Library of Ruina is an auto-battler.
At least, it was, early in development.
Hi, I'm Zero, and in this video
we'll take a look at Library of Ruina's combat system
and how it eventually turned into one of the most unique takes on
Turn-Based Combat out there right now.
Note that I'll only be giving an overview of the system,
refer to my other videos for the details.
I'll also be using more generic terminology as much as possible.
To make up for the lack of detail, I've added a couple of extras -
a bit about the sequel, Limbus Company,
and some thoughts about game development.
In order to properly explain how we got here,
we must first go back to the beginning,
after the full launch of the prequel, Lobotomy Corporation.
Now this isn't much of a spoiler as
we're already at the 3rd game in the franchise,
but LobCorp ends with a very big sequel hook.
And so the devs immediately began work on that sequel.
Since LobCorp leaned more towards management,
it was decided early on that this new game would be more action oriented.
The Director mentioned in an interview that
he wanted it to be like Uncharted Waters 4,
a game whose combat was mostly hands-off
and was fun to watch.
This lead to the initial pre-Alpha prototype,
an Auto-Battler.
From the footage they uploaded to their YouTube channel,
this prototype does seem to get the
“fun to watch” part right.
But you can guess what the team thought about it:
it's mobile game-y and doesn't have enough gameplay elements.
To address these glaring issues,
they started adding more stuff for the player to do,
starting with the cards.
Despite the first line fakeout of this video,
I'm sure many viewers who are only vaguely aware of what this game is about
still know that this is a card game,
whether through quick glimpses of gameplay,
or just paying attention to the intro.
So let's go with that first,
pushing away all the freaky game mechanics to the side for now,
and skip straight to the final game and talk about
the card game stuff that should be familiar to a modern indie gamer.
On the surface, there's a lot of overlap
with your usual collectible card games like Magic: the Gathering.
You get to build a deck for each of your units,
which they then get to draw from in combat.
Each card has a resource cost,
and each unit has limited resources available
in order to play their cards.
As you might expect,
this setup leads to usual card game concepts
like mana curves.
There's also a booster pack mechanic,
which is a bit controversial for this kind of game.
Oh and yeah, since it's a single player game,
you get to have an idea what the enemies are going to do next.
And that's basically the extent
of familiar card game elements in Ruina's combat system.
Remember, this game wasn't a card game from the start.
By having roots in Auto-Battlers,
this let the devs experiment with stuff
you don't typically see in card games.
And oh boy did Project Moon try out some crazy stuff...
You can already see one of those experiments in the initial prototype
take note how these two are fighting but aren't taking any damage.
There's just a counter going up.
If we rewind a bit,
we can see them acting like in a normal Auto-Battler.
That is, both attack and take damage.
But have you stopped to think why,
why do we consider this normal?
Just taking damage and not doing anything about it?
One could say that it's actually realistic,
if you get stabbed or shot,
you get stabbed or shot.
But we're talking about games here,
surely, there are more fun and engaging ways to depict combat.
Ultimately, this is a relic from video game's history:
many of our games have their roots from tabletop games.
And since they predate handheld computers,
their combat systems have to be as simple as possible
while still trying to simulate potentially complicated situations.
Those systems were simplified further once they became video games,
this time due to screen and input limitations.
And this system of attacking and dealing damage just stuck…
through the decades.
There have been innovations, but when you think about it,
they're mostly just ways to take out enemies faster;
the core is still there - one side attacks, other side gets hit.
However, if we look at other media,
there's another fun and engaging way to represent combat...
Two opposing forces parrying each other's blows
until one side overpowers the other.
In short,
Clashing
And that's what Library of Ruina has settled on
as its preferred combat style,
all the way to the release.
And while you can still choose to tank damage,
or find ways to attack without Clashing,
most of the game will revolve around setting up the right Clashes for your team.
I'm not a game design essayist
so I won't dwell on this game-changing paradigm shift for long.
If you want to know more, again, link in the description for a guide.
I will however, discuss something Clash-related
that I don't talk about in that other video…
Namely, your units don't take as much damage
as they would in a normal turn-based game.
I mean, what do you expect when your units don't just
stand around like dumb-asses taking damage.
Less damage leads to a bigger side-effect:
Your teams no longer need dedicated healers.
No, not in the usual
“you wiped out the enemy before they can hurt your party” sort of deal
I'm talking about long, drawn out battles without any healers.
Stop and think about it for a moment:
How would party-based combat look like without healers?
For one, more time spent on attacking.
Gone are the
“ok we need to stop attacking this turn and heal up unless we want to die.”
We can also replace the dedicated healing abilities
with passive effects like Regeneration,
or to be more in line with our constant Clashing,
triggered effects like Lifesteal.
They don't even need to be that strong,
what would be a joke in other games
can be perfectly viable means of sustaining your team
just because they don't take as much damage.
This results in another interesting side-effect:
when your units do take a lot of damage,
battles suddenly become a lot more tense
as we removed all those dedicated healing abilities,
including revives.
I could go on, but I think you got the point
Change something as fundamental as damage dealing,
and lots of things will change down the line.
And that's gonna be an ongoing theme as we continue this video.
Getting back on track...
let's return to the Alpha build
and see how they originally implemented the card game mechanics.
Each turn you get to assign a card to each unit,
with each card adding a number of pips to the unit's queue.
Each pip represents an attack,
or more accurately,
a potential Clash.
Then at the start of every following turn, the pips are refreshed
and you get to assign a new card to the queue,
which again adds other pips.
This way of playing cards does look odd
though it does make a bit more sense in an Auto-Battler sense
where multiple actions are expected in the “auto” part of the battle.
But some of you may have remembered from earlier -
Library of Ruina uses the more familiar resource-based system for playing cards.
And in other games of the sort,
you could just do the multiple actions part by playing multiple cards
as long as you have resources to do so.
So, did they switch to this approach?
By the pre-Beta, the answer to that is yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that they ditched the part where cards you played
in earlier turns stick around.
But also “no” because the rest remained mostly intact -
you can only play one card per turn
(though later on your units can gain multiple slots
effectively letting you play more)
And more importantly, each card still consists of multiple pips,
though now they've become Dice.
As if Clashing wasn't radical enough,
the devs decided that single actions weren't fun enough,
instead taking a cue from fighting and stylish action games
and turned combos into a key part of combat.
Now you might say, this isn't breaking new ground;
lots of cards in other games do multiple things.
However, what's different here is that
each Die is treated as a separate discrete entity within the queue.
Or in bigger picture terms, you aren't playing cards against each other
you're pitting the Dice queues.
The best way to show this in action is to look the Evade Dice.
Most of the other dice work on the concept of
“who rolls highest wins, then we move to the next dice”,
but Evade is special.
If an Evade wins against attacks,
not only does the evader not take any damage,
the Die is reused, allowing the same Die to dodge multiple attacks.
Evade is also a Defensive Die, which means in certain situations,
it can be used to defend an incoming attack from a different enemy.
These reinforce the fact that ultimately,
it's the dice queues that matter,
and that the cards are simply vessels for the dice.
Anyway, it's time to move on again,
so yeah - if you want to know more,
details on the other video.
For the next update, try to forget what you saw about the pre-Beta
and let's return to Alpha yet again…
At this point, the devs have added more gameplay since the early prototype.
On top of our Clashes, we got our cards, our action queue...
but we really haven't solved the main problem with the prototype:
it still doesn't feel like the player has that much control over the combat.
To be fair, there's already a bit of player choice here if you look closely:
units will Clash with the one in front of them so it's all about
choosing the right cards to counter the enemy.
You could still up the player input though.
For example, other Auto-Battlers let you position your units before the battle,
with those close to the front tanking most of the damage.
Maybe the devs tried that approach,
but unfortunately we don't have any footage of that.
Instead, we have hints that they tried the opposite:
that is, you can't reposition your team.
What could change are their Speed values.
As you might guess higher Speed means faster,
and faster units will reach the enemies first
and start clashing with them.
Then you could just have equipment to upgrade their Speed,
or cards to change them on the fly.
At first glance,
it looks like a step forward from the usual pre-wave positioning
but compared to the previous version,
it's almost a step back.
At least in the Alpha you have an idea who's attacking who
and you can play cards accordingly,
with this setup you're guessing
who's going to end up meeting in the middle first.
Alright, I know you didn't forget what you just saw a few minutes ago
so you already know how they addressed this problem:
by adding a targeting system.
Instead of just seeing the enemy's intent, you can also see their targets.
They then dialed back on the weirdness
with the whole playing cards on your units thing,
and went to the more traditional approach
of playing cards to target the enemies.
Everything we talked about so far stays the same.
Playing a card as a response to an incoming attack
will end up becoming a Clash.
Then there's the Dice queue which you already saw in action earlier.
They did, however, give Speed an updated purpose.
Faster units can now intercept an attack meant for other units.
In other games, interception may just be a nice-to-have gimmick,
but in a Clash-focused game, it's almost essential.
Without it, the game would be back to the Alpha
where you could only respond to incoming attacks
and can't choose your units' targets.
With enough fast units, it almost feels like a tactical game
where you can position your units in front of enemies,
limiting their attacking options,
and overall effectively changing the flow of combat.
In practice, however, the tactical analogy fails quickly.
For example, when there's a unit under attack
by more than 2 enemies at once.
This can happen when you don't have enough fast units to balance the clashes,
or one team having more members than the other,
both of which are fairly common.
In this situation,
it can be hard to predict which of the attacks will take place first.
And as you can see there's yet another complicating factor:
Knockbacks.
Long story short,
you can't be tactical if you can't reliably figure out the action order.
Tactical problems aside,
the addition of Speed and Interception is still a big deal as we've
finally got away from the very passive gameplay of the earlier builds.
A few months into the Early Access,
the devs dropped this simple change in the patch notes.
Characters with lower Speed values will always wait for the characters
with higher Speed values to play out their actions before taking their turn
even if they arrive at their targets first.
I admit, I'm one of the many players
who didn't really understand what this meant.
Looking back, however, this may just be
the most important change to the combat system during Early Access.
On the surface,
all this does is cause some weird UI thing where everything stops
except for the fastest unit who then slides towards their target.
But let's cut to the chase -
remember what I said a minute ago that we can't make tactical decisions
unless we can reliably predict the action order?
Yeah, this patch basically gives the player that.
If previously we can't tell if Roland will attack first,
now we know because his Speed is lower.
Even with the knockback, he'll have to wait for his turn because of the patch.
Of course, this change is more complicated than it looks,
but overall, it's just a matter of getting the hang of how things work,
and once you do, you should have no problem
tactically maneuvering your team through the battlefield.
You'd be able to set
pre-Clash flanking maneuvers from units that attack first.
Conversely, you can also set post-Clash follow-ups or finishers.
This is a complicated topic
so again, I'll leave the rest of the details to my other video.
The gameplay shift comes at a cost, however.
By prioritizing the Speed mechanic over the unit positions on the battlefield,
the devs have essentially abandoned most of
what makes an Auto-Battler an Auto-Battler
The only thing that remains is the hands-off battle processing.
Some parts like unit positions survive for other purposes
but all that effort implementing the other Auto-Battler elements is now wasted.
Then again, that's just part of the creative process,
discarding stuff because you choose to go a certain route.
And with this patch,
Project Moon has decided to turn Library of Ruina
into a Turn-Based Tactics game.
Despite this,
I don't call Library of Ruina a Turn-Based Tactics game anymore.
To explain why, let's take a detour and talk about game systems,
starting with Turn-Based.
Basically players taking turns performing actions.
This includes fancier variations like
units taking actions in order of initiative.
Let's put basic Turn-Based combat here on a graph.
Next is Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle
where the player has to wait for gauges
to fill up before getting to act.
Depending on the game or user settings
this can be closer or farther away from vanilla.
Now we can define the axis of our graph,
going from left to right increases the amount of “active input”
in the game system,
and by “active”, we mean things like
the player needing to get the timing right,
or being able to enter the right amount of inputs at a certain time frame.
Another good example of a system that requires active input
would be Turn-based with Quick Time Events.
Think Mario RPGs where hitting buttons at the right timing
will block or deal more damage.
I'll put them here,
requiring more or less active input than ATB
depending on the the variation.
And on the extreme end are non-Turn-Based games:
your real time strategies, your action games,
and even platformers.
Then in this gap are the Real Time With Pause games -
these are still not Turn-Based,
but adding a pause gives you back
one of the main advantages of Turn-Based systems:
You have all the time to strategize your next moves.
Now that we've completed this graph,
let's digress a bit further and address
what some of you may be thinking way back
when I talked about Clashing
and how most games just stayed with tanking damage rather than innovating,
that is:
“What about QTE”?
Like we already have a sort of Clashing and even a Combo mechanic here, right?
And to that I say
Do we really need extra inputs from the player for them to happen in game?
Surely, we can implement them way back here
rather than stray this far.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with
getting away from the basic Turn-Based formula;
it's ultimately a design choice that a developer makes
when building their game.
But whenever Turn-Based games add active elements
to their core gameplay to spice things up
it just feels a bit off for me.
Even worse is when some games overdo it to the point that
they might as well ditch Turn-Based altogether.
Long story short, I prefer games that try to improve Turn-Based Combat
within the constraints of the system,
or, as we shall see in a bit,
at least try to go in a different direction than QTE.
Getting back to the original digression,
it's clear from this line that
the opposite of Turn-Based is active gameplay.
But where do Auto-Battlers and Library of Ruina fit in here?
Right around Turn-Based.
Obviously, game systems involve more complicated factors than this single line,
so let's expand it to one more axis
how many units act simultaneously.
Instead of being next to it,
now these two systems are opposite of basic Turn-Based Combat.
Real-Time combat is still farther away,
but Turn-Based variations can be closer.
And if I had better video editing skills,
I'd add a third dimension and axis -
“tactical control” -
so I could add in Turn-Based Tactics
and distinguish Ruina from Auto-Battlers.
But let's stick with these two axes
and return to the original problem
why calling Library of Ruina Turn-Based Tactics isn't enough:
namely, they just aren't the same.
Well, it turns out
that there's already a well-established distinction between these two:
Library of Ruina is a WEGO tactics game.
WEGO as in “We Go at the same time”.
In contrast, almost every Tactics or vanilla Turn-Based game follow the opposite
IGOUGO
that is, “I go first, then you go”.
Calling Ruina a WEGO tactics game leads to a different problem, however,
as its such a niche subgenre
of a subgenre
that very few people know about it,
which defeats the purpose of assigning a genre
to let people know what the game is about.
So... we reach the main point of this chapter:
What do we call Library of Ruina's combat system then?
How about we just go with the marketing material
and call it “Library Battle Simulation”?
While it's marketable, lore-friendly and all,
it shares the same problem as WEGO,
anyone reading it will have absolutely no clue what it is all about,
possibly negatively affecting their purchasing decision.
So what do I call Library of Ruina's system
if someone would ask me about it nowadays?
It's a Turn-based
Clash-focused
Combo-driven
Hybrid Tactical Auto-Battler
Deckbuilding Card Game.
Or Hybrid Tactical Auto-Battler Card Game for short.
The Hybrid part is key,
as it clearly tells the prospective player
that it's a mix of genres
Project Moon have even started using this description
…sort of,
but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Anyway, I think this description's good enough for most cases,
though it's not quite on the level of other genres.
It needs to be more catchy,
or even provocative.
Here's some that I pulled out of my ass:
Alright, digression over.
By now you might be thinking that
Project Moon must have been going out of their way
intentionally breaking every rule in the book.
That might just be the case,
but I think at least some of them were simply happy accidents.
Case in point: the Emotion System.
This concept has been around from the start,
in the initial crowdfunding details,
and even in the Alpha footage.
Lore-wise, the Library rewards heightened emotions,
regardless if it's positive or negative.
In game terms,
Positive Emotions can come from stuff like killing an enemy,
and Negative can come from the opposite, like bad rolls.
Once a unit or a team gets enough Emotions,
they're given rewards like full resource refreshes,
and other stuff I won't spoil in this video.
On the surface, this is a straightforward example
of having an initial in-universe concept
then adding it into your game.
The accidental part arises when you consider the Focus-Fire trope,
yet another widely accepted thing in video games that
most really don't stop to think about.
Basically in RTSs and games in general where you control groups of units,
it's usually mathematically optimal to focus fire
and take out the enemy team one by one.
But it's not the case in Library of Ruina;
the Emotion System rewards Clashes much more than one-sided attacks.
And since those rewards can easily turn the tide of battle,
the game clearly doesn't want you to Focus-Fire.
Again, I don't know if they intentionally went out of their way
to discourage this decades-old trope,
though I like to think it's just emergent behavior
coming from combining crazy concepts together.
I mean,
the removal of dedicated healing abilities I mentioned way earlier
also discourages Focus-Fire,
and that has its own chicken-and-egg scenario.
And that's it for my not-so-quick overview
of Library of Ruina's complex combat system.
I could continue listing out other stuff they added to the combat
but I think you got the point;
Library of Ruina chose to take a radically different path compared to other games.
Instead, let's talk about something more important:
What are the problems with going down this route?
Which is a silly question, especially if we rephrase it as
What problems will a small indie developer face if they
decide to practically invent a new combat system for their game?
I could try to be funny and just answer
"All the problems" and call it a day,
but that wouldn't be that informative
so I'll be going over some of the main problems
then call it a day.
Alright, top of the list - UI.
No surprise here, we live in a time
when you've got bigger more established studios
spewing out hideous UI in their games,
And that's even when they already had previous UI to work off from.
On the other hand, Library of Ruina had to figure out
how to combine UI from vastly different genres
and make them work.
Really how do you do it?
Maybe look at some other hybrid games
like Fights in Tight Spaces and Midnight Suns?
But even then we have to squeeze in the missing parts
like the auto-battler and the clashing
into UIs already on the verge of being too busy.
In short, a non-janky UI would've required a miracle.
To be fair, what we ended up with isn't that terrible,
especially when you get the hang of the hard parts
like how Clashes are assigned,
and mentally calculating the order of attacks.
Unfortunately that's the next problem
how to make new players get the hang of
what's essentially a new type of game.
If you've been playing the same games over and over again
and have forgotten how long it takes to properly learn a new game system,
try learning Chess, Go,
or any variation of Poker or Mahjong through a video game,
preferably one that isn't a cultural staple where you're from.
Better yet, go watch someone doing it.
Yeah, it's not as simple as it looks.
While it may only take a few minutes to learn the absolute basics,
it will take a lot longer for a new player
to learn enough to play semi-competently.
And I haven't even factored in trying to make a guide for a moving target,
changing the tutorial every time you decide
to make a major change to the core gameplay.
All that said,
being in a difficult position doesn't excuse the problems the game has
with its onboarding process.
The gameplay eventually became stable,
and they had all the time to make things better.
Beyond the bare minimum walls of text and manual,
a game as complicated as this one should at least have
an improved in-game manual with animations,
extra examples, and possibly a search function.
To Project Moon's credit,
they did try to go the extra mile with the tutorial.
There's this idea in game design where instead of relying on annoying popups
to teach certain parts of a game,
one can place players into situations
where they can pick the concepts up by themselves,
whether consciously or subconsciously.
And Library of Ruina does the same with certain stages.
At first, it could seem like the game took a big leap in difficulty,
but if the player pays attention,
they could figure out a game mechanic or two
that makes the stage much easier than it initially seemed.
Unfortunately, these battles turned out to be too difficult for some players
and some of them were nerfed to the point that you can beat them
without even learning what they're meant to teach.
Oh well, at least they tried.
The third problem, you've already saw a chapter on it.
And I could continue, but I've already made my point.
If any one of these can result in lost sales or even refunds,
just imagine having to deal all of them at the same time.
So you found all of this interesting
and decided to check it out on Steam…
then you learn that it's a bit too expensive for a game that might turn out to be
too janky for your taste.
Normally, I'd suggest waiting for a sale.
But if you're watching close to when I originally posted this,
there might not be a price cut soon as
they've recently released new ports
and a discount would just cut into their sales.
Thankfully, there's a perfectly legal way to try out the combat system for free.
Limbus Company is a spinoff sequel
available on Steam, iOS, and Android.
It's a gacha game, but you can get a feel of the combat
without spending a single cent on it.
And you do that by simply playing your way to the third Canto.
The prologue and first Canto are tutorial chapters,
and while the second Canto does start to
get a bit more challenging at certain points,
you can luck your way through some battles
meant to nudge you to learn the game's mechanics.
On the other hand, the third Canto's hard enough that
learning the mechanics is almost essential.
Also, unlike the previous Canto,
you will have to grind for XP.
If you don't want to grind,
you can alternatively try out the Rogue-like dungeon
that opens up at the same point in the game.
As of this recording, all of the Mirror Dungeons so far
have an easy mode that automatically levels up all your units to max level,
removing the need for grinding.
While this is a quicker way to get a good feel of the combat,
there is one big downside:
currently there are out-of-context spoilers in the later floors.
Might not be an issue if you're just here for the combat
and will likely forget about the spoilers
when you get around to doing an actual playthrough.
But if you do mind spoilers, better stick to the main story.
Since we're on the topic,
here's a quick rundown of what spoils what in the franchise.
If you're planning to play Lobotomy Corporation
and don't want spoilers,
tough luck, both games spoil the first game from the get go.
On the other hand, thanks to it being a spinoff,
Limbus Company doesn't spoil Library of Ruina.
Until you go too far into the main story.
And don't ignore the banners and events.
But other than that you'll be fine…
Back to the combat,
note that Limbus Company doesn't quite use the same system as Ruina.
Most of what I talked about are still present,
however the changes are big enough that I feel that
I should at least give you a quick rundown
so that the awkward tutorial doesn't confuse you as much.
If you're one of those
“just give me an overview and I'll figure the rest on my own” types,
this is a good time to pause the video,
download Limbus Company and spend the rest of the day
or two playing up to Canto 3.
Or you can skip to the final chapter and finish the video first.
Anyway on to the changes…
If most of Library of Ruina's quirks can be traced back to its Auto-Battler roots,
most of the changes done to Limbus Company's combat
can be similarly traced back to a single reason:
it's now a mobile game.
Smaller screens mean deckbuilding would be too awkward so it's out.
Instead, you select Identities for your units,
with each Identity having their own stats, abilities,
and a fixed set of Skills -
basically their decks.
You can also give your units extra E.G.O,
special attacks that you can activate
as you have the resources for them.
Of course, nowadays when we talk about mobile games,
we don't just mean portable or having smaller screens.
We generally refer to microtransaction heavy games like Free-to-Play Gacha.
Oh those Identities and E.G.O I just mentioned?
Pullable from Gacha.
Alright, let's get this out of the way:
I hate Live Services, Battle Passes,
and I absolutely HATE Gacha.
But I, and presumably many other Project Moon fans in a similar boat,
are fine with paying for the game simply because
the devs straight up said in an interview
that this was a fund raiser for other projects.
A Faustian Bargain, if you will.
It helps that it doesn't feel like a gacha game sometimes,
with cheap and bankable stamina,
and most stuff grindable through gameplay,
that includes current banners.
And that's all I'll say about the monetization and gacha for now.
I'll leave the rest to another video.
Back to the combat,
the screen size limitation means that
the combat has to be simpler.
With Dailies and replayable Rogue-like dungeons,
it also has to be faster.
The tactical combat wasn't taken out, however,
but is now called Focused Encounters
and is limited to special situations like boss battles.
The default replacing it, Regular Encounters,
sacrifices tactical options for the aforementioned simpler and faster combat.
If we have a sliding scale between
Auto-Battlers and Turn-based Tactics:
Library of Ruina's all the way here
Limbus Company's Focused Encounters are slightly less tactical,
and Regular Encounters sit about here,
firmly in the Auto-Battler side.
A quick rundown of what makes it faster:
There's a fixed attacking pattern,
pause if you want to read about it.
Basically, the game already chooses the targets for you,
and you just need to choose the appropriate skill.
Kinda like the Alpha.
Not being able to choose the targets can lead to poor matchups,
but that's what the E.G.Os are for.
Next on the speed-up:
unlike before where attacks are resolved one by one,
the game can now display multiple clashes and attacks simultaneously.
If you look closely, you might be able to figure out what sort of trickery
the game does to pull this off.
And finally,
if a unit's original target dies before they get to attack,
they proceed to the next valid target so the attack isn't wasted.
Moving on to other changes,
you might have already noticed the next major one
from the footage I've been showing:
the Dice have been replaced by Coins.
On the surface, this might seem like a huge downgrade,
but this Coin battling mechanic can be trickier than it looks.
I'm not going to post another wall of text explaining it,
but feel free to head to my other video to learn how it works.
A good example why Coins aren't that simple
is how they don't always flip 50/50 Heads or Tails.
Instead, they're affected by a unit's Sanity.
A call back to Lobotomy Corporation,
Sanity starts from 0,
and can go up to 45, or down to -45.
45 seems to be an odd choice,
until you do the math.
50% Heads on a coin flip plus 45 gives you 95%.
In other words, a Tails at max Sanity
is a Critical Miss on a D20 die.
So yeah, Coins are basically Dice.
There are multiple ways to gain Sanity,
but the most reliable way is to win a Clash,
with longer Clashes also giving more Sanity.
As some of you may have realized,
this essentially makes it the counterpart to Ruina's Emotion system,
encouraging Clashes over one-sided attacks.
Alright, I think that's enough for an overview for the changes
between Library of Ruina and Limbus Company's combat.
I could go on with more changes,
but let's not forget why I'm even talking about them in a video
that's supposed to be about the former.
In short, if you're gonna follow my suggestion to play
Limbus Company for free first to see
if you like the combat enough to buy Library of Ruina,
just remember that they're not quite the same.
While we've covered all of what I've listed at the start,
I still need to clarify a few more things...
However, this last part's for the game devs;
the rest of you can just skip to the end screen.
Saves you a couple of minutes to do other stuff
like watch videos or grind mirror dungeons or something.
I'm not gonna stop you from sticking around, though.
Anyway, say you're an aspiring game designer or developer.
You stumble upon this video without knowing about the game,
then you see the pros, the cons,
and a glimpse of the end result.
Calling to mind the title,
or its more popular variation
“The Road Less Traveled”,
this finally convinces you to take a similar leap in your game.
As a fan of games that push boundaries, I'd love to see more games do the same.
But I also don't want to see indie games fail,
and what I've shown you in the past 40 minutes
doesn't provide enough context to make such a bold decision.
This missing context leading to misinformed decisions
is perfectly encapsulated by the title:
It's not “The Road Less Traveled”,
it's “The Road Not Taken”,
and it's a direct reference to the Robert Frost poem.
For the Project Moon fans still sticking around,
pat yourself on the back if you saw this literary allusion from a mile away.
Point is, the said poem has a reputation of being misunderstood.
Of course, text can have multiple interpretations;
even those explained by their authors can be interpreted differently.
But for this one,
the misreading comes from not paying enough attention to the text,
or being only familiar with the derivative work.
For example, a common interpretation is it's about indecisiveness,
and the importance of making a choice.
This reading's a bit infamous
for possibly convincing the poem's intended reader
to go fight in World War I.
But apart from that, it's a good lesson to pick up.
However, interpretations like it don't seem to match the poem's intent
once you actually read the lines.
Things pop out like how the two roads are not that different,
or how that powerful last statement
is undermined by what came before it.
Analyzing the poem any further will put us a bit off track
so let's just go back to our main topic.
To recap, if game designers see all this,
they might start doing crazy shit in their games.
But they're missing some key context,
so their game fails, and I get blamed in the end.
I don't want that,
so I'll be going through some alternative interpretations of the title
and give you the missing context.
First, the indecisiveness that we already covered.
As I said, it may not be what the poem's about,
but it's still a good lesson.
Especially in game dev,
sometimes you just have to do it, whatever it is.
Just keep in mind what happened to the first guy.
Next, it's about nonconformity,
taking the less traveled path leads to success.
We're getting away from the original poem,
but after seeing all this,
I could understand why you'd think this way.
But no.
Gonna make a mildy hot take here,
but had the devs chosen a more mundane combat system,
the game probably would've ended up in the same boat.
It's easier to see once you notice that I've only been focusing on the combat,
and made sure not to talk about the rest of the game:
the Themes, Story, the Characters,
the World, the Art, the Music, and so on.
Each of those are worth noting on their own,
and combat is just one part,
maybe even the weakest link.
I'd go as far to say that the game would've gotten a wider audience
if they chose something more mainstream.
Next interpretation is often related to the previous,
as nonconformity usually implies forging one's own path.
You might think I'd also disagree with this,
but this one,
oddly fits.
The missing context here is that I also made sure not to show or talk about
the late, or even mid-game, combat.
I'm gonna be vague here to lessen the spoilers,
but the combat starts out as a clunky yet ambitious system,
and the devs built it up with layer upon layer of new gameplay elements,
while keeping it intertwined with the themes and the story.
I don't want to overhype what they did with the combat,
but if this “stageplay” setup remained a mere gimmick
and didn't evolve to what we got later in the game,
and what we have right now in the sequel…
Mili's great,
but there's no way every single boss battle in the franchise
would have this much play time
if the fights themselves didn't carry that much emotional weight.
In other words,
while the choice to go this route may not have made a difference,
Project Moon worked hard to make sure it did.
And the last, taking the previous two to a reckless extreme,
do it because it's difficult and risky.
I have no idea how you got to this,
maybe you confused the line with some other motivational saying,
but I can't deny that some people out there want a challenge.
This one's a bit tricky,
I sort of agree with the concept,
but disagree with the interpretation,
mostly on the “risk” part.
This time, the context isn't totally missing,
I mentioned it at the start:
Library of Ruina was a heavily anticipated sequel
with a crowdfunding campaign that smashed its goals.
With an existing fanbase, the devs were in a slightly less risky position
as they can get away with things that the main audience
would let slide or even downright expect.
For instance, the early-game world-building
might feel a bit too much if this was a typical game,
but that's exactly what many of us were looking forward to:
we were literally living under a rock in the previous game.
But there's something else about the fanbase
that makes this route a lot less risky:
The people looking forward to the game the most
are the ones who finished Lobotomy Corporation,
a game so janky, tedious,
and soul-crushing that even at 2024,
a time when streamers eat Souls-likes for breakfast,
it's still pretty rare to find content creators
that go through the whole thing
that aren't already Project Moon veterans.
And LobCorp finishers can be very,
very stubborn and determined players:
a radically new combat system with a difficult to use UI
isn't going to stop them from playing.
Maybe too determined -
I'm fairly sure that a decent amount of the player base
were able to finish the game
not through deckbuilding skill or tactical decision making,
but through sheer determination,
and repeating battles until they get really, really lucky.
And, sorry to be blunt,
you're probably not one of the few developers
or studios out there that have the same kind of fanbase.
Alright, that's all the context I can give without spoiling too much
about the game or the franchise as a whole.
If after seeing this you're still going to take the off beaten path,
like waaay off…
Good Luck!
And that's it for this video;
to the right are my intros to Library of Ruina and Limbus Company.
If you're lucky, the latter's no longer
the quick and dirty one that I made a few days after launch.
To the left are my tips for Lobotomy Corporation,
for those who were intrigued by what I said about the game's fans.
Anyway, thanks for watching and see you in the next video.