Years ago, I remember seeing a streamer struggling against absurd odds on a randomized version of a game I loved. He had to fight off random advanced units equipped with the most powerful weapon with his "normal" team, needless to say, it was quite an unfair fight... But he went through, somehow.
I've always been a fan of SRPG games and I particularly fancy Fire Emblem. Esperia ~ Uprising of the Scarlet Witch ~ has a gameplay heavily inspired by it, and what I love the most about these games is how you can do different playthrough and still have fun on the same maps by using different characters and units.
This replayability is possible through the diversity of units, class and skills in a game, but once you have finished the game and replayed it in a harder difficulty, it can become a bit stall. Mind you, Esperia isn't on the easy side, but I still felt like we could "spice things up" a little bit.
Introducing... Randomized difficulty!
What is randomized difficulty? It's a difficulty setting in which enemies will be assigned a random class, weapons and skills at the start of the map. Their position remain the same, but the group of bandits you ought to defeat on the first maps can suddenly become much more... intimidating.
This is bandit group. With a skeleton, two dragon knights and a REAL dragon, one wonder how they don't rule the region already...
From a gameplay perspective, this is like throwing the entire balancing and game design out of the window and look at it burn from your room. The enemies who were carefully placed to try to induce a specific strategy from the player are now changing the entire way the map is played. Suddenly, the path that should have been easy to clear with armored units become saturated with mages and the defense along the river becomes impossible when dragon knights replace normal soldiers. On the other hand, that annoying enemy archer who was hard to hit from across that wall can suddenly become a fencer and be... unable to attack.
Random ballistas on that mountain effectively completely seal off the right path. They can't move (how did they even get there!?) but are nonetheless lethal...
It makes each game imprevisible and unique, and more often than not, more challenging because they don't follow usual patterns. It makes them all the more fun, too, when you discover that the royal army abandoned armored knights for skeletons and thieves and the dragon riding forces now use normal horses.
What inflation does to a kingdom...
Here is another version of the first map. Will this bandit 'Axe throw' skill work with a book...? I kinda want to know why this priest became a bandit, though...
This mode works well for challenges of all sorts, our next goal will be to create a full randomize party with the player units, which will prove to be a more challenging development.
In the meantime though... Thank you for reading, if you want to try the game, it is available on Steam and on a 20% sale right now!
With best witches,
Alice
