Cauldron Chronicles is a single-player, casual, narrative-focused game where the player takes on the role of an alchemist who runs a shop on the side of a road. Over the course of the game, players will have adventurers and other inhabitants of the world come to their shop seeking potions with specific effects. Players will then need to brew the requested potion to the NPC’s specifications, meaning it should grant the main required effects, possibly an optional extra effect, correct flavouring and be absent of any counterproductive effects to the outcome, for example, a health restoring potion should not also poison the drinker. The requester will then go about their business and depending on how much your potion assisted the buyer, they’ll return with a reward for you in the form of payment and even rare ingredients.

For example, a knight may come to you seeking a fire resistance potion that optionally restores health. If you provide all of the requested properties, the knight may return victorious and offers you a dragon heart and dragon scales as a thank you, which would make valuable ingredients for future potions. However, if you only provided fire resistance and no health restoring effects, the knight may come back victorious but badly beaten and just offer you a dragon fang as thanks. Even worse, if you provided a potion that did not contain the requested effects and was instead poisonous, the knight will likely die, meaning you permanently lose a customer.

Potion Combat System

In order to brew potions, you’ll need to go out into the world to gather ingredients, some of which are only found in hostile zones. The player is not a seasoned warrior and is instead armed with their array of potions that can be used to fend off enemies and solve puzzles which is where the potion combat system comes into play. As this is a casual game, the combat is simple and many combat encounters can be solved by tossing a quick fire or poison potion at an enemy or drinking potions for positive effects, however, more dangerous enemies may require a bit more creativity to bring down and this is where the system gets deeper and more interesting.

Let’s say for example, the player is exploring and has a fire potion, a potion of stoneskin, which would normally be consumed for an armour buff, and a force potion that knocks targets away. In the case where the player encounters a fire elemental, the fire potion is useless against it. The player could toss the force potion at the elemental and run away but this means they lose a valuable potion and gain nothing. However, if the player understands how effects interact with each other, then they may know that if they throw the stone skin potion at the elemental, it’s body hardens into stone and can then be followed up with a force potion which shatters rock to destroy the golem, netting valuable materials.

Implementation

The potion combat system is being implemented using Unreal Engine’s Gameplay Ability System which allows us to easily implement player and enemy abilities, attributes and most importantly, status effects. The system is in an early state currently with the Gameplay Ability System and potion throwing implemented. I’ll be updating the post more as we make continued progress on the system.

Progress on the game can be found on the MicroRaptor YouTube channel and a more in-depth look at the combat design documentation can be found here.