Loren Amazon Princess game features revealed!

In the picture above, a big close-up picture of my cat Nina. I wanted her to be present in the game Remember Me, but she's quite hard to draw. The resulting sprite inside the game only vaguely resembles her... :)

Today will talk mainly of the decisions I'm making for my next RPG called "Loren - the amazon princess". But first a quick update about my next otome / life sim game:

Remember Me

Things are going smoothly - all the texts are done, and are being proofread again (even if they were already written by a native English speaker!). I have still to link all the events together, make sure everything works as it's supposed (some scenes happens only after others) and other minor things, but seems very likely that will be able to do pre-orders at mid-April! :)

Loren - the amazon princess

In the picture below, the two playable characters: Saren, the human male slave and Elenor, the elf female slave.

I am still writing the plot/storyboard that then will be transformed into script by writers. But I want to talk about the rules first. I'm still brainstorming the ideas but that's what I have so far:

1. shared inventory. After finishing Planet Stronghold, I had the chance to play some recent RPGs and... well, having a separate inventory for each character is really bad :( In this game, I'll have a shared inventory!
2. character customization. Each character will have access only to a specific weapon, like Dragon Age 2. I know this might sound limiting, but in my case I'm doing this for budget reasons: having different sprites drawn with each possible weapon is out of discussion. I think though that it makes more interesting the gameplay and gives each character a specific set of skills related to his weapon choice. For example, Loren will be a massive damage dealer: she uses two swords (dual wield power!) and does tremendous critical strikes. The downside of course is that she'll have low HP, but thankfully your player character will be a healer!
3. character creation. Again, not much freedom for race and name - for plot reasons you'll have ot be either Saren (human male slave), or Elenor (elf female slave). Also, you'll be a healer. You might wonder then "wtf I cannot even choose my class!". Yes, but you'll be able to choose the specialization skills. Even if you're primarily a healer, at low level, as you go on you'll be able to become several different things: a sort of Templar (warrior/healer) that fight and also heal a bit, a sort of Druid (wizard/healer) who can cast offensive/buff spells and heal a bit, or you can choose to keep your path and become a powerful healer. So as you see, you still have a choice at later levels
4. skill system. I absolutely fell in love with the multiple tree/branches skills! I want to use that method in this game. I have already started designing them and I'm quite happy so far about the variety and results. Each character will have a common skill based on the class (warrior, magic user, scout) and a unique personal skill set, so each character will be somehow unique :) I think this feature should make the game much more replayable since you might want to experiment with all the various characters skills.
5. romance. There will be of course romances subplots! The main one will be between Loren and your Playable Character, but I plan also to allow some other romance between other minor characters. They'll be optional like in Planet Stronghold, but I'm not sure yet they'll have specific quest too.
6. endings. I'd like also to have several different endings, I mean quite different between each other. But is perhaps still a bit too early to talk about this (also, I won't really talk about this since don't want to make spoilers!)
7. battle system. This game is more for the "hardcore fans" than casual RPG player, so I'm thinking to move from the first person view of Planet Stronghold and try some card-RPG battle view. You can see a very ugly looking (hey it's programmer's art) test layout below:
   
   
   I'm going to do this for several reasons: more epic battles, you can fight against 12 goblins if you want :D Also, more tactical choices and the position will influence the battle. The first rows will be the one in direct contact, but all the heroes in the second rows won't be directly attackable by enemies unless they have ranged attacks. Also, I can have area of effect spells/skills, and you can swap positions of the heroes, like move in the back lines if your fighter is injured to heal him, and so on. Will be much more fun I think, even if inevitably is going to make battle more complex (but as I said, I think the target market for this kind of game will appreciate it).

That's all for now, as you can see there's already quite some features to talk about ;)