I'm making an idle game for PC, Steam, called Infinite Forest Idle.
The main game loop is:
- Click "Start Adventure"
- Your character starts fighting monsters, monsters drop stuff you need to become stronger
- You start in zone 1, when you defeat 10 monsters, you progress to zone 2, ...
- Once your health drops to 0, you have to restart from zone 1
- At any point you can go to town, where you can upgrade your character
- Then you go back to "Start Adventure"
The most important concept is that it's a game specifically designed to play while you're doing something else. For example for LoL players to play for 5-10 minutes in between their games, while they're waiting in lobby/queue/champ select/loading screen. During those few minutes you upgrade your character, then press "Start Adventure" when you're done and the game will just run for an hour or two by itself, 0 input or interaction required.
I do also want to add ways to play the game more actively, for example add one time use items that teleport you to a certain boss with special drops.
I currently have 3 classes in the game: Warrior, Archer and Mage Warriors use swords, archers use bows and mages use staves.
My original idea was:
- Warriors are allowed to also equip a shield, which makes them a bit more tanky, so they can get to a higher zone, in return they're a bit slower than the other classes
- Archers get bonus crit strike and damage, so they kill monsters faster, in return they can't get to as high a zone as the other classes
- Mages have a special magic shield that protects their health, they're not as tanky as warriors, but they deal a bit more damage, not as much damage as archers though, they're a little faster than warriors and a little more tanky than archers, somewhere in between the two other classes
I still like this original idea, but now I introduced a new mechanic in my game, a spellbook: You get 10 spell slots (class does not matter here) in which you equip spells that are automatically cast with each attack. It starts from the left and cycles to the right one by one, when it cast the last spell, it starts over from the first spell on the left. The zones and monsters are designed in such a way that each 5th and 10th monster (10 per zone) are much stronger than the other ones. The 5th monster is 3x stronger and the 10th monster is 5x stronger. So the goal is to order your spells and spell combos in such a way that you can deal with those stronger 5th and 10th monsters. Each monster should be defeated in a single hit, otherwise your combo will break and your highest damage spells won't be executed on the bosses anymore.
With this new concept the class dynamic changes completely. I was thinking to make Warriors focus more on basic attacks for their main source of damage and use the spells more as buffs. Then Mages can focus mostly on spells, nearly all their damage will come from them (duh?) But what do I do with Archers?
I don't want to force things too much, so I don't want to design spells specifically for one class or make spells that are only useable by a single class.
The game currently does not have any range or movement, I'm not sure if I want to add that yet. It's basically like Clicker Heroes combat.
I guess the original idea of working with crit hits still works. But I feel like it needs something extra with the spell system.
The spell system is far from done, I want to add a lot more spells that can do all sorts of different things. There's probably some cool ideas for archer spell combos without "forcing" them to be only useable by the archer.
Lastly, it should be more than something just visual. It's very easy to add 100 different spells with a different visual, but that doesn't actually change anything. I want to classes to feel and play in their own unique way, not just look different.
I hope I explained everything well, it's a pretty complex thing to explain here. Feel free to ask questions and make suggestions.
