Hello, and welcome to the first of a few little journal entries that will help explain an idea I've had ever since the planning stages of Mythzone, making the whole series (when it's done) into a fighting game reminiscent of old school fighters like Darkstalkers or the first few King of Fighters installments!
And today, let's discuss how you can play this game if it ever comes to be, shall we? Alright, as the Quarter Guy says, it's game time!
For this demonstration, I'm gonna be using a PS3/PS4 controller to show which buttons would serve which buttons would do what kind of stuff in-game, m'kay? M'kay!
The game will be a traditional six button layout, much like any other fighting game nowadays, but there will also be some changes to it that will be expanded upon later. For now, it's the basics. The square, triangle, and R1 buttons will be your light, medium, and heavy punch buttons respectively, whereas the X, Circle, and R2 buttons will be the light, medium, and heavy KICK buttons.
For assists, much like in Marvel vs Capcom 2 and 3, you'll have to press either the L1 or L2 buttons to have one of your two teammates give you a little hand in battle, holding it down for 2 seconds will switch out the guy (or gal) you're currently playing as at the moment be switched out if you need to change up the flow of combat.
Movement is simple as tilting the left analog stick to where you need it and blocking attacks is just tilting the stick away from whatever attack is coming at you, it all depends on if you're facing left or right in both cases, so just try to account for that, alright?
Now, onto the subject of the new wrinkles to your hackneyed fighting game mechanics, just like I promised. One of these new fangled doodads is the Imagination Gauge, which is your standard issue super attack meter. But wait, it's not as bad as you think! With this gauge comes something that most stuff involving magitek and weapons that give you superpowers can't go without, TRANSFORMATIONS!
This nifty little boost to your characters strength and speed (among other things) and can grant you special little boosts to your moveset, such as making some of the attack's having more range than they normally do, your character having some degree of super armor, you gaining more of a chance to knock your opponent to another part of the stage, and MORE (which just means I haven't really thought about anything else other than that)!
But don't think that transformations are gonna be so broken beyond belief, no sir, I'm gonna make sure it has a bit more balance to it. How, you may ask? Simple, as soon as you transform, the Imagination Gauge will start to slowly deplete and any attacks made by the enemy will make the process go faster, don't worry about your health being depleted as normal, the damage dealt to you will be halved, in exchange for a part of your gauge being depleted instead of your health bar.
After the master's empty, you'll be back to normal, but at half strength and you're more likely to get hurt due to your lowered defenses and temporary post-transformation paralysis (the latter of which will last for about three seconds). Only when you've got a full bar of the Imagination Gauge filled up, there's at least five parts to it, will you be back to normal stats and can charge up your Imagination Gauge. Oh, and by the way, you can charge your gauge when you tilt your left stick away from the opponent and press and hold the attack buttons to charge the gauge, with the strength of the button determining the charging speed of the gauge.
With all this said, I hope you like the brief look at what I have in store for the series way later down the line and hope you guys have any ideas for the game. If you DO have any suggestions, leave them in the comments and I'll see you later!