Elder Awakening

What Will You Become?

Game: Elder Awakening

Role: Solo Developer
Timeline: April 2025 - Ongoing
Platform: PC
Tools: Unreal Engine 5
Itch.io

COUNTER SPELL

Summary:

Version 1

Initially the counter spell was a perfect parry that would permanently unlock the enemies ability for the player. This was initally cool in concept but once people played they found it to become stale pretty quickly. This version also included 3 types of spell aquisition: Parry, Observational, and Absorption.

Version 2

This is what the parry became. I changed the mechanic to narratively and visually fit the theme of the game better, so it's now a spell itself. The player also no longer permanently unlocks a spell that they counter. instead, they get a single use copy called a Mimic.

MIMIC

The mimic spell will always reflect the players current morality alignment. It's availability is indicated by the purple orb at the far left of the hotbar.

FRAGMENTS

Fragments are the core of the magic progression system. Each fragment has its own skill tree, and each fragment has its own form of magic

Flame

Flame fragment uses firey spells to dish out tons of damage. Flame fragment abilities have a passive called Ignite. Enemies killed while Ignited explode on death, dealing large AoE damage.

Spark

Spark fragment uses electric spells to chain their damage throughout all enemies in an area. Spark fragment abilities have a passive called chain reaction. if an enemy dies to a spark ability, the killing ability chains to nearby enemies, and passes debuffs from that enemy to the nearby enemies.

Ice

Ice fragment uses icy spells to slow and stun enemies, taking control of the battlefield. Ice fragment abilities have a passive called Chill. after receiving 5 stacks of chill, the target is stunned

ABSORB

Absorbing an enemies fragment permanenly unlocks their abiiltiy tree for the player, granting them the base abilities of the fragment. Collecting fragments past the first and using abilities on the fragment will add to the fragments experience level. At each level, the fragment gains an ability point which the player can then use to level up existing abilities on that fragment or learn new abilities on the ability tree.

CORRUPTION

Corrupt

Corrupted enemies grant you corrupted fragments. Corrupted Abilities deal more damage but have less control

Cleanse

You can cleanse your corrupted fragments but it costs Humanity.

FUSION

Barrage

Strike

FlurryStrike

You can fuse abilities to create new ones. Right now, you can only fuse Barrage and Strike to create Flurry Strike. Fused abilities merge the best of both abilities into one. Players do not lose the base fusion abilities when they unlock fusions.

CHALLENGES

Fragment Trees

The biggest hurdle right now is getting the fragment ability trees to function with the player hotbar.

TAKEAWAYS

Sunken Cost Fallacy

I've learned that just because I sank a ton of time into something doesn't mean it has to exist. I spent a lot of time trying to make the sword and shield counter work, but it just didn't and now it feels better for players.

Just Do It

I've had this idea for a long time and I thought initially that I wouldn't be able to make this without a ton of money. I've had a blast figuring things out though and now I'm pretty happy with how things are going.

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