Taival Mechanics #4: Player Health System

Have you ever been annoyed by being one-shot unfairly (or in most cases quite fairly) by an enemy? We definitely have, and to fix this we've developed a unique take on how the player's health is handled in Taival.

The player's health consists of a health bar that is divided by hearts. These hearts act as a protection for large damage, and may be broken. Now what does this mean in practice?

When taking damage, the player can at most take damage to the next (unbroken) heart in their health bar. This will break the heart, migitating the rest of the damage of that strike. Now with the heart broken, the health may drop further when next taking damage.

In the next clip, Bongo, the player character, takes damage from eating a toxic mushroom (do not try this at home):

As you can see in the top left corner, the damage from the mushroom stopped when reaching the heart, causing it to break. When a heart breaks, it also removes all negative effects, such as the poison of the mushroom.

To balance the benefits of this system the player cannot recover health above a broken heart with quick means such as healing spells or other consumables in the middle of the combat. Instead, the player must sleep at an inn or at their player home to regain broken hearts, or eat certain stronger slowly-digestible foods out of combat.

Now, the players aren't the only ones who benefit from this system. The bosses in Taival use the same health bar concept, dividing the boss fight into distinct phases:

We've been brainstorming on how to further extend this system. We've looked at different effects for when the heart breaks, such as a area-of-effect lightning shock around the player or a speed boost to allow a quick escape. We want to add diverse effects that support different playstyles!

Thanks for tuning in, and a huge thank you for being a patron!

• Taival team