Going realtime

One of the main goals of The Five Orbs is to enable multiplayer - in the sense of one team of players against another team of players. We have already played such games using the card version, and it is definitely fun.

The current system forces players to each secretly choose a move, then reveal it simultaneously. Even for team matches, this has worked well with the card prototype. The current only version uses this system, and it works well too.

However I am a bit concerned about online play for team matches. Waiting until everyone has finished their move can be quite frustrating, as it provides an intermittent gameplay. I am not saying this is bad; it has undeniable advantages, such as giving plenty of time for mind games. And perhaps this will be the way to go for The Five Orbs, online.

I would nevertheless like to try a "realtime" version of the game. The difference would be that you would not need to wait for your opponent(s) to play. Each move would have timers (wind-up, cooldowns - people familiar with MMORPGs like WoW know what I'm talking about) that would pace the match. The Speed attribute would then be an indicator on how long you need to fire your move, and a cooldown would apply on each move to avoid chaining the same move again and again to reap tons of charges.

After a few tests, this changes several things. First of all, you have less time to think. Or more precisely, you have some pressure to decide your move during the time you can't do anything - the wind-up time of each move: while firing a move, you can't do anything else until the move has fired. The speed scale for the whole game can be parametered to find the good balance between pressure and time to use your Yomi skills.

Moreover, Blocking becomes different. You can effectively Block only when you have fired your move (which, up to now, is the same as in the card version). However, deciding to Block (i.e. counter an attack) forces you to do nothing until your opponent's move fires. At that time, if they did an Attack, you successfully Block it (and lose if they did a Magic).

The price to Block becomes high. You need to sacrifice some time, which you could otherwise use to prepare another move. The reward for successfully Blocking should then be higher. I have modified the move as such: when the Block fires, you gain B (like today). If you successfully Block an Attack, you gain another B, and the attacker's next move is at Speed + 2 (thus slower).

For those who want to play with the realtime version, it can be found here. But beware, there is no explanation whatsoever, so it assumes you are already familiar with the rules and are willing to to a bit of trial and error to understand which button corresponds to what. The only thing that needs to be said is:
To power-up a move, hold Ctrl while clicking (not a great solution, but this will do for now).

And if you want to stick with the turn-by-turn version, or simply compare both, it is here.

If you have any comment on it, feel free, I'll be more than happy to listen to them :)