pages that can be tabbed through.
• Three decks with their own display on the right, which can be swapped between.
• Ability to add or remove cards by selecting them on either the collection or deck view, collection cards are highlighted in white if they're in the currently selected deck.
• Deck automatically organizes cards by Cost (more sorting and filtering options for decks and collections to come later).
• Card description box that shows the information of any card that's highlighted.

Overworld

• Basic movement, including walking and running, and collision.
• Interacting with NPCs and objects to trigger dialogue.
• Text effects like shaking text, colored text, and pausing in betw
• Branching dialogue options.
• Cutscenes where characters can move around and different dialogue can be triggered.
• Voice blips and character portraits that can be changed with each line of dialogue that's sent to be displayed.

That might sound like a lot. And it isn't not a lot, I've been working on the game for coming up on 2 months at this point. But I've still barely scratched the surface. You ever try to make a save game system? It's a nightmare. Plus I'm still learning new quirks of the Godot engine every time I open it up to work, I'm a Unity and Unreal native so there's a lot to get used to. Plus of course all the visual and animation and audio stuff which I've functionally done none of yet. With all that said though, I'm very happy with the way everything is progressing, and I'm really excited to continue working on the game! It feels like it's really starting to get off the ground now, and I hope y'all are as excited as I am.

Future dev logs will probably not have quite as much stuff as this one did, this was just a big catch-up basically. Watch the skies for future news, and you can always come back every Friday to check out the new Friday Doodle!