This devlog is mostly for self-motivation, but any feedback is greatly appreciated, feel free to reach out.
Day 0: Pre-jam brainstorming
What I want to make: an animal training RPG
The inspiration for this game is based on my own personal experience owning guinea pigs. In this game, you will not be raising guinea pigs for your own love and entertainment, you will be raising animals to fight, but the experience will hopefully be largely the same. The core mechanics of the game are: train your animal at home to increase their abilities and stats, use those new abilities in combat, then use the new money to buy better training tools, animals, etc that increase your capability for training the animal.
More fleshed out explanation/vision: you start with an animal and a small amount of starter cash. The animal has some limited abilities, but no trust in you. "Trust" is a stat that changes how receptive the animal is to your commands in and out of battle. However, you can build Trust by feeding your animal, giving it treats, petting, etc. The more you interact with your animal in a positive way, the more it will trust you. Higher Trust means you can train more difficult skills as well. You can also train your animals Strength, Agility, etc., by taking them for exercise, playing games, battling them, etc. This is independent of the Trust stat. For example, you could have a very weak animal that follows your every word, or a powerful animal which acts on its own, or a combination. This allows for various play-styles. The combat system will not be a turn-based RPG but rather real time with KBM.
My tools: I will be using Godot as the primary tool. For sprite editing, I will use GIMP 2.
My strengths: I am a decent programmer, though my knowledge is wide and not very deep. My experience with Godot in particular is limited to tutorials and small uncompleted projects. I have an ear for good music and sound design.
My weaknesses: I don't really know all the best tools to use. I have never finished a game before. I'm still learning Godot and best practices for game devs. I tend to get frustrated debugging code.
Goals, in order of priority: have a UI which can start, load the game, save the player's (animal's) progress, and close the game. Have a working training system where the player can give the animal food to increase trust and use trust to train skills. Have a working battle system where the player can control the animal to attack and move.
Stretch goals: flesh out the game with sound, music, sprites, and transitions. Add mini games to increase animal stats. Add breeding. Give the game a title.
