AyeeJ's Site

It’s Tuesday today — and yes, I know I wrote one of these yesterday, but I’ve been deep in working on the game and the design doc, so here we go again.

Building out the relic system

Today I’ve been focusing on the relics. In Unchosen, relics give you different bonuses based on what type of run you’re doing:

• Mercy run relics — mostly about crowd control (CC), stamina increases, and stat boosts. The idea here is you’re not killing enemies by chewing through their health bar; you’re “vanquishing” them in a different way so you still get the combat experience, just with a twist.
  • The first relic in this path basically changes all your weapon’s health damage into something else, so you still get to use weapons and upgrades — just differently.
• Balance run relics — a mix of damage and stamina boosts. It’s the more versatile option, letting you mix CC and raw damage.
• Domination run relics — focused on big damage and life steal. I think of this like how, as kids, we’d build a Pokémon team with only attack moves. Less strategy, more brutality.

Each path has about 10 relics, and I’ve also thought about what happens mid-run if you switch paths — but I’ll save that detail for later.

Weapons and soul traits

I’ve also fleshed out the weapon list: sword, scythe, dagger, mace, whip, and crossbow. I wanted the player to have meaningful choices, not just one default weapon type. (Personally, I love ranged in most games — except weirdly, I love melee in League of Legends.)

For each weapon, I’ve described how they look across Mercy, Domination, and Balance runs, since I want them to feel visually different based on your chosen path.

I also added soul traits: passive buffs you get from sticking with a single weapon. Up to level 3 (out of 10 total), you can swap weapons freely. After level 3, you can still switch, but you lose all soul traits from the first weapon. Soul traits focus mostly on CC and stamina gain. Even for Domination runs, where CC isn’t the focus, I think a bit of CC will help balance things out.

Thinking about movement & combat

Next up, I’ll be looking at how combat and movement feel. I want this to play well on a controller, so I’ll need to map out buttons, menus, and UI. I’m excited for this part — it’s the first time I get to think about how it’ll feel to actually play the game, not just design it.

I’ve paused the spreadsheets for now — diving too deep into item drop tables this early feels like a trap. Better to keep working on the big picture.

Other updates

• Wrote some dialogue for the first NPC, Mara, an old herbalist who’s a bit grumpy but interesting.
• Updated CC types: replaced snare with stagger (feels more like something you’d do with a weapon rather than magic). So now there’s: slow, fear, charm, stagger, and then parry & block (linked together).

It’s only about three extra pages added to the doc (now at ~43 pages). Doesn’t feel like huge progress, but a lot of thinking and structuring happened today.

Staying healthy while working

Game dev (especially solo, digital work) means staring at screens all day, so I’m trying to take breaks:

• Laid outside with the dogs for 30 minutes to rest my eyes.
• Keep water next to me, and get up every 30–45 minutes to stretch.
• Not sit hunched over like a prawn (bad for the back!).

It’s tough because when inspiration hits, I just want to keep going — but breaks matter.

Website plans

The website right now is mostly just content — lots of text, nothing fancy. I’m not a web designer, so I reached out to a friend (shout out to Luna!) to help with visuals.

I’ve added a new “Chosen” page with an overview of the game, but it’s just a wall of text for now. Hopefully, I’ll get better visuals and structure soon.

That’s about it for today. Small updates, but steady progress. Even if it’s not flashy, it’s still moving forward.