Design in Brief

Here are the design goals I have for the game:

• Turn based tactical battle system.  Multiple player characters, NPCs and enemies.  Complex spells, abilities, items that affect both the board and characters

• Multiple character classes.  Level up both stats and abilities.  Can also find special abilities throughout game world (scrolls).  Abilities are defined by both the effect, and the pattern they have in the tileset.  When viewing abilities, should show both.

• Nested and well-written dialog with NPCs.  Communication of the game narrative is primarily through dialog / stylized cut scenes?
• Can have 2+ people involved in dialog.
• Format is similar to old Bioware games: Portrait of speaker with text.  Multiple options for responses.
• Traveling down certain paths locks the dialog / unlocks quests or items.

• Exploration is done through a world map that populates with locations.  Locations can lead to further Location maps, which in turn contain scripted battles, NPC dialog, stores, etc
• The tile-based map will only be used for tactical battles. Dungeon exploration / towns / world exploration simply done through maps that unlock visitable locations.  Non-combat exploration via tile based world is frankly boring but takes a lot of work.  Would rather have a single artistic backsplash + icons to represent town, dungeon, etc

• Straightforward but system with depth: inventory, equipment, stores, crafting
• Lists of icons + name.  Hover over to see detail / compare.  Auto-stacks.  Use checkmark to buy/sell multiples.
• Crafting (discover by luck + find recipes)

• Quests are revealed via dialog.  Quests are maintained in a game journal.  Instead of having everything defined directly (kill x, collect 5 widgets), the quest entry should simply paraphrase the game narrative, but also be able to review narrative so far.  

• Data Driven: The majority of the game (98%) is defined by external data files and assets.  This will allow modders and players to change the game on the fly, create custom quests, even full games.