Project Echidna is a short skill based RPG(?) where you explore an abandoned laboratory to recover an old prototype. In this game multiple enemies can fight you at once, so plan your battles accordingly! Lure enemies into corners and fight them one on one, or avoid them altogether. If you are very skilled, you can fight them off all at the same time! There is no Leveling system, there is no output randomness, it is just your ability to fight with the tools you have.
Enemies can see you if they have line-of-sight or you get too close. If they touch you they will engage in a battle! Multiple enemies can engage at a time, so be careful!
Battle works similar to any other RPG: You get an action, then each of the enemies gets an action.
On your turn you will play a short minigame that represents your chosen action. How effective that action is will be determined by your ability to play the minigame effectively.
You have five choices of action, some having secondary effects:
Pocket Knife
 | [14x16] |
O'l Reliable. This attack hits one target and if you do well enough it will stun your target and completely remove their action this turn! Quite useful if you are paying attention to what each enemy is going to do.
Tail Strike
 | [14x16] |
This attack hits every target at once, and it gets easier to use effectively the more enemies are in battle with you. Using it will also remove the Slowed condition from yourself.
Fire Bolt
 | [14x16] |
Harder to land a hit than the Pocket Knife, but this magic spell packs a punch! It can burn an enemy if you are very accurate. Burned enemies lose 10% of their HP every turn. This is very good against ones with a lot of armor.
Protect
 | [14x16] |
Use this to block all damage that you will take this turn. There is no minigame here, so use it to slow the battle down if you need to!
Heal Self
 | [14x16] |
Heals your own HP. Keep the red line aligned with the green line. This minigame has more luck than usual, so don't rely on it too often.
Enemies get their own actions too! Next to their name is an icon indicator of what they will do on their turn:
 | [8x8] |
 | [8x8] |
 | [8x8] |
 | [8x8] |
 | [7x7] |
 | [7x7] |
Caution! Contains sensitive subjects and mature themes!
Well, I dislike chiptune music as a whole, and I don't have any compositional ability to speak of. Every song is a remix of the original Zelda dungeon theme. Each enemy has their own variation on this theme. I think this is the weakest part of the game.
I have worked on this game for over half a year now. Originally it was going to be a fangame where your character controlled an individual pokemon (a Houndoom) trying to get a message to your destination in time. Very little of that original game stuck, except for the minigames representing moves that your character knows. Bite, Ember, Overheat, Shadow Ball were the original four moves, with a fifth for not fainting after your HP dropped to 0. Your character still retains the Blaze ability from this stage of development. (Yes, Houndoom doesn't get Blaze, I don't care.)
I quickly trimmed the fat off of the RPG turn based system and decided against any leveling system for such a short game. I did want companion creatures that would help you fight in Double Battles, but alas the sprite space was too limited.
At some point I wanted to make a dungeon as a good learning exercise. Inspired by Outer Wilds, I made a little story that was spread out around the dungeon area and could be discovered piece-by-piece.
While working on the encounter system I realized that the overworld enemies going to battle mode could be a unique way of handling encounters (nobody likes random Zubats Game Freak!). I experimented with how enemies see and chase the player until I found something I liked. Controlling when and who you fought became part of the puzzle. Later on I played Earthbound and found that it has a similar style of encounter. Neat!
Overall I think my first RPG game came out pretty good. Combat feels clean and snappy, and there is a tiny story to discover. I couldn't add the midgame bossfight I wanted, but that is okay.
ver 1.1: Fixed a bug involving dying to the final encounter before winning. Same issue was causing a window to pop up twice.