Project Description

Our project will be a turn-based roleplaying game designed with 2D pixel graphics. Players will interact with a game world that includes a main overworld map, instanced levels, and instanced battle sequences. Players will use the world map to navigate to specific "nodes", or points-of-interest, which will either have them interact with a random event - such as coming across a wandering merchant - or pull them into an instanced level.

Within an instanced level, players will view their character from a top-down perspective, and will have the ability to move around, interact with various level objects, and engage in combat with enemies present in the level. Players may leave the level and and progress through the world map once they have "completed" the task required of them to leave, which could range from defeating a group of enemies in combat, to simply obtaining a required quest item.

Within a combat sequence, players will lead parties of up to four characters (including themselves) in battle against any number of AI enemies. Combat will take place in a turn-based fashion, with turn order being determined by each character's "speed" stat. The character with the highest speed would go first, and the one with the lowest would go last. This order will repeat until one side is defeated. Players will decide which moves to take for each member of their party. These moves would include any action available to the selected character, which would vary by which weapon they have equipped, their skills, etc. Examples of these moves could include striking with a sword, casting a magic spell, or consuming a healing potion.

Players may also manage their party in various ways, such as managing the party's shared inventory, equipping wearable items on party members, and managing members' stats and skills. Inventory items will be gained via obtaining them within levels, at the end of a combat sequence, or by purchasing them from traders. Level-ups will occur as the result of accumulating XP, which is gained via combat. Level-ups of any character in the player's party will allow the player to invest extra points in various stats/skills of that character, which will affect combat in various ways.

This project will be developed in GameMaker Studio, using GML (GameMaker Language) as our primary scripting language. It will be developed for PC, specifically Microsoft Windows, with Linux/Mac support if possible.