Formerly, as I wrote to many of you in emails, the battle mode selector was planned to be a hybrid of GCL’s pick-what-you-want (but basically one main mode with lots of tweakables) and GC0’s lots of (not so) different game modes. After lots of changes in the plans, the “currently final” version is distilled into a 3 modes * 3 difficulty levels simple selector, and some kind of challenge generator where you can have lots of perks and tweaks added (this latter will be shown later in the blog, or probably only in the released game (let’s keep some things secret until release)).
The main idea was to make the battle modes really different, not just like “+20% giant monsters”, so a fundamental rule (“What is the defeat condition?”) was at the scope.
The results are:
Clash:
This is the normal, “GemCraft classic” mode. I guess I don’t have to go into details here, but just to sum it up: You generate mana via many ways, and use mana to cast expensive banishment spells to teleport the attacking monsters away before they smash your fragile glass orb (or eat you alive if you’re playing GC1 or GC0). If you have lots of mana, you can have many monsters attack your orb without losing, there’s no hard limit.
Defeat condition: a monster gets to your orb and you don’t have enough mana to banish it.
Orblets:
Your orb is surrounded by tiny orblets, which attract monsters to snatch them instead of attacking the orb. As long as you have orblets on stock, your orb is safe. After that, further incoming monsters will go for your orb and cost mana to be banished. Orblets have a drawback however, the less you have left intact, the less mana you get. If all your orblets are stolen, you have no more mana income at all. If you manage to kill orblet-carrying monsters, the dropped orblet slowly rolls back towards your orb, an when it docks back in, your lost portion of mana generation multiplier will be restored.
Defeat condition: same as in clash (normal) mode, but losing your orblets will almost ensure your swift defeat.
Games I’ve played that feature this kind of tower defense gameplay: Flash Element TD 2, Cursed Treasure – Don’t touch my gems!, Defense Grid – The Awakening.
Flow:
Why do those monsters (or any attacking creatures in most tower defense games) follow the path blindly? Well, in this mode, they don’t. Although they still obey the rule of not climbing over buildings, they just roam through the grass, trying to get from one side of the scene to the opposite. When off-road, they move slower, but you can’t lay traps in their path there either – it’s up to you to use the laid out paths to your advantage, leading the horde into the wild shrubs for some speed penalty, then back to the road where your traps lay in waiting. Monsters will ignore your orb, but you have a limit on monsters you can let pass through. Your orb still has its use though, if you kill monsters in its vicinity, you get more mana and XP. Your monster limit increases after each wave beaten. You’ll also have to watch out for monster nests (and try to blast them early), monsters can instantly flee entering them.
Defeat condition: a given amount of monsters get from one side to the other alive.
This “you have x lives” kind of gameplay is featured in most TD games, including Kingdom Rush or the Bloons TD series, one famous example (probably the first one I played) for the “side to side free roam” mechanic in addition to the pass-through limit is Desktop Tower Defense.
So, these are the three modes planned. Each will have its own XP slot, so you can play a stage in each mode to get more XP.
The 3 difficulty levels will have a huge gap between them (think of the difficulty ramp between Normal and Nightmare mode in Diablo 2), with a great leap in the possible XP reward of course.
Endurance mode:
After you beat a stage, you can choose to go on in endurance (just like in Bloons TD), to further increase your XP. The endurance multiplier in GCL was quite problematic, so instead of it, any monster you slay in endurance will simply add its own XP to the sum. To make it less exploitable than before (1337 waves shred on autopilot), you can expect the endurance waves to skyrocket in toughness.
Coming up next:
15th of October:
XP system, battle outcome panel
29th of October:
World map
