Redemption Harem - Maps and Exploration

Well, despite my best efforts, v0.1 isn't going to be ready today, even if I put another six hours into trying to get it there. While it's entirely playable, there are still some major mechanics that I haven't been able to get implemented yet.

The big ones are still tied to combat - the parry system and the capture mechanic. Since those are still in development, I can't tell you much about how they do work, only how I want them to work. The point of these posts is to tell you about the game you'll get to play in the hope you'll support me as I develop it, so I won't bother telling you about what might be.

There is still another big thing I can tell you about, though, and it's also a big part of the game - exploration.

Where Maids & Masters did have some exploration facets and had plenty of places to find that were off the beaten path, outside of the experience that could be gained and the loot that could be found, there weren't any actual mechanics to exploration.

Redemption Harem will have two exploration mechanics.

Hunt areas (i.e. places where combat can happen) that aren't the world map will have a mini map in the upper right corner of the screen that will fill in as you explore. All of the plugins I found and tried to implement to make this easier on myself refused to work (either due to coding issues with the plugin or the plugin simply not doing what I need it to do), which almost led to this feature being cut. However, it's not that mechanically complex, it's just time consuming because I have to make all of those assets and implement it all manually, but I think I've got it figured out in a way that won't be too terrible to deal with. It should be a pretty big quality of life feature that'll make the second mechanic feel much more intuitive, and Eckhard is exactly the sort of person to sketch out his own maps to be able to reference them, so finding a way to make it work feels like the better call, even if it does slow development down.

The second mechanic is one that's already in the demo, which is the exploration rewards. Every time you fully explore an area, you'll get some kind of boost. That boost will usually be a permanent stat increase for Eckhard (such as more max HP when you fully explore the fortress and more agility for fully exploring Beerewald), but it can also be profession XP or special events. Which it ends up being will depend on how game balance feels as more of the game gets made, as while permanent stat boosts will probably feel the best, I do still want to put a skill element somewhere in combat so those stat boosts are an extra bonus and not something that's necessary. The other side of that coin is if you're diligent and get all of them, I don't want you to feel like an unkillable murder hobo either, which is why you'll only ever get 1 point at a time for most of your stats. If they get too high too fast, it'll throw off game balance anyway, which is what going to a zero-experience system is supposed to address.

With how close to done all of this is, I'm hoping what's left to implement will go fairly quickly and next week will be the test build instead of another infodump on game mechanics, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Keep an eye on the dev blog if you don't want to wait a whole week for news on that front.