Dev Diary #9 - Fine-Tuning news - Shuyan SAGA

We're still fine-tuning some of the design elements. We recently re-did some parts of the main menu. Once all three episodes of are out (we're doing a three-part episodic release), players will be able to access all three from here; and they'll also be able to change between different profiles if they want to start over.

Note, we also have options on the bottom to jump straight into the combat practice, including the Tournament mode.

Here's the current version of the main menu:

Here's the current version for the difficulty selection screen:

Also, the combat system starts off simple, but gradually becomes more complex as Shuyan learns new moves. We have an XP system that lets you pick and choose which moves to unlock, and this can also help each person adapt the combat to their own style of play:

We recently added a speech indicator to the narrative sequences to make it easier to see who's talking when there are multiple characters on-screen. We designed it as a small, triangular slider that moves horizontally across the top of the dialog boxes during the conversations.

This one shows Lily speaking:

This one shows Shuyan speaking:

We also made some changes to the combat system, with a blue blocking shader and dodge roll animations animations on enemies.

Basically, there are some enemies at the beginning of fights in arena mode that will have a blue glow around them. These enemies will always block your first attack (unless it's a heavy attack). All enemies can block and dodge roll during combat.

Here's an enemy with the blue shader:

Here's one of the enemies doing a dodge roll: