Hey Everyone!
I wanted to quickly talk about TurnBased vs RealTime mode, which I started implementing this week. From the start, I designed the game with the idea that it would take place in real time. I like this about it, because it feels a bit more exciting than other similar games, and as I've said before, it gives it a bit of a typing-game feeling.
The downside to this is that you rarely see whats going on up top during a battle. Along with being a bit challenging for newer players, I decide that having an optional turn-based mode might not be a bad idea. I looked into it this week, and while it does work, it's not great.
First, a lot of the skills and buffs for the Heroes only make sense in real time. A great example is a hero who sleeps an enemy, meaning they wont attack until they wake up by being hit. This works great in real time, since it gives you a large amount of time to find a really good word. In turn based mode, obviously, it breaks. Other things like stuns and slows break too, or become a bit overpowered (it becomes very easy to stun lock an enemy).
In most cases, I was able to find suitable work arounds for these problems. Slows in turn based mode, for example, increased the chance a monster would miss his turn. For the example above, I replaced the sleep effect with a weaken for X turns. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of skills being different depending on what mode you were in, but I assumed people would just choose one or the other, at which point its not a huge deal. But even then, it felt off.
A lot of what makes this game feel unique got lost as soon as I started playing in turn-based mode. Especially in the early stages when you only had access to your basic attack, you could always find a word using a skill tile, and so it felt like a boring back and forth. You couldn't avoid taking damage, or defeat the monster any faster, and it lost all intensity.
For that reason, last night I decided to scrap the idea. A bit of time and effort wasted, but I'm glad I got to try it out, because up until I played it I would have thought it was a great idea 
