My initial plan was to make a platformer/RPG, but now I'm starting to reduce some of the RPG elements. They didn't add much to the game and they made it a lot harder to work on. The biggest change is how character classes will be used. My initial plan was to have five classes, and each character would have a major and minor class, giving it 20 different class combinations. I wanted each class combination to be distinct.
The problem was designing levels that have interesting challenges that different classes overcome in different ways. It was hard to design a secret area that had a few different ways you could reach it (ex: one way for bandits to reach it, one for wizards, etc.). It ended up being "to get to this area you need to climb walls, which means you need to be a bandit".
To get around this I changed how classes work. Each time you play through the game you pick a class. As you progress, you accumulate all of that class's abilities. You can complete the game without any special abilities (there's no place where you'll need wall-climbing). When you complete the game you can pick another class and play through again. You accumulate that new class's abilities and you keep the skills from the first class. Eventually you'll have all abilities.
There may be secret areas that you need certain abilities to reach (or certain combinations of abilities), but the plan is that you'll play through one time for each class. This lets me design areas that you need wall-climbing and anti-gravity to reach because I know that you'll eventually have played through as a band and wizard so you'd have both abilities.
Conceptually
The motivation for this change is re-use. Platformers tend to re-use areas by giving the player new abilities. For example, you'll play through part of a level then gain the ability to jump higher. Now you can go back to earlier parts of the level and reach tall ledges you couldn't before.
This is fun and I like games that do this because it makes the player have to remember what they've seen. The player has to remember where the tall ledges were so once they get the powerup, they can revisit those areas. The problem is that this becomes frustrating when the player forgets where a tall ledge was. It can also be frustrating when the player doesn't know what abilities they'll be getting.
This avoids that problem in a brute force kind of way. If you play through the game first as a bandit, somewhere along the way you'll learn to climb walls. You don't have to go back and revisit all areas to see what areas wall-climbing can get you to, you just complete the game and play through again as a different class. The game forces you to revisit these areas by letting you play through a second time.
The problem with searching for new areas you can reach is that, if you don't find any new areas, you end up going through everywhere three times. The first trip is the initial play through. The second is when you go back to look for new areas. The third is after you don't find the new areas and you go back to where you got the powerup. By playing through the game again from the start, you'll only visit areas twice. Also, it's intentional that you're visiting the areas twice.
Progress
With this new direction it's been a lot easier to work on the game. I was hoping to have something playable at this time and I don't, but it is getting closer.
The new way of using classes also means that the basic game itself can be much shorter, maybe just three dungeons. But, when you play through the game the second time you'll have more abilities than you had the first time and you'll be able to reach more dungeons.
It also means that I can get away with less abilities for each class. If you only had a major and minor class and I wanted characters to have 10 abilities, each class would need 6 or 7 skills (you wouldn't have inherited all abilities from your minor class). Now, if I want the player to have 10 total abilities each class only needs to have 2. There will be more than that, but there doesn't have to be.
The first playable release will contain three dungeons. Dungeons are zones with boss fights. There are areas in between the dungeons, but they don't have bosses. It'll also contain all five classes, each with 2-4 unique abilities. Currently the game has one dungeon (that's almost complete) and most of the abilities are done. Creating the other two dungeons won't be too bad. The hardest part will probably be all of the little details (title screen, menus, saving/loading, graphics, etc.)
Obligatory Screenshots
Wizards can freeze some enemies:
In the character selection screen you walk around as a spirit. There are NPCs representing each class. You use the portal next to the NPC to select that class.
Sidescroller
I'll probably have an update ready in the next week. It's mostly just minor changes. The biggest change will be the addition of a new demo. The new demo will be something like the existing game-demo - a somewhat complete game that people can more easily expand upon.
