The original project of 2024

Sadie V2 will be an improved version of a game we created in 2024 at the Global Game Jam.

Sadie V1 is a simple turn-based game heavily inspired by another famous game called Hoplite (a great game, you should definitely try it), from Magma Fortress. At that time, I wasn't super excited to "almost" copy another game for a game jam:  game jams are occasions where you should experiment with weird ideas after all. But since my dear artist Fabio was so hyped to recreate a simplified version of it, I decided to follow his enthusiasm and help him build that idea.

Hoplite

While we were making Sadie V1, we noticed some areas of improvement for Hoplite:

• A narrative setting

• Clearer and more intuitive mechanics

• A wider pool of enemy's types

Bear in mind that Hoplite is a great game, born during a game jam as well, and these thoughts came to us naturally — we are just creative designers. Clearly, we didn’t solve these issues at the time, but we kept them in mind.

Why do we believe in Sadie V2?

Despite our thoughts, Hoplite is a very well-received game (1M+ downloads on the Play Store). This means the game’s roots are solid, and there's a large number of potential players interested in something more polished and improved. That idea convinced us to pick up the project again and improve it toward a hypothetical perfection — Sadie V2.

Sadie V2

Old / new stuff

Sadie V1, in terms of usability, is a simple game, and we definitely want to preserve that simplicity: movement and spell usage mechanics probably won’t change much. But who cares about the old — let’s talk about the new features:

• New visual style 🖌️

• A complete different world settings / a new story 🌍

• New mechanics ⚙️

• New IA for enemies 🧠

New visual style🖌️

Our references for the new art style are essentially two:

• Darkest Dungeon

• Mike Mignola's works

This will make the game look more horror-ish, and we’re going in that direction.

New world settings / new story🌍

The story always starts in a little town in U.S.A (something like Stranger Things).  Sadie and her cat are returning home: there is a strong bond between Sadie and her cat (they are always together).

Suddenly, a storm breaks out. With the storm, a thunderclap frightens the cat, causing it to run away.

Eventually, the cat runs into an old and abandoned manor. Of all the places in the world... did it really have to go there?

And so, the quest to retrieve the cat begins.

New mechanics⚙️

We’re thinking a lot about the new mechanics for Sadie V2, and the following ones are confirmed.

Dialogue system💬

The new game is a sequence of different levels: some of them feature enemies (so, turn-based combat), while others include interactable items or NPCs. These latter elements introduce a dialogue system in the game.

New combat system⚔️

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things we don't like about Hoplite is how melee attacks work: in certain scenarios, you'd expect to perform an attack, but it doesn't happen. Since we are making a strategy game, we want everything to be crystal clear.

Weak / attack spots 🔵🔴

By clicking on any enemy on the grid, the game will display its attack 🔴 and weak 🔵 spots.

The attack spots are the positions from which an enemy, at the beginning of its turn (or after moving), can attack. So for instance, the selected enemy can attack the player if he moves into tile A.

Weak spots are the positions from which an enemy can be attacked by the player. The selected enemy can be attacked by the player, at the beginning of their turn (or after moving), if Sadie is on one of the blue tiles B or C.

So for now, these are the big changes we’d like to introduce in Sadie V2.

New AI for enemies🧠

The old AI was pretty dumb and can be summarized like this:

“Move towards the closest cell from which I can attack the player, without coordinating with other enemies.”

The new AI we have in mind is heavily based on a module we call "the orchestrator". The orchestrator will decide, for each enemy, the best action to perform, considering enemy's traits (brave, dumb etc.), and also avoid situations in which two enemies move towards the same position to attack.

Furthermore, we want to create some other emerging behaviour, such as:

•  Move to tackle

• Move to activate traps (yes, there will be pressure plates that trigger spike traps)

As for enemy types (the ones already present in Sadie V1), we will definitely have:

• Melee

• Ranged

• Bomb dude

In any case, we also plan to add more enemy types (at least 3 or 4), to create more situations.

What are we doing now?⚒️

Artistically speaking🖌️

We have a rough storyline defined, which is guiding us to create some concepts of the environment.

We are also giving to give Sadie a new look.

We have "horror" in mind (not in terms of genre). All new character designs will be scarier.

In the next few months, we’re going to replace all assets to test a hypothetical in-game look. The game will be released first for Android (then for PC), so we want to find a balance between art and strategy.

Technically speaking🖥️

The orchestrator's behaviour flow is still on paper, and there is just a rough draft implemented on Unity, so we're still working on it. Since it is the foundation of our game, we'll invest the time needed to make it work properly. We estimate to work on it for at least 3/4 months.

RECAP🗒️

We are building a game from an existing one, taking only the good of it, adding new mechanics and changing its visual style. The resulting game will be a strategic, narrative-driven, hex-grid, turn-based game for Android and PC (Itch, Game Jolt and Steam).

Thank you for reading, and we hope to return soon with more news about Sadie V2.

Pietro,
Lazy Duck Games 🦆💤