Vessels - Basics Overview: Sword and Shield/Walker news

Combat

One of the most important aspects of Vessels that we want to make feel fun and challenging is combat. The combat will be centered around your stamina system, so managing it during fights will be key. Almost all actions performed will consume stamina, so there will be a number of factors that will affect how effective or ineffective your combat capabilities are.

There are 3 categories of attack modifiers in Vessels that will boost the amount of damage dealt to certain types of enemies.

Arts - Every attack in Vessels will be classified under a type of Art. The current types of Arts in Vessels are the Vessel Arts, Native Arts, and the Shade Arts. In short,

• Vessel Arts are heavier attacks dealing more damage than Native Arts, but will generally have a longer wind up time and consume more stamina.
• Native Arts consist of your left click attack combination, are generally faster. These consume less stamina but are also not as strong.
• Shade Arts are the most unique of all. They are forbidden powerful arts not meant to be used by Vessels, however if they are, the Vessel will lose spirit.

Arts can be learned by acquiring manuscripts. Once the manuscripts are found, the player uses the manuscript to learn the associated Art. Here is an example of 2 in progress Sword and Shield Vessel Arts.

All enemies in your imediate vicinity will be pushed back slightly. Then a second strike is followed up striking the target directly in front.

We haven't given any of these names yet, but suggestions would be cool. Vessel and Shade Arts are likely to have additional effects added to them. Native Arts likely will not.

Strike - These are the different types of ways that your attacks inflict damage. These consist of Slash, Puncture, Impact, and Energy.

Attribute - Attributes are the different elemental properties imbued into your strikes. These include, but are not limited to Neutral, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Metal, etc. If Neutral, the strike has no attribute.

Dodging

Being able to time your dodge with enemy attacks will maximize your combat efficiency. Be careful though, dodging costs stamina.

Dodging can also be performed in different directions to allow the player to reposition and counter attack. If neutral or moving forward, left, right, or back, a different type of dodge will be performed to better position yourself. This is demonstrated in the video.

Stamina

As emphasized already, managing your stamina is important. Our inspirations for this style of mechanic has been the Souls game in addition to Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma. All these game require you to manage your stamina heavily or you will likely be susceptible to receiving damage or generally a punishing experience. One thing I haven't shown in the video is what happens when you over use stamina, but if you exceed the limit of stamina that can be used, your character will go into an exhausted state for a couple of seconds.

Here is a captured gif of that mechanic.

This is the first pass for the theme we're exploring for the final UI art. In the video, you will only see placeholder art. Later we will try to implement new artwork that is consistent.

The Shade is an entity in itself. It's the reason why the Shade creatures exist. The old corrupted inhabitants of this world succumbed to the darkness in their hearts and mutated them. The Shade creatures consist of creatures that are purely from the Shade or inhabitants used as Vessels of the Shade and anything in between. There is no limit to their existence.

The first Shade creature that I created is the Walker. The Walker is a corpse reanimated due to a parasite. The parasite itself cannot see, but it can detect movement and vibrations in order to sense nearby enemies.

That's all for the update for now! I hope this video along with the info provides a better insight for the mechanics of the game. With further updates, I will expand on other aspects of gameplay vital to the player's survival.