Bosses, encounters, and other bits

Level 8 is the first level of the third labyrinth.  I have it laid out on paper, but I'm not quite ready to start implementing it yet.  Instead, I'm finishing up level 6 and 7 and taking care of some other loose items.  Here are some of the highlights.

Each labyrinth features a boss that must be defeated to progress - and that also drops some powerful unique equipment upon their demise.  Let's take a quick look at one mid-game boss, the Flesh Furnace:

This spectral war machine rules over the steel mill, and boasts an array of physical and fire attacks that can hit multiple targets.  You'll have to tear it apart to end the Hate's influence in the area.  What treasures might it be hoarding?

Before we talk about the next feature, let's talk about how encounters work.  The game will include a mix of random and fixed encounters.  Similar to Wizardry 6+7 (and my previous game), fixed encounters stay dead permanently once defeated, and are intended to make up a large chunk of total encounters.  They tend to guard important areas and treasures.  Random encounters don't run out, but are intended to be supplementary.  The idea is that you will gradually clear the dungeon of the fixed encounters that initially block your path, but will still occasionally be attacked by wandering monsters.  MM0 was a little too heavy on random encounters, even after I toned them down in an update, so I am trying to strike a better balance this time.  I like random encounters as a mechanic, but I also think they can become a nuisance if they appear too frequently.  I'm considering some other tweaks to how random encounters work, but nothing definite yet.

That brings us to a small quality of life feature I added recently: the encounter gauge.  This meter lives in the upper right corner of the screen, and lights up as you come closer to a random encounter - though the meter itself is slightly randomized, so you won't know exactly how close you are.  I think a little warning of an impending encounter makes sense, from both playability and in-universe perspectives, and this was pretty quick to implement.

One last thing to talk about is that I'm doing a pass over the planned and existing player skills to improve their flavor somewhat.  A lot of the skills have fairly generic placeholder-ish names that don't convey much of the magical girl theme or the specific flavor of each class, so I'm trying to spice them up a little bit.  This is a work in progress and I haven't even decided what I'm going for in some cases, but some examples are Swipe -> Flashing Blade (War), Blur -> Cloaking Mist (Storms), and Stinger -> Burning Smite (Vengeance).  Since this a first-person game with fairly limited graphics, I'm finding it a bit challenging to flesh out the theme on the player side, but I think this effort will help.  The flavor of the monsters and labyrinths is a lot easier to establish.  The tone for Minerva powers is generally more militant than sugary, but I do think a little more flair and sparkle is in order.