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Emulation Game 1
Mods
Player has active/passive abilities that can be modified by mods. These are similar to Noita's wand crafting mechanic, where there's a wand with pre-defined behavior that can be modified by various spells. Each ability has a set of tags, and like in Path of Exile, can only be modified by mods that also have those tags. The game consists of finding more and better mods and making your abilities better. Abilities can be swapped during a run but it should be a rare occasion, as the run should keep itself close to what was decided by the player during the draft.
Draft
Before a run there's a draft phase where the player chooses 32 total abilities or mods in a draft. Each draft round has 8 mods decreasing by 2 per pass, with a total of 4 passes per round. Out of the final 32 total, the player then chooses 5 abilities and 15 mods. This draft process may repeat itself multiple times during a run (2 or 3 times), although likely with some changes to its behavior each subsequent time. Details for that depend on how the game's implementation goes.
Folder
During a run there's a map/folder exploration phase. The player chooses to move from file to file while revealing different files. Corrupted files generate battles and are cleaned when the player beats the encounter. Goal is always to clean a folder to some low percentage of corrupted files left. File types are:
File type | Description |
Corrupted | starts a combat arena |
Gacha* | trade credits for random abilities or mods |
Tags* | trade credits for random abilities or mods of specific tags |
Reroll* | a shop with multiple abilities or mods that can be rerolled |
Attack* | trade credits for random mods that are attack oriented |
Box* | contains a predefined set of abilities or mods that are pulled randomly |
Exchange | has borrowing and lending functionalities; in both cases interest is calculated based on number of files explored from contract start |
Collector* | trade specific abilities or mods for credits |
Market* | trade credits for specific abilities or mods or vice-versa |
Luxury* | a shop with a small selection of high quality mods |
Junk* | a shop with a large selection of niche mods |
Health* | trade credits for healing, or occasionally free healing |
* Unthemed files, have to find a theme-appropriate name for them later.
Combat
During a run there are combat arenas. They have wave arena gameplay and their duration is tied to song length. Death from combat arenas is permanent; all abilities and mods are lost and the player has to start a new run.
Tags
Every ability has multiple tags. Tags are used by mods to know which abilities they apply to. If a mod has one tag then it applies to all abilities that have that tag. If a mod has multiple tags then there are multiple possibilities. With two or more mods, it could be that multiple mods are required to apply to the ability or only one/some of them are. If it's the latter, it could also be that the mod adds additional tags to the ability. For instance "Modifier 009 (!area, +repeat)" makes a non-repeating area ability repeat, and so it adds the repeat tag to the ability its attached to. The tags are:
Tag | Description |
Active | abilities that need to be activated to be used, all abilities have the active tag by default unless they have the passive tag |
Area | abilities that have an area of effect |
Attack speed | how fast primary abilities can be used, might affect non-primary abilities depending on the ability |
Aura | a permanent effect around the user that affects nearby allies or enemies; active auras increase the cooldown of other abilities; auras are always areas |
Auto | abilities that act automatically |
Buff | abilities that grant bufs to their users or allies; buffs always have a duration |
Chain | abilities that have the ability to chain, primarily lines and projectiles |
Chance | abilities that have a component of chance to do something; change tag mods generally focus on increaseing, decreasing or adding chances of things happening to abilities |
Channeling | abilities that are activated continuously as long as the user keeps using it; channeling tick rate might be affected by attack speed or cooldown depending on the ability |
Charged | abilities that increase in strength the longer they're charged for before being released; charged abilities always have higher cooldown the longer they're charged for |
Charges | abilities that have multiple uses (charges) before going into cooldown; charges generally build and stack up to a maximum while not in use; build up rate might be affected by attack speed or cooldown depending on the ability |
Construct | stationary units created by the user that automatically attack enemies |
Cooldown | how often non-primary abilities can be used; might affect primary abilities depending on the ability |
Curved projectile | projectiles that move non-linear, have inherent chain/homing/pierce/ricochet, or are affected differently by those mods |
Damage over time | damage dealt over time; damage over time ticks don't trigger on-hit effects |
Debuff | abilities that apply debuffs to enemies; debuffs always have a duration |
Duration | abilities that last for a given duration |
Force | abilities that push enemies around and change their positions |
Health | abilities that affect a character's health stats or that grant him special health mods |
Homing | lines or projectiles that seek targets |
Line | abilities that hit instantly in a line |
Melee | abilities that deal damage close to the user; applied to abilities at will for balance purposes |
Modify | abilities that modify the behavior of other specific abilities or mods |
Movement | abilities that affect a character's movement stats or that allow him to move differently |
Multiple | abilities that are created multiple times; different from repeat in that all copies are created at the same time instead of with a delay |
On-hit | abilities that have on-hit effects that are unique enough that should be captured by a tag |
Passive | abilities that don't need to be activated to be used; generally these will grant passive buffs and not attack at all (use auto for that) |
Pierce | abilities that have the ability to pierce, primarily lines and projectiles |
Primary | abilities that are affected by attack speed and generally have a low interval between uses; the main "basic attack" ability |
Projectile | abilities that use projectiles |
Random | abilities that have a component of randomness to do something; random tag mods generally focus on altering the random selection part of an ability; different from chance in that it generally doesn't explicitly increase or decrease chances of things happening |
Range | abilities that are affected by range, primarily single target melee and ranged abilities, lines, and some types of projectiles |
Ranged | abilities that deal damage far away from the user; applied to abilities at will for balance purposes |
Repeat | abilities that repeat the same effect multiple times |
Ricochet | lines or projectiles that bounce off solids |
Secondary | abilities that are affected by cooldown and generally have a medium interval between uses; the main damage dealing or build enabling ability |
Shield | abilities that affect a character's shield stats or that grant him special shield mods |
Single target | abilities that only hit one target at a time in a targetted fashion |
Special | abilities that are affected by cooldown and generally have a high interval between uses; the high damage dealing or "ult" ability |
Stacks | abilities that build up stacks according to some condition and generally release those stacks according to another condition |
Staged | abilities that have multiple stages; stages generally advance based on ability reuse, and in each stage do something different |
Utility | abilities that are affected by cooldown and have a low/medium interval between uses; the main non-damage dealing ability |
Wall | abilities that create or use walls in some way |
Colors
All abilities are color-coded and have one or multiple colors. The only things colors affect are how the ability looks and how some systems treat them. All enemies are always red, and no abilities are ever red. Colors also loosely abide by certain gameplay types. The colors and its related tags are:
Color | Tags |
White | auto, chance, construct, curved projectile, movement, on-hit, projectile, random, ranged, trigger |
Yellow | area, aura, charged, force, health, melee, repeat, shield, stacks, staged |
Orange | charges, buff, debuff, duration, construct, summon |
Brown | attack speed, charged, cooldown, health, melee, movement, on-hit, ranged, shield, single target, staged |
Green | attack speed, chain, curved projectile, homing, multiple, pierce, projectile, ranged, repeat, ricochet |
Blue | area, chain, channeled, charges, cooldown, force, homing, line, multiple, pierce, range, stacks, status effects |
Purple | aura, buff, damage over time, debuff, duration, status effects |
HP and Shields
Units have both HP and shield. Shields work like energy shields in Path of Exile or shields in Nova Drift - they take damage instead of HP, break when depleted, and then take some time to recharge after taking no damage. The reason for shiels is that I don't want the game to have any in-combat healing, as I want combat more focused on movement and damage avoidance for shield recharges, since that should lead to better enemy design and gameplay. Healing exists in the game but it happens in the folder exploration phase, not in combat.
Damage
Abilities deal damage based on the base/flat value defined on the ability. If an ability says it does 20 damage, it does 20 damage. Abilities can have their damage amplified in two ways: increased damage or added damage. Increased damage is a multiplication of the ability's base damage value, and added damage is added to the ability's base damage.
If an ability does 20 damage, is modified by 20% damage increase and added damage of 5, the final damage will be (20+5)*1.2 = 30 . The general formula is (base + added)*(sum of increased damage mods) . Additionally, some abilities and mods might add extra hits to attacks. Extra hits count as another line of damage, and in the formula, get added to the (base + added) section.
If an ability does 20 damage, is modified by 20% damage increased, added damage of 5, and an extra hit that deals 2 damage, the final damage will be ((20+5)+(2+5))*1.2 = 38.4 . If there were 2 extra hits, one dealing 2 damage and another dealing 3 damage, the final damage would be ((20+5)+(2+5)+(3+5))*1.2 = 48 . The general formula is ([for all hits → (base hit damage + added)])*(sum of increased damage mods) . This means every additional hit double dips on added damage.
Stats
Units and abilities have stats. Stats are always flat values, generally from -10 to 10, although some stats may go over those limits. Units and abilities can have separate stats for the same stat that then get combined for the final effect. For instance, attack speed exists both on units and on abilities. This means that abilities have a number that says how many attacks per second the ability does, and the unit has another modifier value that gets applied to that flat value. So if a unit has an attack speed value of 10, which corresponds to +100% attack speed, and an ability has a flat value of 4 attack per second, then it will have 8 attacks per second when that unit uses it.
Stats are listed below. Flat values are +, percentage values are %. Substitute + for "added" and % for "increased".
Stat | Unit | Ability | Note |
Area damage | +% | + | |
