Combat...

So, combat in Castle Monsterous is pretty much a spectator sport. Running out of time for the Game Jam, I hit on the idea of letting the Hero and Monster just run through their state machines until somebody exhausted their hit points. In addition to side-stepping the ill-specified fighting system, I kind of liked the idea of the player and Hero working together to resolve the game.

As it is though, it's not too thrilling to watch sprites bounce off each other. So I think I need to give the player something to do while that's going on. One thing that occurred to me is that you might collect cards (like Magick or Monopoly cards) as item drops and if you played them, you could influence the combat while it's going on. That would give the player something to do. It would also add some interesting possibilities where Hero could yell at the player to "do something" if he was losing too badly.

I've sketched out a playfield redesign where the map panel is replaced by a green baize card table, with a spread out hand of cards on it. Maybe there should be rules for when you can and can't play cards during battle or something to make it more complicated. I can also see some interesting environmental effects where the bad guy might freeze part of your hand and make it useless for a while or something.