PVSR Development

heart of the mountain

Upcoming Features

These are the things that I need to do / would like to include before the game is released. Some are relatively minor while others represent weeks or months of work. This page will be updated as I finish tasks, come up with new ideas, or abandon things that won’t be included.

Artwork

A great deal of the “feel” I’m going for in this game will be conveyed through the artwork. Blank white cards with just a name and occasionally a few words of description do nothing to get across the sort of whimsy that I’d like this game to have. If you’ve seen the few cards I drew last summer, then you know what I’m going for: “A Cunning Trap” is a picture of a box being held up on a stick, with carrots underneath.

So I need to draw high-quality, color artwork for every single card in the game. Top and bottom, so items as well as enemies and traps. Also artwork for each player, including multiple varieties for different uses: the image you see during character selection will be larger and more detailed than what we have room for while you’re playing the game. Plus the game pieces you move around on the board, both characters and forward camps. AND, there will need to be artwork for the startup screen, options, about screen, logo… there’s a lot to do here. I have no idea how long this will take; it is easily the most daunting task on the list right now.

Ironically, if I manage to sell the physical game to a publisher, it is extremely likely that they’ll have a professional game artist on staff redo all of the artwork. If that happens, I’ll (hopefully be allowed to) update the app with their artwork instead of my own.

Sound

This encompasses both sound effects and music. I don’t know yet whether I want to stay really simple with the sounds: rolling dice, drawing a card, that sort of thing; or if I should attempt to make custom sounds for each card you may encounter: bear growls, werewolf howls, quantum moles... teleporting? That sounds a lot more fun, but is a hell of a lot more work. It will also significantly increase the filesize of the finished product, which may be a concern.

As for music, Alex is planning to create a score once he’s out of school for the summer. I hope he has the time and interest to follow through; I have no doubt that he has the talent and skill.

Animation

Right now the game might be a little hard to follow because everything is so abrupt. I plan on adding animations to make things a lot smoother and make it obvious what’s happening, such as rolling a die, sliding a card into an item slot, or moving a removed tile to the discard pile off the board. The only animations I have so far are simple translations and rotations that I could accomplish in a single line of code.

There also needs to be some sort of special animation for when you win the game.

Something I would really love to be able to do, but which will almost definitely not make the initial release simply because of the immense amount of time and effort it would take, is to enhance each piece of artwork to be animated. Even if the animations are relatively simple, I think they’d add a great deal of dynamism to the game; but doing so would multiply the amount of work required by an obscene amount. Maybe if the initial version becomes popular enough to justify it.

Drag and Drop

Like animations, being able to drag a card or tile to where you want it will make it much easier to understand exactly what’s happening in the game.

Characters

Currently there are four hard-coded characters whose only “powers” are things I used to verify that my code was flexible enough to allow them: moving an extra space, carrying an extra item, having an extra wound slot. The final game will have a larger variety of characters, with a more interesting array of abilities. I think there will very likely be one with an extra item slot, but I’m finding that moving an extra space every turn is too powerful as a built-in player power, and having an extra wound slot is too weak. But perhaps that will change as we all play the game more. I have a few other ideas for player powers, and will gladly accept any ideas you have for more.

Of course the final version will have variable numbers of players, as well as allowing you to select from among them. It will probably be an option when starting a new game to say whether you may choose any character you want, or draw three characters and choose one, or just get one completely at random.

Cards

There are some cards right now where the items have no names or descriptions yet (“TBD”). If you can think of anything fitting for any of them, please let me know! (Note that some cards have items that do nothing at all, just gems. Those “items” are deliberately not named.) I also expect that several of the cards I’m currently using will either need to be modified or removed. It’s way too much to expect that every single card in there right now is absolutely perfect as is and will work in the final product. Let me know if you find any traps or enemies that are too easy or too difficult, or items that seem either overpowered or consistently useless.

Either way though, I also need to add a whole lot more cards. I especially need to add more cards for the Heart of the Mountain at the end of the game; right now there’s just a hard-coded Dragon at the center because that’s what was easiest to do in order for you to start looking at it. I have a few ideas for alternate endings already but could always use more, so please send me anything you happen to think of! – Multiple endings added for tabletop, but I still need to add them to digital

By the way, this also directly affects the artwork task above. More cards are absolutely essential, but mean more work both for coding and for art.

Artificial Intelligence

It isn’t much of a game if you’re playing all of the characters by yourself. Eventually I’ll need the game to control your opponents and play against you in a way that’s actually a challenge, without being totally impossible to beat.

Small Screen support

Ultimately my goal is for the game to run on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and phones. That means there will be at least 4 different screen categories that each require their own layout (with lots of additional tweaking to adapt to the various screen sizes within each category). I’m developing the game right now on an enormous screen, which is fine while I’m just focusing on functionality. Once I know how I want the game to look overall, I’ll do the work to adapt to smaller sizes; this way, I won’t be spending time and effort now on details that will end up not applying to the final version. Unfortunately, this means that the alpha version of the game really only looks good if you’re playing it on a screen about the size of my own.

Multiplayer support

I also need to figure out how to let you play against other human beings. At the simplest, “pass-and-play” support means pausing the game at the end of each turn so you can hand the iPad to the next player or whatever. But more desirable (and more ambitious and complicated) options include playing in real time over a local network, playing in real time over the internet, and playing a delayed game where each player logs in and takes their turn whenever they are available, after which play passes to the next player. I’m not sure too many games bother with that last one these days so I will probably skip it.

Increased player interaction

Right now, the game feels very much like “multiplayer solitaire”. There is just about no way to affect what is happening with your fellow players. You can add or remove tiles in front of them that impede their progress, or remove the tile containing their forward camp. That’s pretty much it. It’s a race, but it feels very much like the winner is just whoever got luckiest with the draw of the cards and the roll of the dice.

On the other hand, I’ve already compared this game to Talisman. The worst thing about Talisman is its player interaction. I hate the fact that someone can land on you and either steal your best item or, if you’re already badly wounded, straight up kill you and steal everything. I want players to care about what each other is doing, but not be able to directly screw each other over in a way that makes the game less fun.

I’ve already begun addressing this in the tabletop version of the game, and if what I’ve done there seems to be working, I’ll add those changes here. My ideas so far:

Traps vs Enemies

To make a bigger distinction between Traps and Enemies, I’m thinking of having Traps not roll against you. The justification is that the die roll is supposed to represent your actions during combat, your ingenuity, tactics, quick thinking, use of the surroundings, and plain luck. That makes sense for an Enemy that is fighting back against you, but a Trap just sits there. I’ll need to increase the attributes on Trap cards to compensate, of course. And redesign any items that affect Trap rolls against you.Out, simply because nothing rolls against you anymore

Instead, I’m currently playtesting the following: when you lose to an Enemy, you take a Wound. When you lose to a Trap, you lose a turn.

Achievements

Pretty minor but I don’t want to forget: it’s de rigueur to have numerous achievements in mobile and Steam games. Simple stuff like Win Your First Game, Win 10 Games, Win a Game with Every Character, as well as more esoteric ones like Have Items Equipped from Moles, Radioactive Moles, and Quantum Moles Simultaneously.

Other features

A few random ones that don’t fit into any other categories above: