Embedded Files
Game: Elder Awakening
Game: Elder Awakening
Role: Solo Developer
Timeline: April 2025 - Ongoing
Platform: PC
Tools: Unreal Engine 5
DEMO (VERSION ONE)
DEMO (VERSION TWO)
COUNTER SPELL
Version One
Version One
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 Two
Version Two
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.
Current version
Counter Spell is now a combination of the two. This allows players to feel immdiately more comfortable with the base functionality of counter spell, as contextually it's a maghic spell, but functionally it's still a shield block with extra steps.
The player uses magic to emit a short range spell that counters projectiles in range. Enemies that are casting that are hit will also have their cast ended, and grant the player the spell being cast.
MIMIC VERSION ONE
MIMIC VERSION ONE
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. The player can only hold ONE countered ability at a time.
MIMIC CURRENT VERSION: HOTBAR
Now the player will assign any ability they counter to their hotbar immediately depending on the ability type. This choice was made to give players the choice to actively arrange their hotbar in real time, but also putting choice into parrying. If you parry an ability, you will have to manually change your layout.
MIMIC CURRENT VERSION: SPELLBOOK
The player now gains a list of abilities that they have successfully countered. They can assign abilites from their spellbook at any time.
Current Enemy Ability Concepts
FIRE
Fire kit: The idea is to encourage close range combat and dealing as much damage as possible in bursts, and allowing enemies to burn during cooldowns. Fire deals more outright damage but has no CC and medium cooldowns.
ICE
Ice is encouraging player to control an area, and reward successfully keeping up sustained attacks while keeping distance. Ice deals less damage than Fire, but has harsher CC and stronger finishers.
BLOOD
Blood was meant to interact with both Ice and Fire, while also being a high risk high reward ability system. Successfully comboing with other ability kits would lead to increased bleed stacks and increased time to apply stacks.
CHALLENGES
Fragment Trees
Fragment Trees
The biggest hurdle was getting the fragment ability trees to function with the player hotbar. Because of this, I chose to pivot to the real time spellbook instead. Now the biggest hurdle is establishing a strong architecture that can handle the growing list of abilities and all their interactions
TAKEAWAYS
Sunken Cost Fallacy
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
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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