Thinking Out Loud: RPGs without Numbers and Turn-Based Action

Brainstorming about a strange RPG design space, and a new idea for turn-based Angeline Era-style bumpslash

The final boss of Romancing Saga 1: a good RPG (with many numbers)

Whenever my current game projects stop having too much demanding game design work - Angeline Era is in the last stretches of development (still a ways to go, but generally just less game design), and Danchi Days is settling into a rhythm - I usually end up thinking about other design ideas. Recently I’ve been posting on Bluesky and getting a lot of interesting thoughts and feedback!

There’s a few ideas I was planning to go into, but this one idea ended up getting long, so today’s post is just going to be about…

Turn-based RPG without numbers

First, my original post on Bluesky (lots of interesting replies!)

2024/11/12 (original post)

>>> Are there turn-based-RPGs that don't present numbers to the player through stats, equipment, health, damage, etc? There's a lot I like about turn-based RPGs and I wonder if there's some essence there that could be captured without numbers

>>> I mainly have this train of thought because I'm playing some extreme number-heavy RPGs recently where you really need to compare tons of numbers and I'm just like... does it have to be this way to achieve expressive battles? Also in Angeline Era, I've found more numbers lead to more eh design choices

>>> But then again Angeline Era is an action game, so...

>>> Maybe something like RTS billiards with saga scarlet/emerald timeline stuff.. some kinda time-freeze thing too (13 sentinels/other rts)..

‪>>>like how action games (like angeline era) can hide all those numbers , letting you focus on the physical/sports aspects of fights. But I'm also interested in designing an experience where dexterity or number crunching is not a barrier, but people can still enjoy encounters, level geometry, etc

2024/11/13

>>> As an update where I'm at:

1. STRATEGY/ACTION/TACTICAL "time only moves when you do" 3d party v. Enemy fighter/action? Knock enemies out of ring / into stuff. Maybe grid/turn based

2. OLD SCHOOL ROGUELIKEsomething that feels like a simplified 3d grid based old-school roguelike (probably too far out of my wheelhouse)

I’ll just talk about the “Strategy/action/tactical” direction for this post. I think the “Old school roguelike” needs a lot more thinking/playing on my end first.

I’ve always enjoyed how some turn-based RPGs can express narrative ideas through their boss’s stats and moves. From something as simple as “a slime only weak to magic”, to something more complex like one of the fairy-tale-inspired bosses in Library of Ruina. It relates to some of the work I’ve been trying to do in action and casual puzzles, like in Danchi Days’ Sense Games (below) or Angeline Era’s Setpoems, or Sephonie’s Linking Puzzles.

Danchi Days’ Sense Games have a bit of a turn-based quality to them, although in practice it feels more like action. This got me thinking what it would be like to explore something that draws more upon turn-based games, and in more of a traditional “RPG Adventure” context.

In particular, I’ve still been searching for the right kind of central mechanic for my (on-hold) Sanpo project’s semi-random worlds.

So… when I asked about a “turn based rpg without numbers…” what did people say?

Tiny Number Games

The most common response were games which use ‘tiny numbers' - minimizing the presence of numbers but not totally eliminating them. Into the Breach, Paper Mario, Tactical Breach Wizards, 868-Hack, Arco, Helen’s Mysterious Castle, some tabletop games. My impression is it’s a very well explored space, and indeed more approachable (although also more puzzly, perhaps) and my conclusion is I don’t think it’s a design space I feel all that motivated to contribute to, as I don’t play the genre nearly enough.

(Also someone brought up Chess which.. is technically a TRPG with 1-HP units! Interesting!)

Other people in the thread brought up the fact that, actually - BIG numbers end up feeling a lot less puzzly, and a lot more ‘heuristic'-y - when numbers get too big you just start getting almost a physical feel for your attacks, and the numbers are the feedback. This is consistent with my recent-ish experience clearing Romancing Saga 1+2 and getting a feel for just how much certain damage numbers (and thus DPS) matter.

pain

But still, there’s a lot of menuing in RS1 and RS2, and that’s not really the kind of thing I’d like to focus on.

Numbers are Probably OK

So can you eliminate numbers? Honestly, probably not. It’s evident that it would probably be really hard (and possibly unnecessary) to hide ALL numbers. Although someone mentioned NEO Scavenger which is a roguelike which does just that!

After giving it some thought, I’m okay showing health bars or damage numbers. Think about Smash Bros. - it has numbers, but it ends up feeling really intuitive for beginner play - the higher your number, the higher your risk. As people mentioned, numbers can just be useful feedback as to your performance.

I think the numbers I mainly want to eliminate are those on like, spell or card or move descriptions - I just don’t want the game to be much about doing math during or outside of battles. There can a little of that, but it shouldn’t be the focus.

Spatial-ness

So after thinking about that, that leaves me at games that feel ‘sort of action-y… sort of tactics-y’. But taking into account my personal interest, I should probably err more towards the action side. There’s games like Resonance of Fate with acrobatic, tactical 3D battle systems. Or Inazuma Eleven mixing RPGs and soccer. Or games like Arco (2D simultaneous turn-based tactics) or YOMI Hustle (2D platform fighter), or arguably SUPERHOT (an FPS) Looking further back, games like Legend of Legaia, or Hybrid Heaven, try to integrate fighting game ideas into a turn-based format. Still, it feels like enough to work off of.

One important thing for me is that level design will matter a lot in this game. I like when the shape of the environment itself feels like part of the story, feels tied into whatever the game is… so when thinking about 3D level design and some kind of weird turn-based action in this way, my first thought turns to really simple to understand sports: Sumo - knock the guy out of the ring. Billiards: take turns trying to hit balls into holes. Jenga: move blocks carefully.

Some people on Bluesky mentioned Inazuma Eleven - a soccer game with some light stats (I need to play…). Or a board game someone recommended, Kabuto Sumo. I like physical games, or sports that are very easy to pick up and understand, and that’ll probably be in the back of my mind with this game’s action inspiration.

I also like the easy logic of Smash Bros.: hit people off the stage. It’s a very easy to understand goal, and it also provides feedback for every move the player uses: either your move is getting the enemies closer to the thresholds, or further away. Here’s a mockup with Angeline Era graphics… you could have to bump the enemies off the stage to defeat them.

Time-only-moves-when-you-move Bumpslash…?

So the current idea I’ve come to is… building a little off of the real-time bumpslash action of my game Angeline Era. If you’re not familiar, the idea of bumpslash is you only attack when you’ve walked into an enemy (so you don’t press a button to attack.)

What if Angeline Era worked a little more like SUPERHOT - where “Time only moves when you move” - that is - it’s only when you’re doing an action or moving around that time continues to flow, so otherwise, everything’s paused (we need a word for this… Tomwym (ugh..) works for now..).

Well, that would immediately do a few things to the design. The game would automatically read as a tactics game. That implies that the level design style would likely be way, way different: probably something that feels more explorative would be best (rather than Angeline Era’s linear action levels).

Because there’s a sense of tactics, that would allow me to use tankier enemies, who otherwise mess up the pace in an action games. This fits well with that Smash Bros-style idea where the goal is not to whittle an enemy’s HP down to 0, but to build up damage on it so you can more easily knock it off the stage (or into a goal or something. Lots of narrative possibility here- maybe it’s not even about killing enemies)

While the game could have the same base movement vocabulary of Angeline Era - move, jump, bumpslash - because it’s more tactics-y, that lets me add in moves that don’t fit in a realtime action context. For example, aimed moves. Angeline Era has a few - e.g. grenades - but they’re not the focus and it’s almost never demanded you be accurate with them.

Because of Tomwym, dexterity is very downplayed. Thus, I could add in some dodging moves, more aggressive enemies, tighter rooms. This lends itself well to a team-based approach, I think. I’m imagining that you have 2 or 3 characters you control, and each character has their own MP bar. Unless they’re doing some kind of command already, characters idle (and regen MP) when not selected, but can be swapped at any time. Maybe characters have certain roles in battle (one stays ranged? the other does more melee?). That would work nicely for the story…

Characters can freely bumpslash, but using special moves takes some kind of MP… (a smash.. a magic spell that binds an enemy…) etc. The environment could play a tactical role in the game, which is important for my Sanpo game idea since I do have a bit of worldbuilding tied to histories/energies/alignments inherent to each area of the game.

I like this idea too, because there could be *dungeons* (important to Sanpo)! Exploration-focused level design fits really well into dungeons. Dungeons, of course, being non-linear collections of ideas for the player to experience, whether they be combat, characters, or more.

Conclusion

So what’s the point in which my idea would feel too strategy-like for me? Too action-like? It’s hard to tell. I think the key would be to make the action aspects feel good enough (and necessary! e.g. the function of the base bumpslash attack) that you don’t just treat it as strategy. But likewise, making the level design too demanding for you to just bumpslash away as a single character. Certainly there would be a lot of nuanced differences between Angeline Era and this idea. Like maybe I’d have to show a timeline of upcoming enemy attacks + player attacks with charge times, because the intuitiveness of that in an action game gets eliminated by the time pausing… But figuring that out would come later.

Will I ever work on this? Well, it would be fun… but I definitely don’t have the time now. Either way, it’s always nice to brainstorm.