I view each game I develop as an opportunity to explore a unique mechanic. For The Adventures of Boxman, this mechanic was the bubble wand attack. I'll be discussing my design process for this attack, which you can see in the video below!

While I enjoy turn-based combat, I often find myself wishing it offered more options for player interaction. Undertale offered this, giving players the opportunity to dodge enemy attacks by moving a heart sprite to dodge projectiles. Using this as inspiration, I started considering ways to make the player's attack interactive, rather than their defense.

This led me to consider FPS gameplay. Landing a shot on a particularly evasive enemy always feels extremely rewarding, so I considered how I could convert this mechanic into something that would work in turn-based RPG combat.

Once again I looked back to Undertale for inspiration. I created a UI similar to what was used for dodging attacks, but for The Adventures of Boxman I added clickable moving targets rather than projectiles to dodge. When a player selects the bubble wand attack, they are given five bubbles to use as ammo. In order to reward accuracy, the amount of damage dealt depends on the number of targets they hit. This allows the player to feel as though they have a much greater impact on combat than if they simply select an attack and watch as their character executes it.

I chose to also implement a traditional attack, the balloon sword. The balloon sword functions like you would expect a standard attack in turn-based combat to function, but with some drawbacks to encourage the use of the bubble wand. The first of these is that it has a chance of popping after each use. If it pops, an item needs to be used to create a new balloon sword before the attack can be used again. In addition, an accurate bubble wand attack will deal significantly more damage than the balloon sword.  This gives players who may struggle with hitting the targets, especially in  tougher fights, a more reliable option while still rewarding those who choose to utilize the bubble wand.

If you'd like to try this system out for yourself, check out The Adventures of Boxman, available now for free!