Svea (Series)

**Svea** is a video game series, currently in development.

*Artifice**Artisan**Exil**Island**Planet**Plight**Stark*
## Exil series

* A video game series with various types of gameplay styles, that all revolve around the same central event, regardless of if it's in the past or future: homosexual men being exiled to an island off the coast by the religious fanatics that are rising in power.

* All entries have some variation of:
	+ Sabotage.
	+ Quick.

* *Exil `α`* – A fully 3D soulslike experience. Uses *Lightning Returns* blocking and stamina reserves.
* *Exil `β`* – A pixelated 2D platformer RPG.
* *Exil `Tactics`* – Tiled 3D strategy RPG with verticality.
* *Knightmare* – Top-down perspective monster tamer.
* *Knightmare Stark Tactics* – Tiled 3D strategy RPG with verticality. The player controls a lone non-fighter. They start with 4 cards on their hands, and draw 1 at the start of each of their turns. Monster cards are summoned onto the field next to the player. Traps are physically set onto the field.

## Recurring designs

* Bonuses.
* Bosses.
	+ De-Leveling – The player is decreased in level to match bosses. Can be temporarily undone by consuming an expensive item.
* Blocking – Perfectly blocking elemental/status moves will grant a temporary resistance to those moves.
* Enemies cannot initiate transitions – In order for battle transitions not to feel like a "punishment", only the player can initiate battles. Enemies deal direct HP damage instead, not unlike hazards. Manipulating the enemy environmentally before battle can have a huge impact.
* Experience memories – EXP is replaced with the ability to find "memories" via exploration and battle that improves battle performance.
* Nonlethal Permadeath – Playable characters that are KO'd in battle and not revived within a few turns are given the **recovering** out-of-battle status. This means they cannot participate in the next few battles.
* Observers – Lore characters that do not directly act in the game, only grant gifts to try to shape history as they see fit.
* Sabotage – In real-time games via arrow, in simulated-time games via ability-based weaknesses. Often lead to stagger.
* Self-healing limited by resource and occurs in real-time. Perhaps require the player to be in the vicinity of enemies to use it.
* Single digit damage – All damage is rounded down (min. 1). However, each character has a damage bonus that contains the remainder. Eventually this reaches 1, and the character will deal 1 bonus damage with the next hit. This allows damage to increase in decimal increments / increments larger than 1, even though damage output will most likely be 1 for most hits.
* Stamina limiting attacks and blocking.
* Presentation of items to NPCs.
* Respawn points.
	+ Upgrade currency needs to be spent at a respawn point; held/unspent upgrade currency will be dropped at the ground with 1 chance to recover upon defeat.
		- If any fast travel is implemented, this *always* drops all held upgrade currency.
	+ Shortcuts – paths of progress often take detours that lead back; opening a shortcut to the point before the detour (or even earlier) to access the next area.
		- This allows the paths to use very few respawn points in total, as via shortcuts the player can use a single one.
	+ Automatic continue – There is no "Game Over" or "Quit" screen, the game continues automatically from the last respawn point, having saved all progress *except* for unspent upgrade currency and enemy defeats.
* Telegraphing – Enemies do not deal damage on contact, but rather have to use attacks. These are heavily telegraphed to the player, allowing them to block the attacks.
	+ Taken to the extreme in games such as *Artisan*, in the form of intents.
* Universal upgrade resource, individual upgrade caps – In games with multiple characters/jobs, all are upgraded with the same 1 resource. However, whether or not they can be upgraded (caps) is determined by how much the player has used them in battle. This matters most if temporary nonlethal permadeath is applied.
* Valves.

* MaskBot – The most common enemy. A bastardization of Face Mechon/Orcust and Knightmare designs, enemies that are mechanic masked humanoids, occasionally with mecha-horror elements, such as being on four legs.

* Auto-Item:
	+ Auto-Esuna: Upon the moment an ailment appears, a timed input appears. Succeeding this consumes an ailment removing item, at the normal time cost.
	+ Auto-Special: Even special offensive items appear via timed input, when the situation calls for it. Otherwise, offensive items are not used, normally.
* Few progression systems. Kept organic.
* Single, global upgrade resource. Can be spent on any unit, as long as they're able, which is done by fighting with them at least once.

* Same-sex – In an effort to show a singular vision/theme:
	+ Characters only refer to each other with male pronouns.
	+ There is no cross-dressing.

## Pixel art inspiration

* *Iconoclasts*.
* *Wargroove*.
* *Sparklite*.
* *Owlboy*.
* *Nimoyd - Survival Sandbox*.
* *Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing*.
* *Date Night Bowling*.
* *Vesper: Ether Saga*.
* *Gravity Circuit*.
* *Jack Move*.
* *Disjunction*.
* *Chained Echoes*.
* *Crosscode*.
* *Other: Her Loving Embrace*.