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I spent most of the rest of my day Saturday cleaning up from my canvas mistake, and didn't get around to character movement and abilities until yesterday. Of course, a good portion of my time was still spent on UI elements, but I argue that they're necessary for the experience? You can't tell what's happening without health bars.
Below, you can see most of the product of my labor until now. Your healer has 3 abilities: an aoe heal, a targeted heal (not yet implemented), and a shield. On the left hand side of the screen, there're some very basic cooldown timers, and as the healer runs around you can see him popping abilities--a green circle which will heal anything (though maybe an easy mode where it only heals allies?), and a blue cylinder which acts as a shield (via a wider collider). The targeted heal will also count down, but it doesn't do anything.
AOE heal and shield abilities
In addition to these abilities, these are the basic models I'm working with at the moment. The detective is your tank, and the astronaut is your mage. I'll probably try to find better models at some point, but who knows if that will be by the end of the jam.
Though there's nothing much going on here, I'm happy to say that just running back and forth, trying to heal both your allies (and the rock tower) at the same time is weirdly fun. I spent maybe half an hour at the end of the night just playing around with it. It's quicker in game than in this .gif.
I'm hoping I can get your allies walking around a bit tomorrow, and maybe even a small version of an AI engine (probably something simple, autonomous movement or an FSM--it might actually end up being GOAP?) so it becomes even more challenging. We'll see how much time I spend on that and how much time I spend on screen transitions. All the buttons work. I love buttons.
My plan at this point is that every ally gets three abilities: the tank will have an aoe taunt which raises his armor and grants enmity, a long range taunt which gives a lot of enmity, and a simple attack to one enemy. The mage will have an aoe attack (which damages everyone but him), a single target long range attack (which does a lot of damage), and a "potion drink" (which does triple duty of mild healing, increasing armor, and lowering enmity). These, of course, are npc abilities, so the player will probably only see the effects.
I'm also thinking of giving the healer a very weak attack, which will do a little damage to the small bugs, but nothing to the big ones. He's got something sort of like that now, but that's just because I need a way to damage allies so I can make sure all my features are working. (Your allies disappear when their health goes to 0.)
The mage will also run away if his health gets too low. Not out of the room (though that might be cool), but also not doing damage. Your allies will follow you, but only if everything is dead.
The bugs will just run at you. They do damage when they run into you, and they have an enmity meter, so they'll attack whoever is at the top of it (healing also gains enmity, not just taunts and damage). I'm not too nervous about that AI. Your allies, though...
The other stuff is more my comfort zone: the tank and mage will give little speeches when you find them, which change if you already have the other one. In addition, I'd love to add little lines requesting healing or yelling about the battle. Also, I think I can get some simple voice acting done. It might be hard to believe, but doing game jams is my way of building a game writing portfolio, even though I haven't done a lot of writing yet.
This version of the game will just be one dungeon level, maybe 6 or 7 rooms? Of course, I'd like it to be more, with several levels. I plan on working on this until its "finished," whatever that means, and hopefully I can upgrade the visuals in that time as well. The assets are fine as they are--this doesn't need to be amazing--but the timers are pretty jank, and there are no animations. I think that might be beyond the scope of the jam, at least for me, but I would like to do something about that at some point.
Either way, I'm happy with where I am so far, and excited for wherever this goes. Thank you everyone for taking this journey with me!