Salutations, all. My name is Dylan, and I am one of the two programmers working on our game: Hexbreaker. This time I will be sharing some information about some of the newest-implemented features. The game has developed quite a lot since my last post, after all!

Action Talismans

Since my previous post, we were able to implement a feature that we had brewing since the beginning, and that is: action talismans! To explain that, talismans themselves must first be explained. A talisman is simply a buff that the player can get after completing any encounter in the game. Generally, they are buffs like "increases damage by 2" or "heals player for 10 health." Things of that variety. However, action talismans are special! They are talismans that the player can use during combat. Things like "the player's next attack will deal damage to all the enemies on the field." But that's not all..! Action talismans can be stored by using the focus action during combat. Up to 3 can be stored, and after that the player can attack to unleash the effects of all three at the same time!

Focus Action

The focus action has replaced the defend action in combat. It has the same base purpose--to mitigate an amount of damage--but it has a wider range of uses and a shiny new name now. The focus action, as mentioned above, can be used to store action talismans so that they can be unleashed on the player's next attack. When focusing and storing a talisman, the sequential bar in the bottom right of the image below will fill up with talisman charges--one for each focused talisman charge.

Enemy Charged Attacks

The enemies in the game are now capable of charging up an attack for a turn. It is certainly advised that the player uses focus to mitigate some of the damage that this more dangerous attack will deal. However, if the player sees that the enemy is charging an attack--which is denoted by a combat message along the lines of "enemy is preparing to unleash its power"--the player can Hexbreak if the player has enough of their own charge to do so. If the player Hexbreaks on a turn when an enemy is charging its attack, the enemy will be interrupted, damaged and stunned--significantly more effective than focusing to mitigate some damage, right? The picture below was taken directly before the enemy unleashed its charged attack.

Accursed Curses

In the image above, in the top-right corner, the curses on the encounter can be seen. Curses appear on every combat encounter that the player faces, and there's a number of them to choose from (some replayability and randomization, if you will). However, we have planned to add significantly more curses to the already decently-sized pool of them. This will allow for even more randomization, and it'll make it so that I'm not interrupted by the "cannot attack curse" every 5 seconds when I'm trying to test the game, haha. There'll be curses that make enemies harder to kill, deal more damage or even curses that inhibit the player more than just the charge inhibiting curse seen above. It's going to be a real trial to get through this gauntlet! Do you have what it takes?

Here ends my discussion on the newer features of Hexbreaker. Though there has been quite a bit of polish in regards to certain other systems, I'll let the other programmer touch on that if he wants to. Hope everyone enjoys the game!

-Dylan