past projects 01: autonomous agent aramis

presentation

playing team fight tactics led me to take great interest in games that play themselves automatically, allowing you to watch your own game and check the consequences of your strategic decisions without interfering directly in the game. the first game I made to explore these themes was Autonomous Agent Aramis.

you play as the machinist of the last autonomous agent, a robot built to protect society from space threats. machinist because the idea is that you don't control the robot directly, it has an artificial inteligence and battles by itself, your job is making sure this is happening in the most ideal way possible.

the autonomous agent is controlled through five decks of cards, the game being also a deck builder, each deck representing a facet of its structure, its weapons, its physical constitution, its artificial inteligence, its special attacks and its item dispensary. but unlike a conventional deck builder, where cards are played to take effect, in this game cards take effect simply by existing in your hand. by simultaneously manipulating five hands of cards, one for each deck, you control the behaviour of the autonomous agent.

the larger structure of the game is like a dungeon crawler, where you go through a fixed number of levels until you reach the end and have a last battle with a boss. along the way you collect more cards and remove undesired ones from your deck.

 

 

the game's title screen

a level, the medalions provide benefits, the geometric shapes initiate battles

automatic battle

the battle takes place automatically and can't be stopped until it ends. the autonomous agent and its enemies alternate taking their turns. each turn they decide to either move or enact their attack.

the cards of the autonomous agent's hands add tags to its functioning, accumulating on top of the screen of the battle area. the tags affect, for instance, the attacks dealt by the AA when it decides to attack during its turn, how many cells it moves when it decides to move, with what frequency it moves and with what frequency it attacks, if it tries to distance itself or get close to enemies, etc.

 

 

the battle screen

 

the tag <shoot>, for example, hits a random opponent in an area around the AAA when it attacks. the higher the number of the <shoot> tag, the bigger the damage and the reach. the tag <speed> defines the number of cells the AA can traverse when it moves, the higher the number of the tag, the longer the distance it moves.

 

detail of the tags

 

the effect of a tag increases exponentially alongside its frequency. this happens to create the necessity to concentrate the attack tags. each attack tag is an independent attack that deals damage independently, so otherwise the proportion of cards sorted in the arsenal deck wouldn't make any difference. four cards with four attacks would amount to almost the same amount of damage everytime. since the effect actually increases exponentially, having a tag four times gives way more damage than having four tags one time.

each deck is controlled in its respective panel. by pulling the lever the player can sort a new hand of cards and they can do this any time they want throughout the battle. however, everytime the player pulls a lever the AA accrues a bit more heat. because of this, the player isn't restricted to accept a bad hand of cards and is free to seek the best combo possible, but they have to pay the cost in heat and there is always the chance that the new hand is worse.

heat (the first bar in the lower screen) determines the amount of pressure that is constantly accumulated by the AA, represented by the valve left of the screen. more heat, more pressure per second. when the AA reaches the pressure limit it discards every single card currently in its hands, sorts a new hand of cards in every panel and accrues a bit more heat. which means it will accumulate pressure faster the next time, reaching this limit even faster.

this can be exploited by the player, who can pull the lever right before this to prevent good cards from being discarded. this has the cost of accumulating even more heat, making the next discard happen even faster.

 the AA also accumulates ultra energy (third bar on the lower screen) throughout the battle. when the ultra energy reaches its limit the AA releases its ultra attack, much stronger than the normal one. following that, the limit the ultra energy needs to reach to unleash the attack decreases, meaning the next ultra attack will arrive faster and faster.

when the AA takes damage it increases its damage bar a little (second one on the lower screen), that also has a "break limit", like preassure and ultra energy. when damage reaches its limit, damage cards are added to the player's decks. these cards are just empty cards, without tags, that occupy space in the decks and the panels. when the break limit is reached it decreases, arriving at this point faster the next time.

 

damage and degradation

as the decks fill with damage cards the AA starts to become less effective, since its hands start to get bogged down by useless cards. because of this, instead of damage being something imperceptible until it reaches a final limit and the character dies, it's something that constantly affects the functioning of the character, making it worse and worse.

a class of enemies explores a similar mechanic. it injects virus cards on the AA with a heating tag, increasing the heat it gains and making the discard of the hands arrive faster. a negative effect that goes beyond numbers and actually makes the character harder to handle.

this was inspired by the game Slay the Spire, where many enemies will attack you by inserting negative cards on your deck. specially the slime monster that inserts cards that are just useless, forcing you to spend actions points to remove them.

I found the damage mechanic to be interesting, but it also has the side effect of making the AA continually simpler and less effective. despite making sense from a narrative stand point and being an effective way to punish for taking damage, it creates an arc that isn't very satisfactory where the character get progressively weaker and simpler wich isn't very fun.

accelerated rhythm

heat/ pressure, the ultra attack and damage accumulation all work in an accelerating rhythm where the break limit is reached faster and faster. so increasingly the AA will be discarding its cards, triggering the ultra attack and accumulating damage.

your cards get discarded so fast as heat accrues that eventually you won't be able to controle it, on top of that your decks get increasingly full of damage cards. to balance, the ultra attack happens faster, cleaning the field of enemies with a powerful attack. the goal is for the player to arrive at the end of a though battle crumbling, unlike other deckbuilders or engine builders where the feeling is of an increasingly more powerful engine.

deckbuilding

I tried to strenghten this feeling of a crumbling and shody, even if still potent, machine with the deckbuilding part. the autonomous agent being made up of so many decks and so many cards means that the player can't manage them as precisely as in other games of the genre.

 

card kit installation screen

 

 

instead of the cards being inserted and removed individually, they come in thematic kits that can contain cards of any deck, but usually form a bit of a combo, to ensure its usefulness.

the impossibility of managing the cards individually means that not only will there be many undesired and single cards, coming together with otherwise good kits, but also that it's too difficult for the player to even know all the cards the autonomous agent has. with this, I wanted to transmit the feeling that the AA is truly massive, a whole vehicle that is being more directed than truly piloted, instead of a succint character.

the game comes with music by Ra Irigaray and can be downloaded here: https://umunum.itch.io/aaaramis