Welcome to the first DevLog of Fogworld! People had trouble finding what exactly you will be doing in this game and what makes it unique, so I will rectify that here.

Fogworld is a dark fantasy monster-taming RPG that combines genre-typical gameplay from games like Pokemon with a game loop that is closer to Roguelites or Deckbuilding games. To explain what this will look like in practice, let’s go over the design pillars of Fogworld in this devlog.

Monsters

When it comes to monster taming games, it’s important that players can find cool and unique monsters. In Fogworld these monsters are called ‘Familiars’. They are the magical beings and spirits of the world and you will be able to summon them and upgrade them in various ways.

In many monster taming games the design of the monsters boils down to “Animal + Element = Monster”. In Fogworld I wanted to avoid this cliché and put extra effort into making sure that every Familiar has something unique about them. For example, there are lots of references to creatures from old stories, paintings or different folklore like the Elwetritsch.

Combat

Combat is an important part of Fogworld and probably the part of the game that you will spend the majority of your time on. Battles are fought in turn-based 5 vs 5 matches, similar to games like Final Fantasy or Monster Sanctuary, but a bit larger. Each Familiar in Fogworld has their own strengths, weaknesses and a special set of skills that allows you to strategically build your team in different ways. 

Typically these kinds of turn-based games have a few flaws that make combat quite monotonous after a while. The dominant strategy becomes “Use the best attack and don’t forget to heal every now and then”. To remedy this problem, Familiars use the Action Point (AP) System. They gain a certain amount of AP each turn which they can spend to use skills or save up for later turns. This means that you will constantly have to decide between using smaller, efficient skills or saving for big, board-sweeping ultimate skills.

Collecting

For RPGs it’s vital that there is a sense of progression for the player. In Fogworld this progression takes on several forms that all have to do with collecting certain items on the map or in combat and then using these items in unique ways.

Probably the most important things you will collect are “Essences”, which form the foundation for summoning familiars, and Mana that is used to level them up.

You can also find equipment that improves familiars by raising their stats and giving them new abilities.

Finally, you will also gather materials that can be used in various ways, such as crafting equipment, creating tiles and buildings for the map and upgrading your home base.

Map

The Overworld Map is probably Fogworld’s most unique feature. It’s set up like a board game, where you can place the tiles and buildings you created before. Certain combinations of tiles and buildings will react by transforming parts of the map or creating new tiles and buildings outside of your control. At night, when you go hunting for new familiars or materials, these tiles, buildings and their combinations can have a positive effect, like healing your familiars, or a negative effect, such as lowering their stats. Some combinations can also have weirder effects like changing the weather, transforming items you found or spawning certain bosses.

Gameplay Loop

All of the steps above feed into Fogworld’s gameplay loop, making it hopefully quite unique. In practice this loop will look something like this:

First, you build a team and adjust the map with a certain goal in mind. For example spawning and defeating the next boss fight.

Then, you start the night and go hunting on the map you just built. You fight a couple of random encounters and the boss fight you spawned.

Finally, after a successful night, you take all the loot you’ve earned back to your home base and upgrade your familiars, craft new tiles, etc. before you start planning for the next night.

This is the basic gameplay loop of Fogworld. As you can see, there is a special focus on allowing players to customize how difficult each night is going to be and rewarding them for taking risks.

I hope this little overview gives you an idea about what you’re going to do in Fogworld! If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know in the comments below.

Thank you for reading!