Welcome again to Wonder Robot D’s blog. Where I’ll talk about my inspiration behind designing the games systems.  

This time I’m looking at Wonder Robot D’s unique progression system and the things I did to try and make sure players would engage with the system.  

A Unique way to progress

When you think gameplay in the turn-based RPG, you think of the battles and levelling up to gain more powerful skills/spells. In Wonder Robot D level up increasing HP and energy used to cast spells.

The way you gain spells is Like FF7's Materia or Paper Mario's badge system. Your skills are determined by equipped items. Unequip the item and you can't use the spell anymore.  

This adds a bit of strategy to your skill choices since you can only bring some of your skills/spells to a battle.  

Making Items feel like a Level Up

Every item is basically a new magic spell for Robot to wield, so it’s important each item gained feels significant.

• Hidden in the environment
• Story Events
• Bought from shops
• Boss Battles
• Behind mandatory encounters
 

An exception starting area's items are relatively easy to obtain. I wanted the player to have access to lots of spells first so they could experiment with set-ups and adjusting skill sets to counter certain enemies.    

I choose to do it this way in Wonder Robot D because I found it interesting to design for.

I was wondering which kind of skill/spell systems people prefer in RPGs?  

-Azzie