I feel like this is a bigger update than most. I mocked up the core game play loop I’m looking for: travel to a planet, battle mobs to get research points, then gather enough elythium to escape back. Once back at HQ, use your research points to upgrade your character. At first, to get to a rough demo to have people try it out and offer feedback on the general idea, I want to trade research points in for new combat skills.

Speaking of combat… I also added a status system! In this video, you can see burning and poison - a tad cliche, but easy examples to implement. I’m still feeling out how I want statuses to impact you exactly. I think burning will scale based on the number of applied stacks, poison will damage based on % of max health. I’m also considering adding exposed to increase incoming damage, stun to randomly prevent skills from triggering, and symbiotic which will cause you take damage if your opponent does. I guess there are tons more I want to try, but that’s too much for this post.

The last major combat mechanic I want to implement is “staggered” - a condition applied to opponent that forces a stance where they can’t make moves and are vulnerable to damage. Then I wan to work on the basic upgrade screen :)