Introduction

Game Summary

Moonlight Alchemist is a hybrid RPG, blending elements of visual novels, turn-based roguelikes, and “life sims” to create a compelling gameplay loop. As a vampiric alchemist, use your evenings unleashing your arcane knowledge upon the forbidden Dark Forest, felling beasts that plague the town of Ambrosia and collecting ingredients for your work. During the day, moonlight (heh) as a humble - if eccentric - apothecary, tending to the needs of a town constantly under threat by monsters.

Inspiration

• Potion Craft
• Little Alchemy / Infinite Craft
• Minecraft magic mods
  • Hex Casting
  • Mana and Artifice
  • Theurgy
• Classic and Modern Roguelikes
  • Aangband
  • Crypt of the Necrodancer

Goals

• Mods as a First-Class Feature
• Choices feel Intentional and Impactful
• Multiple Ways to Solve a Problem

Un-Goals

• “Gameplay Grind” / “Time Sink” mechanics
  • If a player feels the need/desire to build a farm to automate away a major gameplay element, that element of the gameplay has ceased to be fun for that player.
  • If a mechanic feels like it’s there to pad out the length of the game, rather than to add some unique element to the experience, it probably needs to go away/be reworked.
• “Game Logic”
  • Things should be immersive and make at least some narrative sense, even (especially?) to non-gamers.
  • Players should rarely need to explain away why something happens as “because the game demands it” - there should be an in-universe reason for most, if not all, mechanics.

Player Experience

At night, progression through various zones of the Dark Forest requires some elemental puzzle-solving. Monsters of various elemental types react differently to various elemental attacks - some will transform the monster, some will weaken them, and some will outright kill them. Understanding elemental interactions is key to the knowledge-based progression of the game.

During the day, players must use the items they collected at night to make meaningful story choices, both on a personal level (helping individual citizens of the kingdom) and a kingdom level (completing competing quests that advance the story in one direction or another)

Platform

• Prototype: Web (required for gamejam)
• Full Release: Cross-Platform PC
  • Modding-first perspective implies access to filesystem to edit game files

Development Software

• Engine: Godot using C# using GDScript
• Graphics: Blockbench MagicaPixel Goxel
• Audio: Waveform

Genre

• Turn-based Roguelike (Nights)
• Narrative RPG / Visual Novel (Days)

Target Audience

• Retro/Classic Strategy gamers - the turn-based, grid-based style of movement is an intentional callback to the earlier style of roguelike dungeon crawlers.
• “Meaningful Choices” Story-enjoyers - Almost every quest or objective is designed to provide branching paths for the player to explore, with their choices reflecting meaningfully across the larger game world.
• Modders - The longevity of a title is tied not to its developers, but to its players, so allowing players to modify and expand the game in new and creative ways is an important feature, albeit not one likely to be implemented during the prototype.

Concept

Gameplay overview

Gameplay is split between two major parts: Night and Day.

• At night, players explore relatively large “layers” of the Dark Forest. Each portion of the forest has its own unique flora, fauna, and monsters to encounter, which can be used to augment the players’ magic (see “Magic System” below). Players explore until they either decide to return home (i.e. their inventory is full), they move to a new location (by defeating a boss) or they die (and are resurrected within the coffin in the basement of their home).
• During the day, players experiment with the ingredients they have collected, concocting all manner of unique items. Some items may help them at night, others may be used to complete quests given by townsfolk, and still others may be used as story-related gifts.

Theme Interpretation (Shadows and Alchemy)

Shadows: The interpretation of this occurs in many forms:

• “Shadow Magic” is primarily driven by stealing and repurposing the physical/metaphysical “shadow” of an object.
• The protagonist is a vampire who constantly lives in shadows, unable to be exposed to the sun without harm.
• The Dark Forest is a very dark, shadowy location, with many of the monsters taking on similar dark attributes.
• The character themselves is acting in a shadowy, inscrutable fashion, faking his normality and moonlighting as a simple apothecary whilst secretly protecting the town without their knowledge.

Alchemy:

• Combining shadows with elemental energies to create “variants” is a unique method of transformation
• The combining of various elemental flora and monster parts is a transmutational alchemy system.
• The (WIP) story of the game revolves/will revolve around the slow transformation of the city via the influence of various actors upon it, including yourself.

Primary Mechanics

Herbalism

The various flora and fauna of the Dark Forest can be brought back to the alchemy lab to be distilled and refined, transforming them into other useful items. Certain combinations not only yield various narratively-useful items, but also new elemental trinkets that can be used to advance farther into the Dark Forest on future nighttime runs.

Shadow Magic

The protagonist has the ability to steal shadows from various objects, transforming them later into semi-tangible manifestations with varying properties later in the level. For example, a stolen shadow of a bush might later turn into a “shadow bush” that can block off an enemy’s path or slow them down.

Additionally, these shadows can be “elementally infused”, giving them additional properties - a shadow bush infused with fire, for example, could create a firey blockade that melts nearby ice and sets enemies ablaze.

Secondary Mechanics

Elemental Transmutation

Mixing various alchemical ingredients in special pieces of lab equipment would allow the player to unlock new elemental forms, Little Alchemy style. Fire + water = steam, for example, with the manifestations of that concept appearing in new ways later.

Faction Favor

Depending on the narrative, quest-based decisions the player makes, the power of various factions throughout the city could rise or fall in proportion to their actions. This makes for the opportunity for varying outcomes to the story later on (sections of town being controlled by enemy forces, ruling leadership positions changing hands, etc)

Art

Theme Interpretation

Different regions of the dark forest have their own unique color themes, but much inspiration is drawn from Hades in regards to using a deeper, darker palette, reflective of the shadowy nature. Many enemies have purples and blues intermingled, while the plants you find provide striking contrast, running into more vivid greens, reds, yellows, and pinks. The main character is

Design

The art style is intended to be low-poly, semi-retro style with strong medieval fantasy aesthetics - think King of the Castle meets Realm of the Mad God or Tiny Dice Dungeon, with a bit of Minecraft influence seeping in.

For the full release, characters would (ideally) be given fully-drawn “head-and-shoulder” images for use in dialogue, in traditional visual novel style.

Audio

Audio will be retro chiptune, as a callback to old SNES tactics games.

Game Experience

UI

The game will switch between the following UI “scenes”:

• Main Menu
• Night Controls - an HP bar, a “shadow” inventory, and an “infusion” inventory that allows players to use elemental infusions during combat.

Controls

Controls will rely heavily on the mouse, as the magic system involves a lot of clicking (selecting shadows to steal, choosing a tile to attack/cast onto/move to, etc) and hovering over enemies in order to determine their intents/attack ranges/other related tooltips. In addition, the daytime alchemy system involves a very diagetic UI/UX, involving the movement of items between various machines via drag-and-drop. While many of these controls could be simplified over time with the addition of a console-style “selection cursor” that snaps to interactable UI elements, but for simplicity of a prototype, such enhancements will likely be excluded.

Tile-based movement with WASD in the nighttime portions of the game will likely be included, however, as this is a familiar system for players. Hotkeys for inventory items may be used as well.

For movement between daytime city locations, a simple selection menu will be implemented, with the full release having some form of artistic “kingdom map” to interact with.