A lot of those lessons ended up getting turned into changes during either the development process, or post-launch patches. (We made a lot of those, dozens!) But this chapter was our first real chance to implement all those lessons in a more fresh environment. For example, a common piece of post-launch feedback was that the boss fights were the most fun parts of the game. That was easy to go off—now we have two big boss fights in this chapter, plus a recurring miniboss that you fight every rest stop named Jo. You'll learn a lot about her tragic fate over the course of the game, her story is some of my favourite writing I've done yet. But also I wanted her to be complex and increasingly-powerful so that the player feels like they're mastering a tough encounter every time they meet her!
Incidentally, I also started playing Final Fantasy XIV in the past year, and had just started Heavensward by the time we got full feature/writing lock for The Fate of Another World. So just in time to get inspired by wondering how we could translate fun concepts like vuln stacks and AOE markers into the GITCL engine. Please look forward to finding out what this cryptic comment means when you fight Jo!
I also tried to carry this philosophy into regular encounters. Personally, I like to think of GITCL as a persuasive essay on the subject of "RPGs are more fun when they're hard" and I tried to design battles to be the most fun when they're pushing you just a little bit. The Devil Clock system that adds difficult conditions in battle was a big part of that, so I wanted to try a new version of that for this alternate universe. So instead, for random encounters in another world, we have the Devil Cards: over the course of a battle, community cards are laid out in the corner, and they form hands with the card-themed enemies.
So here, we've got an example of a three-of-a-kind that's formed because of two queens in the community cards, plus one queen enemy. And if the player doesn't kill an enemy fast, those two aces are going to form a full house, which has a different, worse debuff. (Incidentally, this screenshot was taken right before I completely ate shit. I wasn't focused on the right enemies at all when I was doing this fight!) So basically every random encounter is a random shuffle, and it's up to the player to decide which enemies to prioritize—under normal circumstances in an RPG you probably want to kill the weakest enemies first, but sometimes, with the Devil Cards on, it's worth it to kill the strongest one if it would cause a really powerful hand to form! This is, of course, a totally optional difficulty mode, but if you feel like you've mastered the systems in the base Get in the Car, Loser!, I think the challenge this adds is gonna keep things really interesting.
One more thing. The Sword of Fate now has a super meter, just for this chapter, to mix things up and give Emily's version of it a little bit more character. Do you fire off the sword whenever you have a chance just so you can do a full rotation, or do you hold onto it until you can max out the meter and do the most efficient possible damage? I've been testing this a lot and I haven't gotten bored of it yet, so I think players are going to find it pretty cool in their hands too.
You can learn more about The Fate of Another World on Steam and Itch, and please, add it to your wishlist if you think it sounds cool! And feel free to ask any questions in the comments below!
