Building Eternity the Video Game - Part Two

 Hello. C J here. I was trying to decide between posting about my Eternity video game project or Pokemon. Then I remembered that Eternity and Pokemon are identical and are already friends. See my previous post in this series for how all Pokemon are already in my games as characters. This was not intentional. The Pokemon game I’m playing just happens to look identical to the setting region I was going to work on next.

I need a magic engine for the video game. This is why I need reference material. The setting and characters I can make myself and often do but I need inspiration for the magic engine for a game of this size. This one has no real life spirituality in it so I need to look to other games for source material. I’m looking at two genres. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team and the genre as a whole lined up perfectly to be useful. I’m also looking to some of my earlier inspiration in the tabletop miniature gaming genre.

Both of these genres feature named setting regions with unique playstyles; bright and dynamic looking characters and monsters; and unique magical or social effects that are tied to a creature’s narrative. Most Pokemon moves alter the stats of other Pokemon or impart status effects. This is strangely how miniature gaming often works. Pokemon also often have moves that trigger on a certain condition including being attacked or attacking. Tabletop games feature mostly effects that can be used only when other conditions are met.

Eternity contains practitioners of every magic style in the setting. There are eleven of these and they are the play styles of my card game Quantum. The core text of Quantum is available in the Downloads section. Each nation has a specialty in one of the ten while the eleventh is found evenly through all of them. These ten are referred to as the arcane arts while the eleventh is willworking, more powerful magic that requires innate talent and cannot be learned. The two themes I’m working with here are magic that trains or alters people to make them more capable and also magic that summons or creates monster allies. These are the common uses for magic in Eternity.

I need a starting point so I’m going to look at the moves my starter character gets in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team. Machop is a fighting type that is incredibly strong despite being small. His moves are all fighting moves that he has the skill and coordination to use repeatedly. Could similar strength or skill be imparted with magic, fictitious or real? That seems like a good mechanical idea. He’s also make a great summon.

Machop is also one of my inspirations for the corrupted species, powerful beings of darkness made out of ordinary people exposed to Dark Magic. So we have extreme strength, martial skill and the ability to impart these traits onto others. What if a whole city were turned into powerful corrupted capable of immense strength? What happens when those moves become shareable? What real life magic or spiritual practice could corrupt someone into a stronger version of themselves? We’re looking at one arcane art here, the onyx art of alchemy. Good. I’ll look into what my pikachu ally can do next. This will take a while.

C J Mcpherson