Cluster Luck Assault: Initial Design

I was inspired by Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. I took a glance at gameplay and heard snippets of what the game was about. The game I had first pictured in my mind was rather different from FF:ATB. I decided to refine that idea into my own mobile game.

There will be three major components to the game:

1. Building an Army
2. Selecting units for a battle
3. Battling bosses

I'll be covering the boss battles in this post. The first two components to the game simply supplement the 3rd so I consider getting 3rd section to a pre-alpha state most important.

Boss:
There will be a boss on the left hand side of the screen. It will periodically attack the player's party. When a party member is attacked they are destroyed. I plan on creating unique visual effects to show how and which party member is attacked. The top left of the screen will display the boss's remaining health.

Player Party
Before the battle (2nd component) the player will select a number of party members to fight with. The selected party members will be randomly queued up to show up to battle. A looping timer will trigger an individual party member to be deployed.

Party Grid
The grid width and height may be different between bosses. Currently experimenting with 4 by 6. When a party member is deployed they will be assigned a grid lane to occupy based on which has the front-most vacancy. If there is no vacant grid-space available in the back-most row they will wait until there is one. They will continue down the grid one grid-space a time until there is not a vacant space directly in front of them. If they aren't moving they will be charging their attack, the charge will be displayed in a bar below their feet. When fully charged they will be highlighted to signify that they are ready. When clicked while ready they will deal damage to the boss.

Victory Condition:
Boss health reaches zero.

Defeat Condition:
All player party members are destroyed.

Battle Screen Overview

A: Boss Location - displays boss
B: Party Grid - displays deployed units
C: Boss health bar location

If you'd like the base phone image for your own purposes you can access a rendered png file here or the vector graphic svg file here. This image was created with the incredibly useful program Inkscape.












Expanding Unit Types
I plan on eventually making different types of party members. Some situations would be that when they use their attack instead of dealing damage to the boss they apply buffs to surrounding allies or  some that never attack but deal damage when destroyed. Maybe a type that will not move on their own but will jump forward a space when they attack. There's many permutations this can take and it will be fun to try creating different types of party members so players can try using different unit compositions for each boss battle.

Expanding Boss Behavior
I plan on making multiple bosses which have different behaviors. Some random ideas: When boss takes damage their attack is delayed/sped up, boss applies debuffs with special attacks, boss uses different kinds of logic to decide which grid-space to attack.

Check out next post for the first-playable pre-alpha version of the game.