bate-bate eng.1: introducing and presenting the game so far

idea and motivation

I got the idea for the game while playing team fight tactics. auto-battlers enamored me immediately, I love the ideia of setting up a stage, then watching the action unfold hands-off. looking at the game more as a space of possibility than a world to manipulate directly and deterministically.

there's also an influence of card games and specially deck builders and engine builders here. decks are likewise a possibility space. but the automation of auto-battlers makes feel like the "cards" deployed are less like tools that I handle and more like little entities that I'm inserting in this ecosystem to react with its environment in a potentially unforeseen way.

battle structure

the battlefield is composed of a 3x3 grid that can be occupied by brawlers, both yours and the enemy, but also static field elements. the battle happens in two phases that alternate, like auto-battlers, the combat phase and the management phase.

the combat phase happens automatically. an initial brawler will be selected as the current active fighter and they will move to make combat with one of their neighbouring brawlers, potently using their primary move. the neighbour they made contact with will be the new active fighter and will do the same, choose a neighbour, move to conyact, potently use their primary move.

the result is a chain of contacts, or bonks, of one fighter on the other, as a wave, triggering a bunch of moves and effects on the process. each brawler has a primary skill that can be either supportive or offensive and will target the contacted brawler depending on whether they're an ally of and opponent. supportive skills only target allies, offensive skills only opponents.

brawlers also have secondary moves that will trigger during specific moments and can affect different areas, like all adjacent cells.

this will continue through a set number of turns before the combat round ends and the management one begins.

during the management phase the player can try to put their brawlers in the best possible position to be successful during the automatic combat phase. it's the only phase the player can act directly on the field. they can move their brawlers around to any empty cell on the grid and can also use items that heal or add buffs. but every time the player makes an action, the AI will act as well.

the AI can do everything the player can, move and use items on the opponents. this adds an element of push your luck to the game. currently these are the only moves the AI and the player can do, but in the future the player will be able to deploy more brawlers and the AI will spawn more enemies. so the player can do as much as they want to, to improve their odds during the combat phase, but with each move there's a chance the AI will do something very serious, like spawning new enemies.

a wave of bonks

movement

using items on your brawler, with the AI using one on the opponent as a response

buffs and debuffs

moves at the moment can inflict damage, heal damage, inflict poison, and buff and debuff the attack and the defense.

an attack buff will increase the damage inflicted by primary moves, while the attack debuff will diminish the damage delt. not symmetrically, the defense buff will diminish the damage received by -any- move, same for the debuff. this allows the possible strategy of opening up brawlers with a defense buff by attacking them with lots of secondary damage moves, to attack later with more powerful primary damage moves.

buffs and debuffs are reset as soon as they take effect. I decided on this because I didn't want the modifiers to spiral out of control making things difficult to predict and balance. at the same time, the effect of buffs and debuffs increases exponentially.

so it's pretty difficult to stack buffs, but there's a big incentive to arrange brawlers as to make that as likelly as possible.

in conclusion

all the demos so far are exclusively in portuguese, but I do intend to release a demo next month with an english option.