Tactics Café Devlog #1 (Patreon)

Heya guys,

Welcome to my first devlog for Tactics Café! 

Being the first, I will take this time to explain the high-level design of the game and touch a bit into what I have working, as well as what I plan to work on for the next couple of weeks!

All visuals shown in here are placeholder and are going to be changed! 

Character Progression

Tactics Café is a Tactical RPG that is built around a roguelike gameplay loop. TRPGs are known for their Unit progression and customisation, being able to build a group or an army up from low levels and have them gain skills throughout the story. That progression has always been one of the most appealing parts of TRPGs, that and the grid-based combat which I always felt gives you more freedom and unique combat compared to a traditional turn-based RPG (that I do still love too ofc). Tactics Café takes advantage of the fact that it is a roguelike by providing that unit progression and customisation in each run you take!  

There are 3 primary ways in which progression happens in TC:

• Starting Skills

The first part is the starting skills that you are able to customise. In Tactics Café,  each playable character starts with a predetermined stat build, a passive ability , a normal attack and two skills that, while more powerful than an attack, cost mana to cast. 

 Each character will have variations of the attack, passive ability and skills that can be swapped out before starting a run, giving you customisation to better fit a specific playstyle you'd like to attain! All skills also scale with stats, therefore they don't become obsolete in later areas. 

• Stat Progression

The second part is the way that stat progression is handled. After clearing an encounter, you have a chance of either receiving a stat upgrade or an item, or potentially something even rarer! When receiving a stat upgrade, you'll be presented with 3 possible stat blocks, that provide a stat increase for 1-3 stats with varying amount. 

You are then able to provide these stat increases to one of your alive characters, allowing you to choose how you want to specialize a character, maybe you feel like Io would better serve as a tank? Dump a bunch of Defence and Resistance stats into him so that he can better weather attacks!

• Items

The third and final (for now) part is items! Each character has an independent inventory that can hold up to 6 items, with each item providing stat increases as long as they are held as well as active skills and passive abilities! These items will provide your characters with additional skills or abilities that will 

There are also artefacts that affect the party as a whole, but those will have to wait for another devlog before I go into detail for it!

Combat

Combat in Tactics Café will familiar to TRPG veterans but fresh thanks to its twist in progression and implementation of roguelike mechanics . You control 1-3 units in battle , taking turns between you and the enemy at moving your whole party and using your arsenal of skills and items to clear the map out of them. 

As mentioned before, each character has a set of skills and attacks that can be used to deal with enemies. Items can also provide active skills that will open up new opportunities for characters. Give Io a longer-ranged skill so that he can deal with enemies further away then he was meant to, or give him a passive ability that applies a status effect to enemies when hitting them with his other skills, the possibilities are numerous! 

Skills are able to apply status effects on units but also able to affect the terrain by creating new effects on tiles, such as creating smoke that will affect a unit's chance of hitting or creating ice blocks to block the way. 

Each combat encounter will take a toll on characters as their health and mana doesn't fully restore after clearing enemies, make sure to keep track of them as you might lose an ally when you least expect it! Thankfully there are other encounter types that can be found in each run, shops to buy new items and revive characters, camps to restore health and move around inventory between characters, story events for a chance of rare items and other benefits for your travel! More specific detail on parts of combat and other encounters will be discussed in other devlogs.

Dating

Outside of the runs, I still wanted there to be progression that would affect gameplay in the runs without empowering the player, while also providing story progression. Tactics Café provides this by having the player spend time and date various playable and non-playable characters. 

To date characters, you will need to use loot found in the form of ingredients from the runs to cook up some delicious gifts to provide to these characters. When doing so, you will unlock new dialogue and events with them, and in turn increase their bond level! When the bond level reaches certain milestones, you will unlock new content. If a playable character reaches a milestone, you'll unlock new variations of their starting skills, ability and attack that will provide a different approach to combat for them!  

We will look back at this later in development, once the game hub has been implemented and we start implementing the dating system!

What's Next?

For now I've provided a surface-level explanation of some key systems of Tactics Café, I will go into more detail of them and introduce more systems as I implement them. 

For the coming weeks I will start working on the implementation of Spine2D animations into the system, which in turn will mean I'll finally add in directional facing, as well as working on the attack animations to make them look good! Each character will have various animations such as an idle, movement, attack, casting, downed and death animation, so each character will take a long time to create all the animations for them, so I aim to have Io's animations fully done by the next devlog, and have started on Eden's animations.

It's a first for me to put into written words what it is I'm working on and planning to do, I will improve with time and hope that you guys will enjoy the devlogs that are to come, as well as look forward to more info and gameplay from Tactics Café!