For many months I've been working on a new variant of RPG gameplay

For many months I've been working on a new variant of RPG gameplay.
I fully intend on making this into a complete product, but first I wanted to run it past public opinion.
Sorry for tiny gifs, I used flipnote early on to get out ideas.

Battles take place on a grid composed of many tiles. Teams attack each other until the other side has lost all health.
You freely arrange your party members to ricochet your enemies across the battle grid.
Use many types of moves, terrain features and items to further damage your foes. Crossing enemy trajectory is a simple way to add a few extra damage.
Placement matters, as soon as you've finished beating on the enemies, they'll have their turn to do the same to you.
Each teammate will have their own distinct moveset. From slashers, chargers, grabbers, shooters and more, each one plays differently on the field.

Due to story reason all people, plants and animals have become mutated.
People gain/lose limbs, change color, change shape. Yes, this means monster girls.
Some people's mutations lend to their moveset, a person with tentacles will use them to restrict targets while the sharp handed teammate lets loose.
Some animals become aggressive and attack passersby. The raccoon for example rolls around using its newfound weight to attack.

Weather also plays a big part. Certain areas in game are undergoing constant natural disasters. They can effect everyone on the battle grid.
Earthquakes can remove stable ground, floods can give water based fighters more area, lightning deals massive damage to whoever stands on the susceptible tiles.
Strong gusts of wind can alter trajectory and needs to be factored in when setting up a proper combo attack.

Does this sound interesting? I'll be clarifying mechanics and posting more art in a bit.

Mite b cool.
So do enemies just bounce off any character that's in their way and take damage or does that character have to take some specific action to do it?

How do battles start? Are you given the units before hand or do you choose where you put your guys? How is the area that you start in?
How different are the different units? Does everyone have a common move? Does everyone have a move unique to them?

This is an interesting idea, and it's something that I've always wanted to do.

The main themes for the game will be teamwork, community and culture. These will be reflected in both battles and overworld gameplay and story.
Across the journey you'll find many potential party members with different stories to tell. Some will join you for plot reasons, others will be optional unlocks.
Outside of battle I have a few 'multiplayer' minigames planned. You'll be playing with your teammates and depending on how well you play together you'll recieve stat boosts, items, new moves, and awards.

The overworld is similar to earthbound, you and your team go place to place and run across enemies in the field.
In battle you'll find 1 or more enemies of varying types placed across the grid.
You'll assign a tile for each of your members to stand on, a move to use, a direction to face, and a time to use it.
After a bit of planning you start the turn and watch your team act in the order you have given.

Movesets can vary greatly. Some people have weak attacks that send the target flying very far, others have swift attacks the can strike targets multiple times. Some can throw or shoot projectiles. Healers can aoe heal all the people surrounding them in a given turn.
Honestly there's tons of different moves and ways to use them, I'll have to write up a decent explanation for each one.

I really like the idea of moving people around a grid and beating enemies with environmental hazards, like kicking people into the spikes in Dark Messiah.
I'm not sure about the doing direct damage to enemies unless there are modifiers in the environment. Simple things, like fire attacks doing more damage to characters standing in a puddle of oil, or lightning attacks doing more damage to wet enemies.
You've got a good idea here user, and I think that you should focus on the environment, though you might and have all right to disagree. While I'm not a huge fan of some of the aspects (monster girls), the game itself sounds pretty damn good.

All of the characters suffer from varying types of mutations.
You'll come across animals that have grown wings, plants that have multiplied in size, people with misplaced eyes, and many more.
For NPCs this usually means a worthless visual change, but for many of your party members and enemies this gives them new ways to engage in battle.
Not everyone benefits, some receive mutations that make living a chore. Finding the reason for these changes and possibly a way to reverse it is a major plot point.

Common obstacles in grid battles are walls and pits. They come in many forms, like trees, boulders, deep water and cliff edges.
When an enemy is thrown into a wall they'll take damage for colliding and land on the spot. When an enemy is forced into a pit they'll be removed from play until their turn, then they'll be placed to attack with their team.

How are they going to look during play? Are the battles in 2D or in 3D? Top down or some kind of isometric view?

Why not ask the /agdg/ thread? I like the idea as it seems similar to one I have that I pit on hold until I get better coding experience. How much do you know how to code though?

I've always liked the idea of combo supereffective moves (such as water attack to electricity). But I find them boring when they're chosen through menus or are always available (and usually the only moves you'll use due to how powerful they get).
With a focus on the environment to help deliver these combos they become a lot more balanced.
Lets say tossing an enemy into a small puddle will get them wet enough to be susceptible to a harsh shock. Looking around a grid you see that the puddle is near a very thorny bush. Do you risk being damaged by it to damage your foe even more?
This brings in level design, to balance environmental hazards and their damage potential. I've made many maps for many biomes and it's been a challenge to prevent the battle from staying in a corner the whole match.

Are you going to add verticality into the levels? I'm sure you could do stuff with character weights, and have it where it's harder to knock a heavy enemy off a cliff, but it will do more damage to an enemy it falls on.

I currently have a working 'demo' that I've been building upon for quite a while. Unfortunately its all programmer art, and not good art at that. Shitty Ui, all position states are done by text, so no 'in air' or 'on land' sprites. Not worth showing off just yet. The original scanned in art I posted is mostly done by a friend of mine, but it isn't the final style of the game although it could be similar.

So technically the game is 2D right now, isometric but not from a corner. The grid is viewed as in the gifs, straight lines, top row is north bottom row is south

The battles are also '2D' as well. People can be counted as 'in air' but currently I don't track how high up they'll get. I've tried it out before and I have a good system for height, but it's useless if the game is made up of 2D art. A height system would work best with 3D models.

Well if that's the case, get to work. I want to see what you can do.

Here's some generic characters with mutations my friend drew up. For more plot relevant characters I have more notable mutations in mind for them, mostly for moveset/gameplay reasons. They can be a bit weird at times… The eyes may or may not be able to cry milk

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I can see some similarities between this and what I have planned for my own game, but I'd think that if it's to be compared to anything it would be the new south park game. I was really caught off guard when they showcased their new gameplay, enough to almost make me switch to another project. But, even then it's like comparing Super Mario Run to any of the older platformers, I'm certain I have just the right complexity to make this a very interesting game on it's own.


The world is set in a simpler time across a batch of towns. While it wont go too fantasy, because of the addition of mutants and natural disasters the locations will still be able to bring some interesting elements to the battles.
The forest area is filled with mutated plants. Bushes with extra sharp thorns, flowers producing sticky sap, trees with really dense bark. Elements from the area can be interchanged to keep the battles lively and active. Random elements such as trees falling or items dropping can help battles spread out and use more of the grid.


I have quite a few written notebooks here on the game's design and have some images yet to scan in. It doesn't help that the gameplay isn't the easiest to explain outside of the story tutorials. Thanks for bearing with me.

So, you want a tactical, turnbased RPG with characters that changed from their circumstances? Are you going to have it be isometric from a corner? Are troop placements going to be freely deployable or is there a fixed number of troop locations for you to choose from, depending on the terrain?

Ignore spoiler.


Damage is mainly dealt through your teammate's moves. But, to get the most out of your turn you'll have to plan your attacks to collide your enemies into each other. You could also throw an enemy into another party member's waiting move. This requires the player to plan out their attacks. One missed move can disrupt all the attacks that were to follow.
If the player wishes to not risk this (or isn't any good at planning for their future moves) they can still place their team and attack each enemy 1v1, although they'll miss out on the damage boost.

Things can get even more complicated when you decide to attack your own team.
If you decide to damage yourself you can send your teammate flying, still prepped to use their move. So instead of them just sitting there swiping 3 times, they do so while flying past 3 different enemies.
This is best shown in the minecart gif posted above

Basically, although I'd like to explain it as a little bit different than the usual turn-based game.
Within each turn there are multiple SubTurns which count as the passing of time.
The enemies turn lasts multiple SubTurns until they use all of their moves and all of your party members stop flying around. Same is true for your team's turn.
When preparing for your turn you can place your party anywhere on the grid they can individually stay on. So no one can be placed on a hole tile unless they have wings, but everyone can be on stable ground. Once placed you choose their moves and what SubTurn they attack on. Each move has a limit on when they can be used. Usually powerful moves can only be used after 7+ SubTurns, meaning preparation is needed to toss an enemy to the right location at the right time.

This can be a bit too much to understand and use, so within the game I have a optional tutorial to ease new players into the right mind of thinking.
A brief look at the SubTurns is shown in this gif.

It's certainly an interesting way of implementing combat. The way it plays out reminds me very much of both Wakfu and Grandia (& 2), but with a much larger emphasis on battlefield control. I'd certainly play it, I've been wanting something like Dofus/Wakfu for a while now That isn't ruined by developers who don't know what they want to do with it, Ankama

Of course, who cares about the gameplay when there's monster girls and plot.

Mutations come in many different types. Many people view them differently as well.
Some call it a gift from god while other's believe it to be a curse. Some changes are easy to adapt to but many require adjusted clothing and daily routines.
The scene of a normal world being so suddenly thrust into a strange occurrence sets the story in the towns you visit.
One town is overrun by criminals taking advantage of their new abilities to wreak havoc.
Another town becomes overgrown with plants, choking their river and putting their fishing industry in danger.

Besides the main story I'd like it if each party member has a few story scenes of their own. They'd be activated by going to specific areas with them in your party.
These scenes will tell more about that character and possibly have some degree of interaction.
This is to help combat what some other rpgs do, which is to have the best playable characters receive little to no dialog.
Completing these events will give bonuses to that person stats, unlock a new move or ability, or give some other reward.
In other words these are missions to do for you own party, rather than just npcs.