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What is Echo Saga?
The fantasy game I would make today to improve on what I began with The Lost Sorceress.
Hundreds of years ago, the world of Sitrac was transformed by the discovery of Elmsoul power, or as it's now known, "magic." Sitrac became a mammoth, logic-defying paradise... a joyous dreamland of insatiable wonder. Then Sitrac was met by a century-long cataclysm.
A diminished scatter of humans survive today in the wastes of Sitrac, long cut off from the magic that fashioned, and destroyed, their world. Resources are few, growth is minimal, weather is chaotic and hope is fading. Only an act of God can save Sitrac from total annihilation.
Sitrac must settle though for God's pale substitute, the Elmsouls that initially caused the planet's demise. A large band of Elmsouls coded "Echoes" have been frozen in stone for a hundred years. Now, they have awoken. Magic will return to Sitrac. Magic YOU will control.
As one of the last Elmsouls, you must find, awaken and command each frozen member of your race. Elmsoul power CAN save the world. What will YOU do with their power? Saving Sitrac will put your race at risk. You COULD just protect them and let humans die. What's your choice?
What do you need to know about Echo Saga?
I wanted to set a game in a place that was once a paradise, but is now a sprawl of ruins. There's something about exploring the destroyed suggestion of a place and imagining what it was like pre-destruction that I LOVE in an adventure setting.
Every Elmsoul in Echo Saga has forgotten their lives from before the Sitrac demise. They must traverse this dying world, find places they vaguely recognize from their old lives and piece their memories back together. OR instead start new lives as new people in this new world.
Each Elmsoul is, in essence, two characters: The character that they used to be, which they could remember, or the character that they could become by starting new lives in present-Sitrac. Maybe an Elmsoul that was once awful avoids remembering it and becomes nice? Or vice versa?
Whichever way the Elmsouls live in today's Sitrac, they must be careful about their use of magic. The last humans know that magic both destroyed AND also could SAVE the world, so they may react unpredictably if they discover that your people are still alive. Reveal magic wisely.
The game lets you "live" in any part of Sitrac as long as there's a safe place to sleep and a means to acquire food and climate-suited bodily coverings. There is no end-goal to this game. Time passes day-by-day, morning-to-night and once 365 days have passed, the game ends.
Moving the game day-to-day/morning-to-night over a fixed set of days will allow me to bring the sort of depth to Sitrac's inhabitants that I always loved seeing in games like Zelda Majora's Mask. But obviously the character depth will be on a grander scale: 365 days instead of 3.
One BIG thing to mention about Echo Saga: Any character that dies, Elmsoul or human, STAYS DEAD FOREVER. No extra lives, no resurrection spells, no fairies in a bottle, absolutely no videogamey deaths whatsoever. Death is LEGITIMATE in Echo Saga, so for God's sake, be careful!
The core purpose of Echo Saga is to have the player make a statement at the end of the game's year. How many Elmsouls did you try to save? How many humans did you help? Were you ever violent? Do you have a future in Sitrac? Is the world safe? How many people died because of you?
The Lost Sorceress had only one ending which the player would either reach or not reach. I don't want that for Echo Saga. Fixed endings in games no longer interest me, as they stop you making meaningful right-or-wrong decisions. You instead just do whatever gets you to the end.
I would love to finish it some day, don't get me wrong, but my mission with The Lost Sorceress was to make "the people's Final Fantasy." As good as that game could be, it's still held back by Final Fantasy's limitations. By design, Echo Saga will deliver beyond those limitations.
Now for some details on the game's magic and battle systems! Below is a rough mock-up of an Echo Saga fight.
QUICK EXPLANATION OF RPG FIGHTS FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT - IF YOU KNOW RPG'S, SKIP AHEAD.
In the image above, the opponent is on the left, the team of fighters you issue commands to is on the right.
In traditional role-playing games, each fighter on your team wields weapons and can attack opponents as many times as they want. Fighters also possess an amount of Magic Points (MP) that can be spent on the use of special skills.
Usually, skills are more useful than attacking freely with a weapon, hence why the skill's use is limited by MP cost. Once a fighter's MP is spent to 0, that fighter can't use skills again until the MP is restored. The MP-total of a fighter increases as that fighter wins battles and gets stronger.
Strength increase will help your fighter attack faster than their opponent, deal more damage with weapon strikes/MP skills and receive less damage from opponent attacks, all of which is represented by that fighter's numeric battle statistics (Speed, Attack, Skill, Defence, etc).
Players can access their team's battle stats at all times by calling a menu. From here, they can equip their team with items found around the game world and further boost their stats. Equipment can also reduce/nullify specific kinds of opponent attacks, plus cause other interesting effects.
SO: gather a team of fighters, understand all the numbers, get your team using skills and attacks wisely, defeat opponents, increase strength, acquire and smartly-use equipment and create an unbeatable crew.
NOW WE SHOULD ALL BE ON THE SAME PAGE. DON'T SKIP ANY FURTHER!
What makes Echo Saga's fights different?
Echo Saga has no MP. I never liked how MP lets you, in EVERY battle, easily hurl a barrage of meteors at an opponent, drink MP Ether and hurl countless more meteors (ONE meteor should do the job, right?). Something as monumental as CAUSING METEOR STORMS ends up losing all impact.
Skills are DIFFICULT to make use of in Echo Saga, they deal more damage and have a FINITE use across the game. For this to work, the MP system needs to go. Also, you can't use the same skills in EVERY battle. Depending on the surrounding environment, skill-variety will differ.
For example: ICE skills that freeze opponents can only be summoned if enough cold surrounds the fight. FIRE skills that burn are limited only to warm areas. You'll never be able to summon fire skills in a mid-blizzard fight. You must use other skills to ensure victory. UNLESS...
You can acquire elemental CASTS to carry in your inventory and use in battle. This temporarily brings an element into the fight to call upon. Want to use fire in a blizzard? Gather some Fire Casts, use them and fry your ice-climate opponents! How do you gather Fire Casts? Well-
If you go to say, a volcano, and defeat a beast that calls upon the fire element to attack you, that beast will yield Fire Casts. Volcano beasts will summon fire exclusively, since heat will be everywhere, but unless YOU have non-fire Casts, fire's all YOU'VE got to work with.
Casts, by the way, are the solidified remnants of a soul that has escaped a dead body. If a living creature's soul channels an element upon death, the THREE Casts that creature will leave behind will contain the power of that element. That's how Casts work.
Volcano beasts must fill their souls with the element of fire before they unleash it upon you. THAT'S when you must kill them for their Fire-Casts. Wanna speed things up? Provoke the beast into using fire by posing a threat to the beast, but also looking susceptible to fire.
Suppose this fire beast is a bird. Carry a wooden shield that burns easily (fighters can switch equipment mid-battle), then fire a warning shot from a crossbow, a weapon that birds will recognize as lethal. They'll panic and call upon fire. JUST DON'T SUMMON WATER. They'll flee!
On the battle screen, you can see Cast Slots above each opponent, telling you how much of an element they are calling upon and what Casts they will yield once you defeat them. If you kill an opponent without these slots being filled, they will yield no Casts.
The aim in each battle is to provoke the opponent into filling ALL of these slots with a desired element, then defeat them quickly before they kill you with those elements. Remember, death is permanent in Echo Saga. If you lose a team member that you value, they're gone forever.
In the case of Volcano-Bird, once they fill their three Cast-Slots with fire, switch to a non-wooden shield, infuse your arrows with a Water Cast and ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. Kill enough beasts in an area and they'll stop showing up, so NEVER fight unless you intend to get Casts.
This whole system exists because I want *every* fight in Echo Saga to be challenging, gripping and engaging. RPG fights have a tendency to grow tedious and repetitive, which is baffling since these games involve MAGIC and MYTHICAL BEASTS. You'll never tire of Echo Saga's magic.
OK, done talking Echo Saga! No idea when this game will get made, but I intend to bring it to you as soon as I can!
Want me to speed up? Please go to patreon.com/lenaray - That's...
...and donate to support Echo Saga!
Any questions, confusion or compliments about Echo Saga? Leave a comment below!
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