Each card type in Osagai was designed with a unique objective in mind. If you've skimmed through some games and threads before, you'll see a (thankfully) ever growing thread of games and devs focusing on making combat much more than just "Attack" and spamming the highest powered spell you have.
While there's nothing wrong with skill progression, Osagai attempts to eliminate a byproduct of usual level-based skills;
Skill Bloat. Skill Bloat is what happens when your characters have so many skills that you end up just not using most of them.
Some of my favorite games have been on both sides of this issue. For example, Kelarly's Castle Oblivion/Feral Dreams/Passage of the Hollow Moon games have a typical "Gain a Level > Get Better Ability" progression and the correct call is to usually use the strongest ability until your MP runs out and then quaff an Ether. Typical JRPG fashion, and nothing truly wrong about that, but we can do a lot better.
Indrah's games, and particularly Rootbound which inspired Osagai immensely, takes a different approach. Characters have a small subset of skills and each skill does a very specific effect. Some aren't used as often but are there to provide alternative approaches. I appreciated the ability to customize the characters and there was no skill that I didn't use at least every so often. While certain skills were used more frequently, nothing felt useless.
When building Osagai, pencilcase27's script was the starting point. I'd found the script a long time ago and had blasted out a quick game proposal. I was originally going to go full on CCG themed and have a very MTG type game where you'd buy cards from boosters and etc. While this isn't that game, working with the script gave me plenty of new ideas that found their way here.
I mentioned that there are different card types in Osagai. To make it even more clear, each card type does something different than the others.
Weapons
Weapons are your "bread and butter" so to speak. If you were to imagine a classic RPG Maker game, Weapons would be your ability to spam the ATTACK option. You can use a
single Weapons card each turn but it costs you no Ability Points to use. In true RPG fashion, your starting "Sword" cards are pretty low on the power level curve. But as where you'd usually be equipping better and better weapons on your character, in Osagai you will slowly replace Swords one at a time with weaponry that are only slightly better.
Sword itself simply deals damage equal to your attack. And throughout the game, you
can decide to just use Swords. There's no penalty for it. But every weapon you'll find will always do slightly more than the basic Sword card.
Where it gets tricky is that
every other Weapon is about equal to itself. You have Weapons which have an
element (Fire, Ice, Storm, Light or Dark); a common staple among rpgs.
But then, most other Weapons have only a % chance of having an additional bonus. Some might inflict status effects, draw you a card, regain 1 AP, gain you some health, etc. All of that at a % chance and not a guaranteed hit.
While some players may balk at the idea of using abilities which do not automatically succeed (and curse at the RNG Gods while they're at it), that's not what Weapons are for. Weapons are there to allow you to push Damage every round with the added
bonus of sometimes/usually doing a little bit more.
Spells
When you 100% want something to happen, be it set your enemies ablaze or inflict virulent Wounds, you turn to Spells.
Spells are distinct from Weapons in that they will cost AP to use but are not limited to only once a turn.
Spells are used for the following purposes:
- Supplementing your damage output. A single Weapon swing a turn is all well and good, but when you can also launch a fireball, your damage will usually double up.
- Targeting elemental weaknesses. Spells are usually elemental in nature, and the right mix of them can make sure enemies with a weakness for a particular element bite the dust that much quicker.
- Deck based effects. Drawing cards, recovering used cards, searching for a specific card or card type, shuffling, reordering the deck, etc. There's a lot to do here.
- Combos. Spells are like pieces of a puzzle. Beyond the basics, spells can apply Marker states to opponents or to yourself, boosting other spells you use. (More on Marker States later) For example, Scorch deals basic Fire damage but deals an additional 2 damage if the opponent has the Fire Marker. Many skills also have a Follow Up skill which triggers when certain conditions are met. The most common effect is called Cantrip, which will allow the caster to draw a card if the condition is met.
You juggle your Spells by managing your Ability Points (2 AP regained each turn up to a maximum of 10) and making sure to keep certain Marker states or conditions active.
Equipment
Equipment cards replace your typical Buff spells and your usual Armors and Accessories.
Equipment cards cost
AP to use just like Spells and you can only use a single Equipment each turn. Doing so counts as using your Weapon.
Equipment cards are strong. They usually do one or more of the following:
- Grant a Basic Enhancement: ATK+, DEF+, MAG+, RES+, etc. These basic enhancements can be generated and applied by all manner of cards but Equipments are usually the ones to do so. These Basic Enhancements last only for a short amount of time before wearing off.
- Grant a Unique Enhancement. Equipment provide a unique Enhancement. Sometimes it's something very small, like an additional +1 DEF, drawing a card, a 25% chance to resist Poison, etc. Other times, it's much larger. These Unique Enhancements do not normally wear off. Instead, imagine you have 2 Equipment Slots: Armors and Trinkets. You can only have a single Unique Armor and Unique Trinket enhancement active at a time. Playing a new one will remove all others and replace it with the new one.
If you're wondering about Equipment redundancy, remember that you can still play other copies of a card to keep Basic Enhancements active and trigger non Unique abilities. Basic Equipments do not have a Unique Enhancement, allowing you to keep reapplying Basic Enhancements without worrying about losing your Unique ones.
Items
Item cards are exactly as items would be in an ordinary RPG.
They cost
no AP and have
no limit to the amount that can be played each turn.
Items can do all manner of effects, but they tend to be very minor. Furthermore, you can only have 1 copy of a unique item in a deck. Think of items as your Jack of all Trades. Versatile, not perfect and they'll help you in a pinch if your AP gets low.
