Hi there, wonderful humans!

Here's my first real devlog entry. I'm happy with the fundaments of the battle system but I did go through some iterations to get there. I started with building pretty much the same system as the Pokémon games but realized that wouldn't work for what I want from the game. Doing a move, then the enemy, then me again... it felt static and those buff and debuff moves get neglected because why decrease the defense by a little bit if you could just attack, right? (I was never a really good Pokémon player...)

What if you could do more than one move per turn? What if there are cool combos? What if switching between your animons could even be used for combos? In general, I felt all the detailed stats, IVs, EVs, all these juicy things that are fun when you play a long rpg and want to optimize the endgame, get more in the way of a fast-paced rogue-lite. So I axed all the convoluted things like detailed stats, including speed and initiative, and went for a system that is inspired by the Powered by the Apocalypse ttrpg system(s) where enemies have no turns but they get to do something if you (the player) doesn't roll high enough. I liked that. My actions cause reactions, not some arbitrary speed numbers.

So the retaliation moves were born and whenever you execute a technique, the enemy gets to execute one, too (unless the move is sneaky, then you're a lil' ninja and the enemy didn't notice!).

I noticed then, though, that the creatures lost a lot of their individuality. It didn't really matter anymore what you caught, really. The only things that mattered was what types of moves they could learn and how much HP they had. It didn't really matter what fire animon you caught, they were pretty much the same. There was no room for really tanky and defensive animon or weak but super fast builds. So I decided that the animon each get an individual ability that makes them unique.

Enter Quirks

I named them quirks, I thought it's cute. Everyone has their little quirk and it makes them lovable, right? So quirks are things that trigger certain effects at certain times, that could be at start of battle, or when you switch, or anytime you roll a die, etc. I set up a Quirk class and derived individual quirks from it. For now, there are quirks for the starters, meaning Kalboo, Halazoom, Difdagua, and Asinember but I'll add more so that all of them get one. Here's a quick overview of the currently existing ones.

Kalboo - Lucky:
Gain an additional reroll while this animon is summoned.

Difdagua - Fidgety:
Whenever this animon gets swapped out, it gains 1 damage bonus.

Halazoom - Defensive:
Whenever this animon gains shields, it gains 1 more.

Asinember:
Whenever this animon is attacked, the attacker suffers 1 damage.

They aren't balanced yet. Difdagua's might be too annoying to switch out and in for it to trigger, but tweaking is easier than setting up, so this is just a start. I'll add the quirks with a patch at the end of the weak and you get to play around with them.

Bonus

I finally managed to replace all animon placeholders and the main menu placeholder art with my own art. Take a look at the new main menu and the first boss: Malyx