Combat Mechanics: A High-Level Overview (Dev Log)

First dev log: overview of the combat system

I'm very excited to start sharing what I've been working on for the last year or so - Hunt of the Reptorians.

It's a deck building game where you creatively smash spaceships apart from the outside in. In this first update, I'll give an overview of the combat system.

Build a deck to captain your ship

I love deck building games. I also love managing spaceships. I felt the deck building model would work well as an abstraction of a ship's weapons and abilities and all the on board activities such as repairing, targeting, boarding, etc. It will also be really cool to experiment with crazy cards and synergies between them.

Dynamically carve up enemy ships... and avoid being carved up yourself

I always loved making sand fortresses when I was a boy and loved the feeling I got when the fortress was surrounded with water and the waves started breaking up the fortress from the outside and my siblings and I scrambled to patch up the weaker bits until eventually the tide managed to find a way in! I wanted to capture a similar feeling in Hunt of the Reptorians. The safety of the internal rooms is protected by a layer of armour. Attacks generally break up this armour from the outside in until the juicy internal rooms are exposed.

There is also the concept of external ship parts. These will include gun batteries, engines, shield bubble emitters etc. They are delicate external structures that can be easily damaged with well-targeted or lucky hits. They will need to be carefully protected by well-placed walls or shield bubbles.

Enemy ships come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It's up to you to plan how you will dissect the ship and identify any vulnerable spots.

Would you like more detail?

That's all for this one. If you've read this far, I'm hoping you're interested. If so, please wishlist the game If you want to be the first to get updates and get a place in early playtests, then please sign up to the mailing list.

Till next time,

James