Feature Update

Hey everyone!

It's been awhile since I've last posted something related to the development of Hololive Isekai. The last time, on Twitter, I teased 4 icons related to elements.

Now, I will finally reveal what I've been designing and planning on!

Elemental Status Effects

From v0.3 onwards, regular status effects like burned, fatigued, or attack up will no longer be in the game. Instead, a new elemental system will replace it. I think the elemental status effect feature will provide some additional tactical wrinkle to the game, which is equals to added fun! It's quite a complicated system, so let me break down what my plans are.

Basically, there are four elements that will serve as status effects which can be applied onto characters. Each element interact with each other on a elemental wheel, like so:

The arrows indicate that the element will override the next element, meaning to say, as an example, a character with a fire status effect who received a water status effect, will see that its fire status effect removed and be replaced by the incoming water status effect.

However, in reverse, the incoming status effect will be nullified instead. ie. if a character with a water status effect who received a skill that would apply fire status effect, the fire status effect will NOT be applied. If the skill were to deal damage to the character, the damage will still go through.

Boons and Banes

So what's good about applying elemental status effects if the status effects don't do anything? Each of the element will affect the character in some way, depending on the nature of the status effect (boon or bane) - a boon is a status effect with positive effects and a bane is a status effect with negative effects.

Here is the list of the effects each element will provide:

In case the images do not load, here are the effects:

Fire boon: Character will have its attack increased.
Gale boon: Character will have its speed increased.
Earth boon: Character will take reduced damage from enemies.
Water boon: Character will heal health over time.

Fire bane: Character will take damage over time.
Gale bane: Character will have its attack decreased.
Earth bane: Character will take increased damage from enemies.
Water bane: Character will have its speed decreased.

Each status effect will last over a set number of turns depending on the character's skill. With such a system, it opens up more opportunities for me and the design team to create fun combat scenarios which will see players using their creativity and wit to overcome challenges.

Reversals

In addition to elemental overrides and immunities, characters can also perform elemental reversals. Elemental reversal is a situation where characters apply an opposite effect of the same element onto their targets. It will essentially reverse the status effect's nature, removing the original status effect and applying the new one. Reversals will also allow characters to deal some extra damage OR heal some of the target's health when it happens, depending on the nature of the last applied status effect.

Visuals

The status effects are also getting some cool new visuals to indicate when status effect is in effect.

Additional Features

I also want to address some few new smaller features that I'm adding into the game that will allow for more robust designs.

Guarding

All characters will get an additional generic action called Guard. Guard will essentially allow a character to skip its current turn, but until the character's next turn, it will take 50% less damage from enemies' skills. Guarding characters will also have increased Turn Priority on the next round, meaning to say, they are more likely to go first on the next round. Characters with the same Turn Priority will still have their turn order determined by their speeds.

Poise

Characters will also get a new stat called Poise. Poise determines how likely a character will be pushed or pulled when certain skills are used on them. Pretty simple.

Enmity

Something a little more under the hood, the game will feature an Enmity system, where it determines how likely a character will be targeted by enemies. Enmity will be generated when a character uses a skill, unless otherwise stated. Some Enmity will be lost after a character takes damage. Some Enmity will also be lost passively at the start of a character's turn.

Conclusion

So... yeah. That's about it for today's update. I have been working and trying to implement these new features and at the same time, rewriting the codes to better fit additional localizations and a new battle system. A lot of it is coding, so there wasn't really anything exciting to show, so I apologize for the lack of updates. Aside from my real life, there's still much to be done, so I hope everyone will be patient with me and the team.

Until then, don't let your dreams be dreams.

Phew... that's all the elements...
"No, there is another..."