The VG Resource

Pretty standard, but don't be afraid to remove, add, and change statuses over time if you feel the need to. This is a good list to start with, just keep in mind that you should add features that actually work and should be in the game. Like the poison one, you don't seem to enthusiastic about; make sure you're not just putting it in there because every RPG does and you feel obliged to add it, or you're trying to make sure you have "enough".

Mind you, I'm not saying this is a bad list of statuses, they seem interesting and might be perfect for the game. Just giving you some stuff to keep in mind

Mockup of the status effects on the menu.



They'll overlap the player sprite when it pops up. May increase the size if it's a tad too small.

EDIT: Possible icons?

I think these look nice, now? Mostly recentered and changed the colour of a few of them.

Oh I meant to say but I forgot; the mix of styles seems a bit strange. You've got symbols, faces, and punctuation. Not sure if that's an issue though, could be confusing but might not be.

Whatever the case I think poisoned is better recognised with something like a green or purple skull. The sick icon currently looks more like someone just sticking their tongue out, making the mouth more frown-y and also maybe tinting it green could help. The rest seem fairly clear though.

Changed the poison one to be more correct. Original icon will be used on the overworld when enemies get your attention, so I'm at least not throwing it out.

Have no idea what to do with sick, and fear, though. May also redo dizzy.

What type of sick is it, a cold or stomach bug? If it's a cold, a runny nose would be best (look at earthbound status symbols for an example), but if it's a somach bug a grey-greenish cloud would work (see mother 3's status symbols)

As for fear, maybe make the eyes shifty w/ teeth showing and put "shaking" lines around it?

I might do the greenish cloud, as it could mean anything sickness related.

No idea how I'll fit the fear one in the a box that small, though.

I'm used to poisoned being the purple bubbles (most famously from Final Fantasy). A skull sounds more like sickness to me.

So I added the little indicators to know that an enemy has spotted you. Cue a softlock by accidentally giving them hitboxes. It was already fixed after making this gif.



Possible final icons?

They seem good, don't count on them being absolutely final though. They might be, but you should let yourself change them in the future if you get better ideas or useful feedback. Game development is a heavily iterative process, you should be aware that things will change over time and many things you won't get right the first time round.

If you're satisfied for now I'd say just use these for and actually start implementing them. You can always polish later.

Yeah. I know games go from phases.

From basic concepts, to alpha, then beta, and then finalizing to making sure everything works right.

Yeah exactly. Don't fret too much about the icons, I think they look fine right now. And with things like this where you care about recognizability, you can't really decide on much until you've had some playtesting and actual feedback.

I think the enemy noticing icon looks good by the way. Do enemies kind of run at you a bit like the M&L RPGs? (There are probably better examples that I can't think of right now.)

They function more like Paper Mario's, as they chase you down once the indicator comes up. There's a tiny delay before they start chasing you to balance out human reaction time. Here's a short gif of how they work without a battle being started by contact (which I have a routine programmed to ensure empty encounters lead to no battle, as it would crash trying to load one with nothing there)



They also have a movement radius that they'll return to once they lose interest with the player, or if you go too far away from the raidus. They're pre-placed in the level, and are always invisible to the player.



I might nerf on how they see you. As right now, they can see you even if you're behind an enemy. Which doesn't see fair to me.

The one mistake I always made was spending so much time on small sprites and details that by the time I was getting tired, there wasn't really a game left to actually play. Work on the core mechanics first, so you can motivate yourself by seeing the great game you have worked on

With a quick work of settable variable in the enemy behavior and a check between two, enemies now run away if you're overleveled compared to their level. For example, here's a level 3 player vs a level 1 enemy. They flee, as expected.



Of course, enemies will have their levels set a tad higher than the player would have in the current part of the game I'd expect. Meaning you'd grind for a bit for something like this to happen.

Next step will be making optional features for the enemy AI so they seem less like they're made to chase players. Maybe they could have other goals in mind?

Also, should I make the object shadows more visible? As they are present.