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Once Upon A Lamb
| PC | Turn-Based Combat | Strategy | Puzzle
Scope
Engine: Unity
Team Size: 2
Duration: 1 Year (WIP)
Once Upon A Lamb is a Turn-based Strategy game I am currently developing with R'lyeah Industrial.
Follow my YouTube for any coming updates!
We are looking for an animator who is familiar with 2D rigging and animating in Unity, and would love to talk with any possibility of publish this game.
If you are interested, please contact me through LinkedIn or Email!
Production, Sprints, and Iterations
A Larger Scope
Once Upon A Lamb is the biggest game I worked on so far, with a goal of actual release. It will be the first official piece by R'lyeah Industrial Studio.
Prototype: Shadow Play & Action Coin
Havin a clear vision of making a turn-based combat game with a theme of paper theater, I built a prototype as both the proof of concept. For future expansibility, we need a solid core gameplay that can be built up to a full game eventually.
To convey the feeling of "Puppeteering", I tried to create a system which the player just moves the character around to apply action with action points in a week.
I tried to reference "Darkest Dungeon" in which the skills are applied one by one by each character, but soon, I figured that this does not even look like a combat, and it was not strategic at all if there are no skill sets.
That was when I came up with the ACTION COIN mechanic, which has become the most important gameplay.
One of my core concept of presenting combat as a "play" leads to the idea of player controlling both player and enemy, as they are all "puppets," and an old Automaton Theatre that activated by coins would be a perfect fit.
I reworked my prototype, created a combat with action coin and had people try it. I found a solid foundation to expand the game vibe.
First Playable: Paper Theater Established
Because of the theme I chose, the art style is crucial for the overall experience, whether if I can convince the player "this is a paper theater."
As an experienced artist, I was confident on this part. Soon, I created a matching visual for combat within one week, refine the mechanics with only one level, and finished my first playable two weeks later.
Vertical Slice: Redefining Core Mechanics
As I progress on building levels, I discovered a serious problem for my core mechanics.
In my first playable, the player must use ALL the coins provided per round to actually apply the outcome. The coins allow characters on both side to do different action depending on coin types, attack, guard, and move. Unfortunately, this seemly solid plan caused two major flaws:
1. The provided coin pool felt repetitive. I wanted the coin mechanic to be clean and simple, not overwhelming the player with types, which limited the pool I could give. The levels are not flexible, and there are barely strategic aspect.
2. There are no point for the player character to "Guard". Since the player is controlling both sides, the benefit of putting guard on enemy will always be way bigger than on player character.
The solution is very simple yet took me more than a month to find:
Give the player all coin at once, and instead of using all coins to apply, they should fill all the available COIN SLOTS.
As I examined on narrative, animation, and UI communication, it gets clearer and clearer on "what this game will be." It is a puzzle game in the form of combat, and the elements are very tactile.
This gave me a great objective to follow, I made the UI diegetic, and replace the "Reset Wave" button with a "Death Coin" for the player to kill their character, like in a Greek Tragedy.
Current Development State
I created this great system that is unique and appealing, the rest to do is polishing it, the most difficult part of all.
The art style so far is good, but still, not following the true aesthetic I wanted. Furthermore, there are existing UI problem which are hard to fix with the way it is presented. I had to make this hard decision and rework on all assets.
Multiple iteration were made and thrown away even on only UI design.
It really paid off, worth every try.
The scene itself right now is more than enough to get people's curiosity, and once they go through the tutorial, realizing the combat is a puzzle become a extraordinary hook, making the player wanting to engage.
Our programmer joined the development since vertical slice, and we have been testing, debugging everything issue possible. The first level will soon be finished, and We looking forward to release our first beta to public!
Developer
Aria Chang (Chi-Chen Chang)
Producer, Game Designer, Artist
Yu-Hsuan Chen
Programmer
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