Ba-Bomb!: Lessons learned (part 4) Puzzle-RPG

Quest mode: the real reason to play Ba-Bomb!

Quest mode allowed me to add in some of the wackiness and character appeal that I had always intended for Ba-Bomb!
One of the biggest challenges with creating the quest mode was figuring out how to design it so that it wouldn't take forever and a day to finish making it.  That meant I needed to limit art assets and game complexity as much as possible, while still keeping a somewhat grand scale.

I started by figuring out a story that could be told in as few drawings as possible.

Pengi's at home enjoying his favorite snack.

Monsters invade and ban Pengi's favorite snack!

It's payback time!

Ok, there's actually a few more drawings than just these 3, but I'm not going to post all of them.

I referenced older 8-bit RPG's to see where they cut corners, as well as figuring out a few tricks of my own.
One of the tricks I used was to only animate Pengi, the enemies are all just a single drawing that get's moved around on screen.  I also recolored a number of enemies to create alternate stronger versions of the same enemy to be used later in the game.

I really wanted the RPG aspect to be secondary to the Puzzle aspect of the game, so I simplified the RPG mechanics as much as I could while still making it feel like a traditional RPG.
One of the ways I achieved this was to get rid of traditional Experience and Magic points.
I replaced Experience points with Gold and replaced Magic with items that could either be purchased or found.

So, to level up, all you'd need to do is go shopping.
At the shop you can buy Attack-up, HP-up, Defense-up, as well as techniques like Counter and Dodge. You can buy various items such as the Anvil to attack enemies or a box of matches to assist you whenever you run out.
My favorite part of the shop is the Advice button.  Advice is always free, and is a mix of useful tips, sarcasm and jokes.

Most RPG's have a small party of adventurers, but I simplified it down to just having Pengi.

The biggest problem that needed to be solved with the 'gold only' single character system was healing.
In a typical RPG, healing can be done through Magic, Items, or Healers.  I replaced all of this with a single item/character: Dr. Piggy.

You can get Dr. Piggy from the shop for free.  The only catch being that Dr. Piggy is a piggybank doctor who needs to get paid to heal you.  This works fine in most instances, except for when you run out of gold.
I solved this by leaving the player with 1 HP after losing a battle, and by having Dr. Piggy offer you first aid if you have 1 HP and less than 50 gold.  So, if you keep getting your butt kicked by monsters and run out of Gold, Dr. Piggy can get you back in the game.

Random encounters also exist in the game, but are far less common then in most RPG's.

In Quest mode, you walk along paths until you encounter a monster icon.  Touch the monster icon, and you will enter into a battle.  Win the battle and the monster icon will be replaced by a red circle.  Walking across the red circle has about a 10% chance of a random encounter.  I felt that this system gave you a good deal of control over deciding when to fight, but still enough randomness to keep it interesting.

When in a battle, you start by seeing who your enemy is, as well as stats for both you and the enemy.  The enemy you will face is semi-random, but you will face weaker enemies in the first area, and the strongest enemies in the final area.
Battle difficulty isn't just determined by the enemy's Attack and Defense points, since it's a puzzle game, the number of differently colored bombs will also vary.  In the first area of the game, you will encounter easier stages with fewer bomb colors, and in the later rounds, you will encounter harder stages with more colors and rocks.

In a battle, your goal is to fill the bar on the bottom of the screen by creating the largest combos you can.  When the bar is full, you get your turn to choose to either Attack, Defend, use an Item or Run.
Attack attacks the enemy, Defend increases your defense for several turns, Item allows you to use one of your items, such as Anvil, Matchbook, or Dr. Piggy, and Run attempts to run away from the battle.
If you have purchased the Counter or Dodge techniques, you will have a significantly higher chance of countering or dodging an enemy attack if you select Defend.

Every 4 turns, the enemy will have his chance to attack or use magic.  Not all enemies use magic, but the one's who do will use stronger magic later in the game.  Magic attacks include, but are not limited to: Shuffle - randomizes bomb placement, Summon Skwid - makes Skwid enemy appear, Steal - steals your matches, Anvil - anvil falls on you, Siphon - steals your health, and my favorite: Hail of Stones - which causes stones to fall from the sky and litter the play field.
Sometimes an enemy will spend their turn focusing to build up their magic points if they've used up all their magic.

Of course, the enemies aren't the only ones who have magic.
Though, for Pengi to use magic, he must first find the enchanted Ocarina.
The Ocarina isn't too hard to find, as the shopkeeper gives a couple hints about where to find it.

In the first world of the game, there is a tombstone deep in the woods.  If Pengi has the shovel item, he will dig up the grave and encounter an enemy called "restless bones".  If you defeat this enemy, you will receive the Ocarina.
You can use the Ocarina in a battle, but unless you purchase lessons from the shopkeeper, the Ocarina's magic will backfire on you.
The Ocarina takes a few turns to charge up, and it's effects are random, but at a higher level, they are always useful.
The Ocarina can give you extra matches, extra gold, health, it can clear the screen of stones or duds, it can drop anvils on the enemies or even siphon health from them.
Although the Ocarina's magic is useful, the true purpose of the Ocarina is to unseal the door to the final boss and get the game's good ending.

The real challenge in making the Quest mode wasn't designing the maps or coming up with ideas, the main challenge was properly balancing the game:
Making sure the enemies weren't too strong or weak, balancing the amount of gold received in battle and spent at the shop, balancing the progress bar to ensure you can have a turn just as often as the enemies, etc.  Balancing takes time, and I believe that I balanced this game pretty well, as I spent many many hours testing it to make sure it was well balanced.

Overall, I felt that Quest mode turned out really well.  In the iOS versions of the game, all game modes are unlocked for free, but you only earn a minuscule amount of gold from winning battles until you unlock the full version for $1.  I felt that this was a good strategy, but I never made very many sales.
Next time, I'll share my thoughts on marketing Ba-Bomb!

To be continued...