Overworld gameplay additions

[milkyroute]

In Pokémon, the overworld gameplay consists mainly of walking around, reading dialog, and starting battles. However, I've always found the lack of interaction between Pokemon and the overworld quite disappointing. Also, just walking around doesn't give you a deep adventure feeling; in Pokemon, only the numerous battles through some routes give it, but the overworld gameplay doesn’t really help.

So I put some thought into it and tried to improve those two points. I quickly came back to HMs, which are a good idea in theory (interaction between creatures and the environment, and puzzles to solve in the overworld), but that comes with the numerous problems you know in practice.

So I came up with another idea to implement this idea: to tie overworld abilities not to moves, but to types (with double-typed creatures having one of the two at random, or according to their nature, for example). I also wanted the overworld abilities to have deeper gameplay. I think taking inspiration from the gameplay of objects in the Zelda series would be a good place to start. Some of these abilities would be unlocked by default, others would be taught by the equivalent of gym leaders.

Before I develop the abilities I thought of, what do you think of this idea? Do you have any better ideas to fit the initial intentions mentioned at the beginning of this thread?

To give some examples of what I see with this idea, here are the abilities I’ve thought of. It's a first list I came up with in an hour or two, so I'm not really proud of every idea here, but it's a start, and new ideas can replace the old ones.

Movement abilities: abilities that give the player additional movement options.

• Dragon [Powerful Jump]: allows the player to jump high in some places. A very powerful ability for the end game; also makes backtracking in earlier areas easier.
• Normal [Speed]: allows the player to move really fast in a straight line. Not really useful except for convenience, but available from the start.
• Bug [String]: allows the player to grab onto a tree above and climb up. Can also grab distant objects.
• Flying [Fly]: allows the player to fly over some obstacles (up to a limit to be defined, of course).

Access abilities: abilities that only clear the way, like most Pokemon HMs. I'm trying to limit these to a maximum to allow for deeper gameplay.

• Rock / Ground [Filling]: fills a gap and allows the player to pass through.
• Electric [Recharge]: interacts with electronic devices. Can be more complex than a mere access ability, but will depend heavily on level design. Is very versatile.

"Puzzle" abilities: abilities that can solve overworld puzzles and unlock new paths. Some are part of a group of abilities that interact with each other.

"Light" group: manipulates beams of light that can unlock paths (make an OpMon flee, make a tree grow...)

• Steel [Mirror]: reflects and redirects a beam of light.
• Fairy [Light]: emits a beam of light
• Dark [Dark]: emits a shadow beam that cancels any light beam it interacts with.

"Trees" group: grows trees to burn multiple obstacles at once.

• Grass [Tree]: grows a tree in some places.
• Fire [Flamethrower]: burns something, and burns any adjacent combustible objects (including trees).

Other:

• Fighting [Strength]: pushes heavy objects. (Same thing as the Pokemon HM, the best HM for me)
• Ice [Freezing]: freezes some water tiles and allows walking on them (with ice movement mechanics).
• Psychic [Mind control]: takes control of an OpMon and allows to move it and use its ability.
• Ghost [Invisibility] / Poison [Mist]: makes the player invisible, allowing them to go unnoticed by OpMons and trainers on the way.
• Water [Dive]: same as Pokemon, allows diving underwater. The level design will include more puzzles though, using the two layers the player can switch between.

As you can see, some abilities are more inspired than others, and some types share an ability because I couldn’t find two separate abilities; that’s why feedback is needed to improve this mechanic idea. So, what do you think?

[DavidLiang1129]

Good idea, I have an idea too, if you want to increase the sense of adventure, how about the idea of "survival mode"? Players will have to eat, sleep, and get tired

[milkyroute]

I think the concept of "fatigue" is already translated into the gameplay by the state of the OpMon team (with each battle, HPs and PPs get lower), so it might be redundant. Also, I think difficulty should come with a reward (here puzzles come with access to new places). I have really bad memories of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon's "Hunger" level, to be honest 😅

But a "survival mode" separate from the base game could be interesting, as long as we find something to reward difficulty. But that's something we might see at the end of development.