Tactical RPG OpenWorld Card Game Project / Help

General
1

Hello everyone!

I’m working on a tactical RPG with a timeline-based combat system, inspired by games like Elden Ring, Slay the Spire, and tactical RPGs. The game is built around deckbuilding mechanics, turn-based strategy, and an open-world structure where players can explore freely and engage in battles dynamically.

Here is a project presentation i’m working on : https://www.canva.com/design/DAGd-weHCjs/Jd4ff2ZHFEWovdFx5wJfCQ/edit?utm_content=DAGd-weHCjs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

I am an hard core gamer like some says, very aware of the game market, was a passionate game dev when i was in school, did a pretty close copy of pokemon on Texas Instrument TI89 instead of studying for an entire year… I did some games with RPG maker, one being a rpg roguelike dungeon with an enhanced path core mechanic but i am really rusty. I’m lacking of good programming skills yet, but i’l learning ATM. I’m willing to use Godot 4 for development.

Core Concept of the game

“Ascension of the 2” is a 2D tactical RPG where the world and its encounters are represented as cards placed on a timeline. The player controls a card-character that moves and interacts with other cards on the field. This is a card version of an Elden Ring sort of game, where a timeline of 9 cards represents the world around the hero, close to him ( approx 9 meters radius ).

:small_blue_diamond: Open-World Exploration: The game features a large, interconnected world, where players can freely choose their paths, encounter NPCs, and face different challenges.
:small_blue_diamond: Timeline-Based Combat: Battles are turn-based but simultaneous – both the player and enemies select their actions, which are then executed based on speed and position.
:small_blue_diamond: Deckbuilding Mechanics: The player customizes their deck, unlocking new abilities, attacks, and movement options by defeating enemies and collecting loot.
:small_blue_diamond: Tactical Movement & Positioning: Each action in combat (attack, dodge, magic) is represented by a card, positioning and learning boss patterns on the 9-slot timeline is crucial for survival.

The game features a hand-drawn, stylized 2D aesthetic, inspired by Okami and comic book visuals, with smooth card animations to create a dynamic feel.

I’m new to Godot but eager to learn! Any advice on managing UI-heavy games, handling timeline-based mechanics, or structuring an open-world in Godot 4 would be greatly appreciated. I will focus on this game for the next months since i have great hopes for this game to be really interesting.

The goal is to make a Demo by my own ( probably 1 year… ) and ask for help, devs, money, game production company, etc…

Could you help me ? Any advice will be great, specially on the structure of my work this year, and the organisation of my Game on Godot.

Much love

Antoine

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Hi!

I know I’m responding two months later, but I was scrolling in some discussions and thought I’d answer this one.

First of all, you’re saying you’re lacking good programming skills, but you’re still trying to do a deckbuilder/TRPG/open world/UI heavy game, and on top of that, you seem to have very little Godot experience, from what I understand. I guess you see my point already but let’s not beat around the bush: I’m not saying you should not do it, but you should be well aware that you might be raising the bar too high.
I’ve been working as a game developer on two games that were TRPG/strategy based, and even with a team of ~10 people, one year of prototyping is very short to get a nice demo. It’s obviously not just about programming, it’s also about game design, balancing, game feel, difficulty curve, etc. You know all of that already, but I wanted to insist that what you’re doing is very hard.

Anyway, now to answer your actual question :smile: know that I’m no expert developer nor Godot expert, my experience mostly comes from Unity, but here are some thoughts that may help.

  • 1/ One of the worst things when working on the last TRPG game I’ve worked on was the lack of debugging tools. When implementing a new feature or integrating some content, there were most of the time no easy way to test it. For instance, when adding a boss fight, we had to start the game (including the long Unity play mode startup), generate a level, on the right map, manually set the current day so that the boss wave starts, etc. while it would have been so convenient just having a test scene with no game cycle, no environment, just the ability to move on the grid and spawn some enemies to try out their behaviour. Easier said than done, of course, but if I had to develop the game from the beginning again, that’s the point I would definitely do better.

  • 2/ A thing I force myself to do to ensure my game structure is flexible, is to ensure I can instantiate anything from my game (enemies, buildings, items, players, whatever you want) in an empty scene with no error in console. Any entity should be, as far as is reasonable and practicable, able to exist by itself without relying on the existence on other entities, or manager scripts, etc.
    You may say: “okay, but why would a NPC entity exist in my game without the NPCManager, that does not make sense”. From a gameplay perspective, it indeed does not. From a code architecture perspective, it’s a very good thing having few dependencies between your classes, even though they’re related. You will save yourself trouble with code order execution, and it will ease debugging tools implementation (which refer to point 1).

  • 3/ About the tactical/turn-based system part: the thing you should always keep in mind is to keep a code readable enough, that you never have any doubt on what’s happening and in what order. For instance, I really like using events (or signals, if you’re using gdscript), but for a turn-based system, I’d suggest using direct method calls to make the algorithm clear and easy to debug using breakpoints.
    Also, one thing that caused a lot of headaches when working on my last TRPG game was the management of the logic and the visuals: say you have a card triggering a spell on an enemy, and that enemy explodes on death, damaging enemies around, that will also maybe explode, and so on, that’s a lot of logic happening that can be computed in a single frame, but the visuals will happen in sequence. Therefore, you need to be very vigilant about how you handle that; I don’t think there’s a perfect absolution way of doing that, but it’s a topic that can be troublesome, so keep an eye on it.

  • 4/ Your game will have a lot of data (NPC, cards, enemies, etc.) so make sure to spend enough time on a comfortable setup for those data. Whatever you decide to use to represent them (Godot Resources, JSON, XML, YAML, Google Sheets, etc.), just know that this will be a cornerstone of the project, so don’t be afraid of spending a lot of time on that to ensure everything is correctly done, so that once your demo is done and you start working on the game’s full production, you don’t waste time on that.

About the rest, I don’t have enough experience (nor in Godot, nor in open world games) to give you advices, but I believe you get my point: spend the needed time on the pre-production part, to save you lots of trouble and headaches afterwards.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask, here or in dm, and I’ll try to help as much as I can :slight_smile:

Good luck!

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Hi!

Thank you very much for your answer! This is a perfect answer for a non perfect project, unfortunatelly i realised recently that this will be ver hard for me to develop the game by myself due to my lack of dev skills. I am passionate and tried very hard for 3 months but this is going nowhere. The good part is that i have a way clearer vision of what the game should be, that i had a lot of fun and a bunch of knowledge form it, and that i can now hold a very simple conversation about programming with a dev. I realized that it would take 10 years for me alone to be able to build a demo from scratch, someone might say i should have known that a bit earlier. That didn’t change my passion for game creation and hope to find souls to build an early team and a game presentation to find a way to finance the project, since i really believe that the game is worth the trial. Let’s say i find hope with the success of expedition 33 clair obscur, of a trpg/craft/qte game with lots of poetry and fun.

So i’m back to start since the beginning of the month, i uninstalled godot and write a screenplay, at least i know how to write sentences since i write poetry, novels and screenplay ( in french, sry for my eng :). I fully work on polishing the vision i have of the game and hope to build a story that could push talented personas to love and dream the project as much as i do.

I wish i could resume the “vision” of the game to maybe start a topic opened to suggestions, questions and arguments. To be short, the game is now a TRPG/QTE, the story is the ascenssion of a 2 of heart ( metaphor ) that travel a very fluid and almost windy timeline of events ( ex:the sound of the cards flopping changes to a wingbeat of a seagul and here is the landscape of a coast scrolls by ), some events could changes the futur or past timeline with key choices, in the worlds of spades, heart, etc, to reach his/her godly form. The fact that this is a card game bring so much possibilities in term of creativity that i am thrilled to work on.

Thank you very much for your answer sixrobin, all your points are interesting and your tone is very enjoyable, i express my sincere respect.

Good continuation to everyone working on a passion project!

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