Spirit of the Fox

Community Showcases
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Current Version
Older Art Style
Web Player Demo

“Spirit of the Fox” is a 2D action game about carving a new world out of the void while demons rip it apart. It’s in the early stages, but has gone through several rounds of demos. This post will be updated! Feedback is welcome.

You’re a kitsune (Japanese fox spirit) trying to push back the frontier of the world by turning blighted, cursed ground into idyllic cherry blossoms and hovering mountains. Towns of ordinary humans generate Dreams that fuel your spells, including a barrier you can place to mark off a rectangle and permanently shield the world. To win this demo, you have to cast that spell, “Iron-Walled World”, on four tiles with the same terrain, forming a rectangle, while they’re “alive”, and once more at the central Gate.

== About the Idea ==

The original idea was a “Progress Quest”-style toy with a kitsune wandering around purifying the land. Then it became a card game about cooperating with other players to harvest the dreams of mortals and forge them into artifacts and spells to fend off the demon horde. Then it became a design for a turn-based game in Python, and now it’s an action game.

Inspirations include the tabletop RPG “Exalted”, “Okami”, and SNES RPGs “ActRaiser” and “SoulBlazer”.

== Where This Project Is Going ==

The next goal is to set up a non-random level with just two terrain types, and use a little dialog system that I just built (and want to try selling; having trouble making it work with multiple GUI skins) to introduce a story. The overall project involves:
-Smooth movement; no real reason to restrict movement to 1-tile increments
-Multiple enemy types from Japanese folklore: tengu, oni, kappa, gaki
-An overworld with multiple levels, showing the big picture of the larger world you’re creating
-Battles with the Nightmares, a group of demon generals, each with their own gimmick
-New spells and items, equipped and charged by spending time in towns instead of simply paying magic points
-Considerably larger levels, forcing you to rely on building defenses and trusting your people to hold the border while you’re away

Feedback is appreciated. Known problems include wanting better controls and better art, especially the sprites and (if I can handle creating water-material objects in run-time) animated water terrain, and smooth transitions between tiles.

The big picture is that I had imagined doing this as a turn-based game with some notion of a separate battle system, RPG style, but it’s become a frantic action game and I’m not entirely sure that’s good. Having larger levels will shift gameplay toward the Tower Defense style, because you have to balance the need to expand the frontier with the fact that you can’t be everywhere at once. Also, the card game version had an (allegedly) humorous set of locations and items/powers; see kschnee.xepher.net/cgi-bin/floatingworld_deck.py which deals random “cards” each time it’s loaded. The current gameplay style doesn’t really have you interacting with the people the way the cards had implied, which bothers me.

== Credits ==

Credits go to several artists on OpenGameArt.org (listed in game), Daniel Cook of LostGarden.com (old art style), charas-project.net for placeholder sprites, and Butterfly Tea of Jamendo.com for music.

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kschnee.xepher.net/code/unity/sof140424.htm
I’ve been experimenting with a different control scheme. From the title screen hit the “mouse control experiment” button. Use WASD to move instead of arrows, and hold LMB and move the mouse to control that orb you used to move with the arrows. So now you can move and do magic at the same time. Part of the experment is a toggle button for two forms of mouse control. Spell orb mimics your movement with some inertia, or slippery mouse control where there’s damped control and some randomness. I could also have done direct “follow the cursor” movement, but where’s the challenge in that?

I’m not sure whether this system is a good idea. What do you think?

The idea behind the spell orb was that the basic mechanic of “healing the land” was boring when it was a trivial task, like mowing the lawn. By making it require some effort the task becomes more interesting, and feels a little more like actually doing something cool. The control scheme would evolve from arrows + numbers + Z, to WASD + mouse + numbers. (Spacebar to attack? RMB?) I DON’T want to have mechanics where you win by clicking on enemies and waiting for them to die, Diablo style, or by spamming class abilities 1-6-3 in order as their cooldown timers refill, MMO style. The gameplay should be a balance between the basic land-healing task, fighting off the current monsters, and building up defenses/powers.

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Been busy with finishing my degree, but I did build something significant that should help with this project: “Heroic Speech”, a dialog system that lets me create multi-page conversations with choices and character portraits. It’s been submitted to the asset store in its own right.

Demo: http://kschnee.xepher.net/code/unity/Heroic_Speech_Demo.htm

Still need to decide on the control scheme.