Indie Guardians of Gridvale - Not-So-Serious Tactical Roguelite with Timing Mechanics

[cyborgboy95]

https://sinistersiamese.com/guardians-of-gridvale/





About This Game

Spoiler

Push enemies into water or set them on fire. Use the environment and smart positioning in this tactical, turn based RPG. Enemies telegraph their moves and an optional timing mini-game decides the damage of your attacks. Equip and level up your heroes and take control of the Guardians of Gridvale!
Use the environment
Push enemies into the water, blow up rocks to make shortcuts, freeze water to create bridges, stand on hills to extend the range of your projectile attacks or set grass on fire and enjoy watching the world burn.
Optional Timing based attacks
While dice rolls can be fun and all, missing that 99% shot can feel worse than a kick in the family jewels. The swingmeter let's you use your timing and skill to determine the result of your attacks instead! Don't worry if your reflexes sucks though. The Guardians of Gridvale never "miss". Even botched attacks do some amount of damage. You can turn this off if you prefer a more traditional, random damage system.

Peek into the future
Enemies clearly show who they will attack and change their target as you make your moves so you don’t have to waste actions based on crazy guesses and hearsay. Plan accordingly! Enemy about to slaughter your fragile bard? Take the enemy out first or move the bard into the woods to increase her defense and mitigate damage.
Unique skill trees
Each hero has their own unique skill tree that you can tweak to suit your play style. Don't like to play defense? Then turn your pacifist cleric into a bloodthirsty mass-murderer that leaves piles of corpses in his wake... Well, maybe not exactly like that but you get the point!
Go camping
All heroes need to relax and clear their heads a little between sessions of stomping baddies and what better way of doing that than going camping? Rest and tend to your wounds, hang out with friends or sharpen your weapons to make stabbing poor goblins an even more satisfying experience! It's your camp and your heroes, so you decide how they should waste their time.

Other features

• Fast paced turn based combat. No need to go and make coffee while waiting for excruciatingly slow animations to complete.
  
• Customizable difficulty. Make the enemies frail like soft tissue paper or reduce their damage. If your reflexes are a thing of the past you can always make the timing mini-game go slower or turn it off completely and rely on random damage. I won't stop you if you want to make the game harder either.
  
• Classic 2D perspective and old school pixel art. Grandparents generally can’t handle rotating cameras nor fancy “3D” graphics so I made a game that works for them too!
  
• A story full of idiots and stupid jokes. Who said that saving the world needs to be boring, dark and dull?

More Details from Interview

Spoiler

10 TURNS INTERVIEW WITH GUARDIANS OF GRIDVALE DEV



After a shortstop, we are back on track with the 10 Turns Interviews. Today, I had the pleasure of chatting with Luis Regueira, eclectic and talented indie developers currently struggling with an interesting turn-based strategy RPG. Many entertaining details have emerged as well as some useful advice for aspiring indie developers. Scroll down to discover more.

Hi Luis, thank you for the time you are dedicating to me and TBL. Could you please introduce yourself and the Sinister Siamese Studios?

I played around with making dice and card games my entire childhood really and decided almost twenty years ago that I should learn programming and graphics so I could become a ”real” game developer. It didn’t take me long however to get turned off by the whole idea because I saw how poorly people in the industry were treated (bad salaries, constant overtime etc) and I ended up working in IT as a software tester and making small prototypes on my spare time.

Somewhere along the way I felt that I should pick up programming seriously again and I learned iOS Development which is what I work with today 8 years later. In 2016 I teamed up with a friend to finally make my first commercial game and we made ”Rogue Knight: Infested Lands” for iOS and it was during that time that the name ”Sinister Siamese Studios” was born. The name is after my two cats who are not siameses

What does it mean to be an Indie developer? Especially during this worldwide pandemic

It probably means eating bread and water every day for most . I work full time though and only do game dev on my spare time so I can enjoy the occasional slice of cheese and glass of wine. The pandemic hasn’t affected my game development at all, to be honest. I haven’t attended any social gatherings or conventions before the pandemic either but I guess that’s where most developer would notice it. As to what I means to be an Indie Developer… For me personally it means having less time to work on things than I would like and I think that’s true for most Indie Developers regardless of how much time you put in.

Could you please introduce your project?

“Guardians of Gridvale” is a TRPG with timing mechanics where the enemies telegraph their moves in advance and update them as the player performs actions.

“Picture Into the Breach, Fire Emblem and Paper Mario having a threesome with XCOM sitting next to the bed with a camera”

People sometimes ask me about how these games inspired or influenced my game so here’s a breakdown:

Into the Breach: The tactical gameplay with enemies showing their moves and the focus on abilities that do more than one thing as well as smaller, more focused maps.

Paper Mario: The tone of the writing (not so serious) as well as the timing mechanics

Fire Emblem: The theme and the graphics, the focus on different classes and the dialogues. XCOM: The game structure outside of the tactical missions…

How the idea of Guardians of Gridvale came out?

I was tired of doing small mobile prototypes and wanted to try my hand at doing something squad-based a la into the Breach / XCOM. “Guardians of Gridvale” is basically a mishmash of all my favourite turn-based games.

How about the length of the game? Will it be structured in missions? Will there be something secondary to do?

The basic idea is that there will be scripted story missions with side missions in between. Similar to Gears Tactics if you’ve played that? The side missions will be procedurally generated and give different rewards like XP boosts, gold, new items, or similar. In between missions I hope to implement a camp system where you take care of your units wounds, eat, select which units to bring and what items and skills to equip for the coming missions as well as simpler dialogue between the heroes.

I have a bunch of things I want to try out here but I haven’t yet implemented all of them and I don’t want to promise to much since I don’t know how much this will “cost” in development time. This part could easily balloon and become too big so I tend to not talk about it too much…yet.

How is development going? At what point are you now?

The game is still earlier in development than most people think. I’ve been focusing hard on setting up the “skeleton” of the game so I can get to the next phase of development which will be filling it with more content. I still have lots more enemies to design (there will be more than just Goblins in the game I promise), tilesets to draw, levels to design, and don’t tell anyone but there will most likely be more than 4 heroes…

I saw you are working hard for a first playable demo? Any predictions about that?

I had the goal to release the demo Q1 2021 but I’ve realized that won’t be happening. I have another daughter coming which gives me less time in the months ahead and I also don’t want to make the mistake of showing something too unfinished. My experience is that first impressions tend to last so even if it’s early I want to polish this a bit more to not disappoint anyone and turn them off completely on the game. I would say that I’ll have something out before or during the summer.

Do you have any plans to start some crowdfunding campaign for the game?

There will be no crowdfunding for this. I will keep on making the game in my spare time and do my best to maintain a healthy balance between “real life” and game dev. Crowdfunding would be too stressful for me…

Have you set on the agenda an approximate release date? And what platforms will the game be distributed on?

I am hoping to release in 2022 although I won’t kill myself to make that date. If it comes out in 2023 that’s fine too. I am aiming to release on steam first and consoles after that with the Nintendo Switch being my ultimate goal. Mobile is definitely a possibility too but will be saved for last.

Before the final bonus question, usually, I like being able to leave some interesting insights to other indie developers in my interviews and so I ask you, how is your working day organized? Do you have any particular routines, habits, or strict rules that you respect?

For someone that works on their spare time, the hours are very limited. It is crucial that you know exactly what to work on and that you try trimming out all the “fat” on every task. Work on what’s most important, always. My golden rule is this: do something every day no matter how small. Even if it’s just 10 minutes, that still gets you closer to your goal. The other thing is that I always try to work in the morning when everybody is sleeping and I haven’t started my day job yet.

Bonus question: The last Turn-Based game played?

Currently I’m playing: Gears Tactics, XCOM 2, Into the Breach (I already have all the achievements but have a couple of medals missing) and Mario & Rabbids. The last turn-based game I finished was Mutant: Year Zero a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks Luis it was a huge pleasure talking to you, we will keep following Guardians of Gridvale development and I take this opportunity to remind everyone your official website and also your Twitter profile. Wish you the best.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1510840/view/3060753719320747389

Devlog 1. Introducing myself and Swingmeter mechanics​

Hi all!

The page for ”Guardians of Gridvale” has been up for two weeks now and I think this is the perfect time to introduce myself!

My name is Luis and I'm the sole developer of this game. I am 40 years old (yeah I know ), have a wife, two small kids & two small cats plus a day job where I program iOS apps. What little spare time I have is mostly poured into the development of this game. A game I hope you guys are as excited about as I am! “Guardians of Gridvale” is pretty far from done so don’t be afraid to give me your opinions about things since your feedback will help shape the end product and is of great help to me!

I’m gonna try to post regular updates here going into details about what I'm working on but first I want to talk about a feature that I knew would be divisive: the swingmeter.

The feature

The swingmeter appears when the heroes perform some types of attacks. It’s a moving slider that is stopped when you click the mouse and is one of the many factors that decides how much damage an attack makes. It’s important to note that attacks don’t “miss” so even if you perform poorly on the swingmeter mini-game you will still do damage albeit slightly lower. You can score a critical, a normal or a poor hit.

The "controversy"

Some players absolutely hate timing mechanics and feel that one of the main reasons for playing tactical turn based games is because they are games about thinking and not reacting. They tend to assume that mechanics that test your reflexes in this sorts of games are more important than tactical thinking but that's not true at all in this case.

The details about how damage works

There are multiple factors affecting your damage output in the game: equipped weapons & armor, passive and active skills, tile bonuses, tile penalties, defense bonuses from allies… I’ll talk more about all of these at some other time but the takeaway is that the swingmeter adds a damage bonus/penalty after ALL of these factors have been applied and it won’t be an exaggerated factor. Maybe +/-25% or something. The timing mini-game was always meant to be a bonus, NOT a requirement!

The fallback

If you happen to be one of the player’s who isn’t too happy about the swingmeter I just want to make it clear that the feature can be turned off in the options. The damage bonus/penalty will then be applied randomly and function the same as in most traditional turn based games. Just random damage in other words. It will also be possible to tweak the speed of the swingmeter if you like it but find it too challenging.

All of this will need lots of balancing and iterating and might change a lot before the final version though once people start testing the game

Until next time and thanks a lot for following my progress!

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1510840/view/3099036308542085957

Hero selection and the core loop​

Hi friends, fans and family!

Core loop

The last couple of weeks I have been focused on tying the core loop together. The various game parts are still in an unfinished state and need more love. Right now I need to tie all the different screens together to get a proper flow going. The core loop will go something like this:

- Select a story mission or “random” mission
- Select which heroes go on the mission and equip them, select new skills, level up etc
- Play mission
- Get loot, rewards and XP
- Go to camp to rest, get to know the heroes etc
- Rinse and repeat

Hero selection

The part I’m focusing on right now is the “Select Heroes Screen” which means I’m adding new heroes among other things. There will be a total of 8 unique heroes to choose from and which heroes you pick will depend on a lot of factors like for example:

* What are the conditions for the mission?
* How many heroes can you send?
* Is every hero available?
* Are there any heroes that need extra XP?
* What is your play style?

I’m taking care to make sure that the player has an incentive to rotate their squad but I don’t want to do it in a heavy handed way. I’d like to make the player WANT to rotate their squad without them HAVING to which is not the easiest of things and time will tell how well I succeed with that…

Apart from this I’ve been rewriting and fixing A LOT of code since I’m getting very close to the part where I will be adding content like crazy and the parts of the code where I will mess around the most need to be in top shape so they’re easy to change and maintain.

Thanks for reading! // Luis

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Infinitron]

https://sinistersiamese.com/2022/02/23/playing-defense/

Playing defense

I’ve told you before how the Swingmeter affects attack damage and this time I wanted to talk a bit about how to defend in Guardians of Gridvale. There are no timing mechanics and no random damage when it comes to your enemies attacks. Defense is mostly a matter of positioning even though there are some defensive skills and some equipment that’ll boost your chances of not getting your ass kicked.

Enemies telegraph their attacks

One of the main features of Guardians of Gridvale is that the enemies show who they will attack on their turn. This gives you a clear indication of what the threat level is for each of your heroes. Moving your heroes might however change your enemies plans so keep that in mind. If a hero that was previously unreachable get’s in closer an enemy within distance will update his intention to attack that hero. Checking how much damage your hero will receive is crucial to minimise damage and not get KO:ed.

Defensive bonuses:

There are plenty of different tiles that provide defense bonuses. Tree tiles will grant a defense bonus as will hills and houses for example. Roads on the other hand will provide defense penalties so keep that in mind before rushing in to attack. The other way of getting a defense bonus is by standing next to a companion. In other words, positioning really matters and can often be the difference between life and death.

Undo button

Guardians of Gridvale features an undo button and let’s you move your heroes around to check what positions are the most favourable for you. Put a hero in a position where they will be stomped by several enemies? Press Undo and choose a different position to see how that would play out. Note however that as soon as you perform any other action such as attacking or using any other type of skill, the chance to undo is gone and your current positions are locked until next turn.

Defense bonuses and positioning really add up:

Here’s a bit of math for you (everybody loves math right :D). If a hero with a defense of 0 gets attacked by 3 enemies that each does 5 damage, how much damage will that hero receive? That’s right, 15(!) damage. However, if the same hero instead stands on a forest tile (+1 def) that is next to a friend (+1 def) and puts himself in a position where 5 enemies can attack him, he receives the same amount of damage. Don’t underestimate how much of a difference those bonuses can make.

Here’s a short little gif to show you how this works:

 

[Infinitron]

Roguelited: https://sinistersiamese.com/2022/05/06/turning-guardians-of-gridvale-into-a-roguelike-roguelite/

Turning “Guardians of Gridvale” into a roguelike/roguelite

Hi friends, fans & family! I have a bunch of text coming your way today so I’ll waste no time and get right to it!

Genre change
A major change perhaps… or not? I am going to make “Guardians of Gridvale” a roguelike/roguelite. I know it sounds like a big change but I promise that most of the things will remain as they are: you will still manage a group of heroes with the same tactical, turn based gameplay! There’s just gonna be a greater focus on randomisation and less focus on a “main story”. The banter between heroes etc will still remain. Why am I doing this? Well here’s my reasoning but first a picture of the hero selection screen…

It was my intial idea

This game was born because I wanted to try to make something somewhat similar to ”Into the Breach” but with another setting and some different mechanics. I loved the idea of having banter between heroes and flesh that out in comparison and when I mentioned the game on social media a lot of people wanted a tactical RPG and not a roguelike. I caved but now I’m thinking that I shouldn’t have and need to be true to my initial ”vision”.

It’s a genre I love myself

I practically only play roguelikes/roguelites these days apart from those rare occasions where I have time to play something more time consuming (and that’s when I play my RPGs ). I don’t have time to play more involved, epic story games at this moment in life unfortunately.

“Easier” to get the main loop in place

I practically get rid of the “main story” part of the game if I make a roguelike. Banter will remain but I don’t have to make an overarching story which probably wouldn’t be super good anyway. I also will have fewer parts that depend on each other allowing me to just make a beginning and an end and have whatever is randomized in between. Whether it is ACTUALLY easier remains to be seen but a lot of the things I have planned will be easier to implement with a few tweaks…

Possible to expand upon

Since the game will be made with replayability in mind, adding more heroes, items, maps and enemies is an obvious way of adding to the longevity of the game. It’s harder to make people come back to a game that has a big story focus once they’re done with it.

More commercially viable

Steam loves strategy games and roguelikes and while I’m definitely not making this for money my game will have a better shot at a tiny bit of “success” with streamers and the audience this way.

Spoiler

What will this mean for the game then?

⁃ The tactical combat will remain untouched. You’ll still use the environment, the swingmeter and see enemies attack intentions.

⁃ Maps will be handmade. The game will pick a map and randomize enemy and hero positions and maybe some other stuff but retain that “handmade” feel as much as possible

⁃ I won’t stray from my goal of having varied objectives. I don’t really like “kill all enemies” style missions

⁃ Banter between heroes and humor will remain a pillar of the design

⁃ Your starting party will be picked by you with more heroes appearing randomly during the course of a run. You’ll unlock heroes to get more to choose from.

⁃ There will be a bunch of items and equipment in the game. I’ll tell you more about those at some other point but here’s a picture for making it this far

⁃ There might be “choose your adventure” type text situations to handle with different choices available depending on your current party etc. I say might because it’s not a priority but I think it would be fun to do. Still, that takes work and I don’t really have much time…


Loss conditions

What is the loss condition and what will carry over between runs? Good question. This and a lot of other things will be determined through experimentation together with you, the player.

I will be playing even more roguelikes/roguelites going forward so give me your recommendations! Games with a party of several characters are extra welcome!

Thanks for reading

// Luis

 

[Infinitron]

https://sinistersiamese.com/2022/07/01/major-gameplay-changes-in-the-works/

MAJOR Gameplay changes in the works…​

Hi friends, fans & family! I have some exciting news to share but before I get to it I’m going to tell you what my vision for “Guardian of Gridvale” is/was and where it is now…

The vision​

When I first began working on “Guardians of Gridvale” I had a couple of goals:

1. Show the enemies upcoming actions so that the player doesn’t have to guess/figure out what the AI will do
2. Make sure that skills manipulate positioning of heroes and enemies and alter the environment itself
3. Have a timing mini-game to give an extra “oumph” when attacking

Goals 2 and 3 were fairly “easy” to achieve from a design perspective and I kind of knew how to approach them but showing the enemies upcoming moves proved to be tricky. Why? Because I didn’t want to straight up copy “Into the Breach” and so I thought of different ways of achieving this. The design lead me to make a system where the player makes moves and the enemies update their upcoming moves. This all sounds good and well in theory but I ran into some problems…

The problem​

1. It is difficult to implement. You have to take into account where enemies will be and make sure they’re not in the way of each other in the future for example. It also needs to be computed very often which has implications for how smart the AI can be. Undo functionality was messy and error prone too.
2. The logic behind how it works is difficult to explain to the player and a lot times how the enemy will react to my moves becomes a guessing game which was the opposite of what I was going for.
3. The design is not tight and unique enough. It is not traditional turnbased gameplay nor is it entirely new. You could for example just turn off the enemy intentions and the gameplay becomes the standard I go, you go.

The realisation​

So as I was working on the game a week ago something hits me that was sort of gnawing at the back of my head for a long time…

This is simply not as fun as I envisioned. It is not as creative as I envisioned and I felt that I was failing to make what I set out to make.

So I started thinking… What if the enemies show you their moves but don’t update them at all? “Into the Breach” gameplay is about protecting buildings so getting away from attacks is trivial: you just move out of the way. My game is about combat though so this won’t do. And then it hit me!

What if the enemies are in “overwatch”? “Overwatch” is a mechanic popularized by XCOM where units aim at an area and fire at the first enemy that enters that zone.

I ran some tests and found that I could do a lot of fun stuff with something similar. What if the enemies move and end their turn aiming at the heroes? If the heroes try to move they are instantly attacked. Eureka!

The solution?​

I implemented this system this week:

1. Enemies move and end their movement targeting heroes
2. Player has their turn. If a targeted hero tries to move he gets fired on before completing the move.
3. Enemies get to attack (if they haven’t already during the player’s turn).

Here’s two gifs that show you enemy movement and them attacking when the archer moves:

This improved the game immensely imho. It is pretty easy to grasp for the player and pretty unique. I did however need to fix a couple of things:

• Heroes can now move+attack or attack+move. No longer is a hero’s turn over after an attack.
• The player will get their ass kicked because the enemies do so much damage. To counter this I came up with giving the player a completely free turn. That’s right. The very first turn you get to move and attack without a reply from the enemies. This gives you a lot of freedom when positioning your heroes. Then the turn sequence starts.

But does this mean that the player can’t avoid damage? No. You have several way of doing this:

1. kill attacking enemies before they can attack.
2. Use defensive skills like blocks, parries, dodges, teleports etc
3. Use offensive skills like pushing/pulling away the attacker so his attacks is canceled. Use attacks that swap places with enemies or charge right passed them etc. Unlike moving, using attacks does not cause the targeting enemy to fire.

This will indeed make the game “puzzlier” which some of you might not like but rest assured there will never be “perfect” solutions. You will take damage for sure and be forced to manage that. Trust me when I say that the game has been much improved by this move. It’s way more fun now! Can’t wait to show let you try it!

If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter which is the only way of getting in on the very first, crude/raw demo of the game. Here’s the link: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/sinistersiamese

Thanks for reading!

// Luis

 

[Infinitron]

https://sinistersiamese.com/2023/07/04/still-alive-and-still-working-on-the-game/

Still alive and still working on the game…​

Hi friends, fans & family!

Sorry for the looong radio silence. I have been… busy. Without going into too much details I made a lot of big realisations last summer which caused me to take a long break from the development of the game. I’m in the middle of an ADHD investigation that started because there’s always been some suspicious symptoms but lately with two small kids, a full-time and committing to my hobbies everything simply became too much. All is good and I’ve gone through most of it now and I’ve been working on the game for quite some time but made no posts so this one is going to be BIG! With that said… Let’s get to it!

Oh and please be patient with the loading of the embedded twitter posts. There are a LOT of gifs here

Upping the resolution of the title screen​

I started working on the new title screen and it’s still not done but I’m almost there, just have to clean up the background a bit.This new one will look much better in all resolutions. Let’s compare them!

Houses can now be visited​

I loved the feature in Fire Emblem where you can visit the houses on the map and get items, learn more about the world or get surprises. I’ve added a skeleton for house visits that you can see in action here:

Mission types and side objectives​

I’ve also managed to get some side objectives and mission types other than “kill everyone” set up. Right now there are missions where you need to defend something for x turns, rescuing units before they get killed or escorting them to a safe location. There’s also varying rewards in place like money, items, experience or increased morale…

Status effects and environmental combos​

I LOVE the combat in Divinity Original Sin 2 and needed to work even more on the environmental stuff that I already have going so I created a basic framework for craziness! If you cast fire on oil you create an explosion. If you cast fire on ice it melts and units become “wet”. If a unit is wet it will take more damage from lightning etc. Cast fire on water and the tile starts “smoking”… This system needs lots more love but we’ll get there.

No more telegraphed attacks…​

In the end I have opted to remove the telegraphed attack feature all together. It never became what I wanted it to be so this game is now a “traditional” turn based game with timing mechanics. Still… The AI is predictable and the game will be very clear on how “it thinks” so players can use and exploit that to their advantage. Gladly, lots of the code I wrote did come in handy and the game shows you which enemies are in range and how much damage you might receive before you move to a certain tile. You can see that here (note that those exclamation mark look much nicer now but this is the “clearest” gif I have of how it works):

Portals that spit out reinforcements​

I needed to find a way to add additional enemies to levels and couldn’t find anything better than the classic portals although they do come with a twist… If you “kill” the portal (it’s a normal enemy) you stop it from spitting out reinforcements but if you leave it alone you will soon be overwhelmed…

Uploaded first build to Steam and tested the game on my Steamdeck…​

This gave me so much joy and motivation! The game works like a charm on the Steamdeck and being able to download, install and see it run for the first time was magical!

When is the demo coming out?​

Soon XD. No more promises. I’m working on it! If you want to try the very first version (before I release it publicly on itch.io) signing up for the newsletter is the way to go: http://tinyletter.com/sinistersiamese

With that I say goodbye for this time! Hope you like the updates and don’t hesitate to tell me what you think :D. Big thanks for taking an interest in my work ❤



// Luis

 

[Infinitron]

https://sinistersiamese.com/2023/09/01/progress-report-august-10-31/

Progress report August 10-31​

Hi friends, fans & family!

Will try to post more often about progress in the game and will try to do that with as little “fluff” as possible (that’s the price to pay for the increase in frequency ) so let’s hop right in!

August 10-31 progress:

Features:

– added help chapters so players can read up on how some mechanics in the game work

– added code to handle individual mission difficulty

– added icons for the top menu and replaced text buttons
– added enemy initiative order button so you can see in what order enemies will act

– added villager/civilian happiness/morale meter
– added morale and legend/story points as mission reward types. One of the ways of losing the game is by the people losing faith in the heroes (happens when mission objectives are failed) and morale can now be restored. Legend/story points are used to unlock new stuff for future runs.

– Changed web shot to slow down units insted of incapacitating them (too similar to ice otherwise). This effect will last until a unit is attacked which will break the web
– added the “flying” passive ability. Flying units can pass through rocks and hostile units and stand/cross water tiles. The ability can be given to any unit and can be applied to items.

See ya soon! // Luis