As Asterism is an RPG VN about using constellations to defeat shadow monsters and saving the Zodiac, one of the early features planned was to allow players to summon the Zodiac in battles after they’ve been saved. Summoning a Zodiac could have various effects depending on who is summoned- some would heal, some would attack all enemies, etc.
Kotachi is the only character able to summon Zodiac in your party, so we decided to have it tied to his skills. When the player selects Kotachi’s skills and Summon a Zodiac, a popup will appear. This popup will show which Zodiac members you’ve saved.
We were unsure at first how to display the Zodiac on the popup. A text list with no images wouldn’t be very user-friendly. Should it be headshots of them like how the part members have headshots? We decided to go with a small icon of the constellation as well as the name underneath for 2 reasons:
- A clear representation (headshot) of the character wasn’t necessary as it won’t tell the player what the skill itself does
- The constellation icon reinforces the astronomy theme, that these are Zodiac constellations
Once you select a constellation, another popup will appear saying what it does. This serves as both a confirmation screen to use it and to tell the player what the skill does.
With these mockups created, we made a quick prototype of it to see how it feels.
The final interface for summons is not finished yet but will be shortly. While building the prototype for testing, we tweaked the confirmation screen.
Now the confirmation screen will say a small blurb about the skill and how many people it affects- whether it’s single target, an entire party, and whether or not it affects enemies or your party.
We’re still working on the final version of the summons so stay tuned!
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