Contrary to what the Gruedorf may imply...

I have been making games. Starting as a 24hr contest game this sort of ballooned massively. I've actually been kind of avoiding Gruedorf because it seemed to make me less productive having to pump out a post every week and well... yeah. But every now and then it's nice to just sit down and talk about your game.


The name of the game is Hydration 2: Oasis. Long story short, while discussing a contest game to make with one Hachi-Roku of the OHRRPGCE community we came up with an idea that enamored Hachi so much that he made it himself. Flash forward to years later and Hawk wakes up in a sweat with regret. The idea of the game is pretty simple: You're in a desert with limited water. Find some water.



In H2O the desert is randomly generated with a few treasures scattered around and the ultimate goal always lying in the north. Every step consumes some of your water, so deciding whether to risk wandering off for better equipment or to rush ahead is vital. Additionally, using your skills in battle consumes hydration in combat as well so you have to make further conservation decisions there.



You actually pick 3 out of 25 or so skills at the beginning of the game. These are your skills for the entire game. The battle system is a fairly simple affair: At the top of the screen is a bar indicating when you and your enemy's turns are coming up. It's continually moving to the left. Once it arrives, it is your turn. From there you can choose what to do, but everything has a delay on it. If an enemy attacks you during this delay they deal more damage or potentially break your attack. This rule applies to the enemies as well. You can also just guard for a period, blocking any damage or effect. Even attacking and guarding still consume a little hydration, though.

How far along are we? The battle system is essentially complete minus enemy data/AI, but all skills and status effects are done outside of statistically balancing them. Equipment and item systems are also done and completely functional. The amount ikaDB helped with this project is stunning. I just wrapped up a large chunk of the random map generation (see the image at the top for an example of it), it's probably the hardest thing of the entire game and it's still not entirely done.

Graphically Giz, my new artist, has most of the art done as well aside from last minute pieces to be added as we go, though the music production hasn't really started yet. So basically, really close. I'm hoping to begin beta testing this month if not outright releasing it.