EYSIR - Monthly Log 01

We've entered March, and with a new month comes a new devlog! This is the first of hopefully not many monthly updates on progress for EYSIR: Empire of the Fallen. Through these, I'll share how development has been going during the past month. Whether that be just talking about some feature of the game or sharing a funny story about development, it'll be here!

For starters, here are a few of the features that have been implemented into Eysir within the past month:

• Added a title screen
• NPCs can wander around town
• Loss state for battles
• Save/load system
• Automap for dungeons
• Menu sound effects
• Hotel to recover and save

That last one in particular presented me with a pretty interesting balancing issue because of how I wanted to approach it. Typically, resting at an inn in an RPG costs you next to nothing. The cheapest items at the shops cost over 10 times what you'll pay for a night's rest. This is generally by design since you don't want the player to be stuck without being able to afford healing or sometimes even being able to save. In EYSIR, prices for hotels -- and thus, recovery and saving -- will be slightly more substantial. But what do you do if you can't afford a room?

Some games solve this by offering a free option that has some limitations. In the case of early Wizardry titles, it's done by offering free lodging (via Stables) that only restores MP. Hilariously enough, that makes it the best option since you preserve your character's limited lifespans and you can just restore your HP to full with magic and go back to sleep for free right afterwards. I wanted a similar option, but without making it the obvious best option from a meta-game perspective. My solution?

I went for the absolute madman option and made free full recovery the most unattractive option, simply by forcing players to do the one thing they absolutely do not want to do: Nothing. For thirty full seconds. The repulsion from considering sleeping in a sketchy alleyway has never before been more accurately simulated!

On the side of more intentionally user-friendly game design choices, I've added a dungeon automap feature:

The automap keeps track of where you've previously stepped and automatically reveals walls, shows your position, as well as displaying other important features such as stairs and exits. For the more classically-minded dungeon-crawl veteran, there is an option to disable the automap feature and display coordinates only. Perfect for pulling out the trusty graph paper!

As an aside, I also wanted to make a brief mention about the upcoming demo. I was considering doing a public demo, but based off of how much more work and polish would need to be done for a demo not to be detrimental, a closed beta would be the more ideal solution. If you're interested in trying out the beta build of EYSIR, stay tuned to my Twitter account or to the game's update page here on itch.io for information on how to join when it becomes available.

Next on the agenda is getting all the initial sound effects and music finished up and added into the game.

That's all for this update. See you next month!