Prototype 1 - 4v4 Monster Battler

4v4 JRPG-style combat system where you manage a team of monsters to overcome their individual weaknesses and defeat your opponent, mixing the distinct team roles of a classic JRPG with the customizability of a monster-catcher.

Core Loop: Analyze your opponent's team state and your own, select your actions, watch how the turn plays out, repeat until victory or defeat.

Controls: Mouse only - everything is controlled by clicking buttons.

You can see what a monster does by hovering over them while selecting your team, and you can see what an action does by hovering over it during your turn!

Right now, the game is PvP (Hot Seat) only - I plan to add a simple AI later.

---

This game concept, while simple, is one that I’ve wanted to tackle for quite some time now. It actually had its origins in a summer project I had planned around freshman or sophomore year, to try and keep myself from getting rusty, but the concept unfortunately never made it past the planning stage, and I’d always regretted that. I ended up sort of melding the spirit of it into this project, combined with the more direct design challenges of trying to build a 4v4 game that felt like it actually encouraged balance in teambuilding and more drawn-out, strategic battles. Seeing that old project finally bear fruit, even in spirit, was very personally fulfilling, and I assume that’s a part of why I enjoyed the final product so much.

I was honestly quite worried about whether my core loop was actually involved enough to be worth prototyping. Looking back, I don’t think the concept itself was especially unique, and I do feel a bit silly prototyping something so “generic”. At the same time, though, I’ve always enjoyed taking something “generic” and trying to make it stand out in its execution and in the little details, and I was passionate about trying to do that here. I was banking on my own ability to turn a simple concept into something that felt special through the monster design and more granular mechanics, which kind of made it an awkward target for a prototype... but I do think it came out alright!

The game, ultimately, didn’t change much from concept to result. The specific battle mechanics were only developed a few days after I started working, since I began more with a design challenge I wanted to solve and had to work backwards to create the effect I intended (encouraging players to spread out their attacks), but I believe the core loop I wanted to create and the style of gameplay I envisioned are reflected well in the final product - the player is encouraged to think, encouraged to spread their attacks out, and encouraged to use support moves. I do think I also actually discovered something new about the idea that I enjoyed, sort of realizing another reason why I wanted to encourage spreading damage out somewhat - aside from focus-fire very much making battles a “win-more” scenario where comebacks are difficult (thus further encouraging fully leaning into damage to knock out enemy monsters before yours can be knocked out so you have the material advantage), it also prevents a lot of monsters from actually doing their jobs, since they’re being knocked out so quickly. With this system, monsters absolutely can still get utterly demolished within a matter of a couple of turns, but it’s not normal - most of the time, each monster will stick around for a good few turns, meaning that they actually have the ability to fulfill a role and increase strategic interplay for longer.

I had set out to essentially answer two questions tied together, inspired by two games in the genre that fascinated me with their failures. Did Pokemon Crystal’s more specialized, team-oriented approach to monster design (with many Pokemon that are hopelessly incompetent on offense but carry a lot of valuable support moves, or simply have movepools or stats too limited to be self-sufficient offensive forces) work better in a setting with multiple monsters on the field at once? And did the 4v4 setup of Robopon 2, which apparently suffered massively from a lack of depth due to the dominant focus-fire strategy, have potential if that dominant strategy was disrupted through anti-focus-fire mechanics and more specialized team members? In essence, could I create a strategically deep and engaging battle system through combining specialized, individually-mediocre monster design and a large party system that discourages focusing on one target at a time (making the game play sort of like a halfway point between a 4v4 and four separate 1v1 battles)? 

Ultimately, I would say that the answer (to me, at least) is... yes! Granted, my tastes have always been somewhat unique, but I’ve had a lot of fun whenever I’ve played - battles tend to last for a good 10-15 rounds on average, which is about where I wanted them (not dragging on forever, but remaining competitive beyond the opening rounds), there’s still a sense of strategy in targeting and focusing on specific opponents without it being optimal to just attack the same monster several times over, and support actions are all incredibly valuable because battles tend to drag on a bit, so a raised/lowered stat or a status effect has ample time to really matter. I haven’t had the time to REALLY playtest the heck out of my game just yet, but from what I have played, it does feel like strategic teambuilding and strategic play are rewarded, and it feels like there are a lot of interesting synergies I didn’t really consider - something that I’m very excited about, since I really wasn’t confident in my ability to create interesting synergies.

That said, there’s also a LOT that I want to add to the game. First and foremost, I’d really like to add an enemy AI! Having even a fairly simple opponent to play against would both make the game more accessible to other people and make it much easier for me to test, and it would be great practice. I have the entire system planned out, I just didn’t quite have the time to implement it. It would be nice to add a “match” system (where the player can fight multiple enemies in a row, as a sort of endless high-score game system), as well, to give the game a sense of progression and turn the game from more of a proof-of-concept into something that can be played. This would definitely be my next step, and really the final major mechanical step (outside of allowing the player to swap monsters out between matches, perhaps).

The other big thing I’d want to add would just be... more monsters, and more balancing of the existing monsters! I have 50 monsters drawn, and I’d love to implement more of them. There are also definitely archetypes I think I’d want more of - there just isn’t a ton of variety in the support monsters right now, so I feel like a few monsters would keep coming up in teams (for instance, there are only three monsters that can heal), and redirection/ally protection in particular just has not been explored. I’d also like to explore a few more mechanics, like lifesteal, multi-hit moves, more damage-over-time effects, blocking only some (but not all) incoming attacks, and perhaps additional elements. I feel like there’s a lot of potential for interesting monster designs here, and I’d love to add more! (Though I’m not sure how I’d cram any more monsters onto the selection screen...)

As for balancing, I like the game, but even now I can tell that some monsters and mechanics are stronger or weaker than they should be. For instance, because of how slow the game is, Poison’s damage over time effect feels really, really powerful, and having more ways to play around it would be helpful. I’d also like to have a way to guarantee that Defense bonuses, Attack penalties, and healing don’t let games slow to a crawl - I’ll need a way to ensure that these can’t get out of hand, through perhaps more damage over time options, limits to how many times certain attacks can get used, or ways to remove stat buffs/debuffs. A lot of this could be partially solved through just having more variety in support options, but to prevent a bad matchup from being too insurmountable, I should also probably add some more universal mechanics that counter stall tactics if games go on too long. On the other hand, Burn as a status currently feels very weak and hard to explain, so I may need to tweak it - I don’t want to let it completely remove the focus-fire penalty, but I could at least have the penalty be reduced further than it currently is.