Welcome to the final devlog of 2022! This post will be divided into two parts, the emotion/element system and then what I've been doing/will be doing.

The Emotion system

In order to add depth to Web Odyssey's battle system, I wanted to add some sort of elemental system. But before I talk about the system currently in place, I would like to explain the original design process.

Way back in 2019/2020 I remember listening to Rude Buster from Deltarune and imagining a Shitty RPG sequel with a sideview battle system and I envisionned James putting his sword on fire then Jumping at the enemy to attack and do extra damage.

Come 2021 and I am finally making this sequel, and I decide to add an element system.

The five elements were: ice, fire, water, electrical and ground.

Ice is weak to fire, fire is weak to water, water is weak to electric, electric is weak to ground and ground is weak to ice.

The original idea was that you could give an element to either an enemy or a party member, you could then do a "combo" where for example, you give the enemy ice, then you give Josh fire, then you attack that enemy with Josh:

Then, when you attack an enemy with an element, you lose that element and "transfer" it to the enemy.

Like that, you could potentially do a super triple combo, if for example, if the enemy is iced and James has fire and Jess has water and Josh has electricity.

This was pretty cool on paper, however in practice it was just a little too repetitive, you'd give yourself 3 elements one turn, attack on the next, and repeat.

On top of that, the hell does "elements" have to do with the internet anyway? nothing!
So I had a mechanic that didn't make sense thematically or mechanically.

Then a friend of mine and I brainstormed for ideas and we eventually came up with a mechanic that solved both of these issues!

Thematically:

Instead of "elements", we would instead use emotions! The concept of using emotions was kinda inspired by OMORI, but we took a different approach with it. First off, the internet is known for often displaying certain emotions, which is what made me chose the following emotions the replace elements:

• Smug

• Depression

• Cringe

• Rage

• Horny

Smug is for the people who think they know everything and are very prideful.

Depression and sadness in general is felt by many people around the internet.

Cringing is inevitable on the internet, its a weird mix of embarrasment and disgust.

Rage is even more inevitable, everybody is angry nowadays (fun fact this was orginially going to be either "Triggered" or "Offended" but I really didn't want to take any chances)

And finally hornyness, do I even need to explain. You know the "rules", and so do I.

Mechanically:

First things first, instead of emotions being weak to certain emotions, every single enemy now has their own weaknesses and strengths against certain emotions! This is basically just like in the persona/SMT games.

This change came with a new permanent skill called "Kowalski Analysis" which lets you see the Name, health, ATK and most importantly emotional strenghts and weaknesses for each enemy:

With this change, you still have to give yourself a certain emotion using a skill, however you no longer have to give an element to an enemy. You also no longer "transfer" your emotion after attacking.

If you hit an enemy while you have an emotion he is strong against, your damage will be halved.

However, if you hit an enemy's weakness you'll do...

And your damage will be tripled! (The drip stat is also added to your damage when dealing emotional damage)

Similarly to the triple perfect mechanic, doing triple emotional damage has a special effect: it'll force the enemy to skip it's turn!

Now, you'll also have to worry about emotions when dodging enemy attacks; taking any damage will make you lose your emotion! This rewards good dodging and makes avoiding attacks way more intense and exciting! Getting hit normally is like "ah oops whatever" but when you're trying to get an emotional combo going, getting hit becomes devastating!

But that is not all, enemies can use emotions too!

Enemies will throw out attack imbued with the emotions that they are strong against! When you get hit by an emotional attack you gain that emotion. You want to avoid these even more as not only do you take damage, you'll be weaker against the enemy!

When you get hit with an emotional attack of the same emotion you currently have, you take 0.5x damage and you gain an extra 3 turns on your emotion.
If you already have an emotion and get hit with an emotional attack of any other emotion you take 1.5x damage.

Now you might think, okay, just gotta avoid the attacks more, whats the big deal?

WELL, you will often be fighting more than one enemy at once, and you'll notice that sometimes an enemy is weak to what the other enemy is strong against and vice versa. In those cases it could be extremely helpful to intentionally get hit by certain emotions of one enemy in order to keep your combo going on the other enemy without wasting an entire turn giving everyone the desired emotions.
Your emotion will eventually run out of turns, unless you increase the turn count WHILE the enemy is attacking you!

That's about it for emotions, I have no idea how this will be teached to the player, but I'll find a way!

The whole Emotion system was gradually implemented from July to November, but I'm pretty happy with where it is now!

What I've been doing/will be doing

I've done a few pretty cool things in the past few months, including a new logo and a website! Other than that I've mostly been doing small additions and things that will be useful for the fututre that I can't show yet!

One thing I've done however, which I think is pretty cool, is a new animation when using items!

This was directly inspired by the Mario and Luigi games:

Anyway, I've got a few stuff in the works that I'm pretty excited for in the next month.

Most importantly, I'm currently working on a trailer for the game! I plan to release it at the very start of 2023! Please look forward to that.

So yeah, I guess that's it for this devlog, THIS TOOK SO MUCH LONGER THAN I EXPECTED. I'M AT 1100 WORDS RIGHT NOW I'VE NEVER DONE THAT IN ANY SCHOOL WORK EVER!

So yeah, that's why I'm late by a day.

Before I leave I just want to say, wow, I have worked on the same project for the entirety of 2022! The whole year has been spent working on a single project! I have never done something like that before, and I look forward to working on this game even more in 2023.

I hope you spend a good christmas/holidays and have a happy new year!

Thank you for reading to the end!