Oops all devlog

The Idea:

Oops All Rhythm is an offshoot of another project I was working on. It was originally a RPG like Paper Mario, but you could send multiple fighters out at once, and the action commands would overlap. I was having trouble getting it how I wanted it; where the player would send out fighters in a rhythm and the action commands would create a beat. but it was too hard to send out fighters and do action commands at the same time. I came up with a 'call and response' system where the player would select which fighters they wanted ahead of time, then they would be sent out automatically so you could focus on the action commands. 

It's currently like what you see in Oops All Rhythm, except holding arrow keys chooses which fighter to send out. Some time before that, I thought about having the fighter be determined by when you hit Z, which led to Oops All Rhythm's system. 

The Gameplay:

There's a few rhythm RPGs, but when you're "attacking" it's just hitting notes like DDR, which gives me an impression of dodging.  I wanted the player to make their own rhythm and send it at the enemy, to mirror how the enemies attack.  Players need high arrow counts for damage, while making it playable for themselves.  

Since the enemies will preview what their attack is, their patterns can be very complex. The same concept applies to the player since they get a chance to 'practice' their attack. Originally, the enemies had much lower health; just doing half notes was enough to clear encounters in one turn.  I increased enemy HP so players had to use quarter notes or faster to win in one turn. 

I was worried the player's turn was too boring or that they would always use the same rhythm to attack, but I left it alone since they have to readjust to the new BPM of each encounter. Ideally the player will follow the BPM on their first turn, then go all out on the next. Depending on player skill, they can take extra turns building up speed, or try to squeeze extra hits in on the first turn. 

I couldn't decide on how to improve the enemy's turn, so I hope the fast-forward is sufficient. 

The Scrapped:

I was initially going to play the referenced music over the enemy's turn. It was too repetitive, clashed with the input sounds, and was a copyright concern. I was then going to have unique sounds for the inputs, per encounter, that sounded like the referenced music, but that didn't sound right either. I probably could use different drums or something, but I'm just leaving it as is.

I left out player health because it brought up a lot of questions. How much HP do you have? When and how is it restored? What happens when the player dies? Not especially hard questions to make answers for, but since I couldn't come up with something interesting I just left it alone. I considered just closing the game on death, or if you miss too many of the enemy arrows you skip your turn.

I wanted to have some kind of system where if you hit an enemy with a specific pattern, you get some kind of bonus. The pattern could be mimicking  the enemy's pattern, or the next part of the referenced song so that you'd have to figure out the song to get it. This would basically double my workload, and the only thing I could give the player is extra damage; maybe an instakill. 

7/4/20:

I was going to talk about how I didn't want to add or improve certain things, but some of the things I couldn't find a reason not to implement. So I added in saving, a title screen, and options. The graphics mostly have to stay as they are, so the 'reference guessing game' stays intact.  Alternate 'input' audio is on the table, but not a huge concern.