Beast Master - Beginner Tournament

The easiest Beast Master tournament in the arena. I had a lot of fun putting this one together! And, again, a reminder that the Triple Triad theme is just a placeholder.

 

Beast Master Card Game

 And here we go, the card game is now functional and named Beast Master!

Update to Card Design

 Slight update to the visual look of cards after my previous update on how I'm changing the gameplay of the card game a bit.

So, the cottontail is a level 1 card. This means that it has an attack of 1, and can only attack left or right because this is where its arrows are pointing. The appearance of a card will also change based on its level:

Challenge Mode & The Arena

First off, before I get into things, progress is going pretty well and additional testing should be starting in the next day or two on post-demo content.

Anyway, on to the point of this update. I just want to touch on two things I felt like talking about. 

1. The Arena
I've posted about the arena before. Basically, you send one character into the arena for a 1v1 fight against a series of five increasingly difficult battles. You acquire points based on how well you do, and you can exchange these points for items and zil. Originally, this was all that the Arena was going to be, but now it has become just one wing of the Arena called the Battle Wing! 

The Arena possesses a second wing called the Tournament Wing where you'll be able to play cards. Now, I mentioned my plans for the card game a while back and it was intended to be a straight Triple Triad game with no additional rules (plus, same, etc.), but this has also changed. The card game will still be played on a 3x3 grid, but it will be merging the rules of both Triple Triad and Tetra Master! 

Instead of having four different numbers indicating how strong a card is in each direction, all cards only have one number, which will be displayed on the card as their level. Cards will go up to level 5 in strength. Now, this card level, this indicates how strong a card attacks in all direction. I know what your reaction is to that. "But UPRC, won't the card game suck if the numbers only go up to 5?"

The thing is, these cards are going to have... arrows! All cards can have up to four arrows, one per side. If you have a card that has an arrow pointing left, and you place it beside a card that does not have any arrow on its right side, you automatically flip it. No arrow means that card cannot attack or defend at all on that side. So, there's a bit of Tetra Master in there as well. 

Since I am on vacation, I'm going to try and get some form of the card game up and running at last, so fingers crossed that happens.

2. Challenge Mode
This is something that will be a thing much, much, muuuuuch later on. After defeating the final boss and watching the credits, you will receive a prompt asking if you want to return to the world map and activate Challenge Mode. 

What is Challenge Mode? Basically, it brings back most of the game's bosses back from the dead and makes all of them extremely high level bosses that will test the player's ability to the limit. The final boss will also be amped up in Challenge Mode, but will be gated off until the rest of the bosses have been defeated. Bosses will appear in the areas where they originally inhabited and will hopefully give some great treasure as well. We'll see!

Anyway, that's all for now.

Run, Forrest, Run!

 As mentioned in the last update, Salar Volcano spawns fire elementals from lava holes that hunt you down!

The lava elementals are currently set to spawn and chase you for four seconds before despawning. Ten seconds later, a new one spawns. The cycle is endless! Endless, I say!

Salar Volcano Preview

 First off, a screenshot! I've mapped more than this, but it's still new for the dev blog.

Salar Volcano is the second crystal dungeon in Penumbra Crystallis, the first being the Water Shrine. Salar Volcano primarily features cave/lava tiles, but it does transition back and forth to shrine tiles similar to those used in the Water Shrine.

Hazards include glowing lava pits that spawn lava elementals. These elementals will chase down the player for a few seconds before dissipating. There will also be magic fire traps on the floor that, when triggered, will burn all party members for 25-30 damage. Once you activate a trap floor tile, that particular trap tile cannot be triggered again and can be walked over freely.

Monsters are, for the most part, fire-based. This means that Oalston's ice magic and the Chione summon will be very powerful here!

More on Salar Volcano later.

More Updates Coming Soon

 A neat little shrine that will feature in an upcoming cave and the following volcano dungeon. The candles will flicker and glow for a nice little lighting effect. You will also be able to interact with these shrines to restore small amounts of HP and MP.

And apologies for not having much more than that at the moment! I spent the last week doing a side project, the Blackmoon Prophecy Randomizer, which you can grab here. I wanted to get it out of the way ASAP, which is why I was able to finish work on it within a week. Now that I've finished working on that, I'll be focusing solely on Penumbra Crystallis again. Expect more updates soon. 

Magic Missile

 Oalston is the final character to receive a codex-specific ability, and that ability is Magic Missile. It's a fun one!