What the Hell is Project Carnation?

Quick Development Update

Before we get to the Carnation stuff: Urimas has finished some more idle animations, Koops has finished the style bible, and Hund is working on the big map reveal. I’ve also got some TOP SECRET individual working on some more chapter 2 talk sprites.

I also borrowed a second monitor and bought a new HDMI cable (because the old one freaking broke) so I could greatly improve the engine’s support for multi-monitor setups. Unfortunately the version of Allegro it currently uses is bugged, but the SDL version works. I may have to update the Allegro version after Carnation is out.

Project Carnation

Possible Title: Witches of Ravenbrook

Carnation is an RPG dungeon crawler where your three humans must confront and defeat the so-titled Witches of Ravenbrook in a turn-based combat system with upgradeable equipment and changeable classes.

There’s TF involved, as if I had to tell you that.

After several iterations of design, we’ve settled on what I’m calling an Influence system. When a character’s HP reaches 0, they gain a point of influence, which advances the transformation. As you level up you can increase the influence cap, slowing down transformations, but when the transformation is complete, that party member is hostile for the remainder of the expedition.

Your party enters dungeons and is not always expected to succeed, as the difficulty is intentionally high but fair. If you fail to reach the end and beat the boss, then you keep half of the gained EXP and money. I wanted to make it acceptable and okay to go get transformed, make it part of the gameplay, while still giving you the ability to overcome it.

The art lead is Inkyfluffs, the internationally renowned artist who worked on such titles as String Tyrant and is currently making Covenstead. The characters of Chris, Beth, and Lore are also her design and she’s handling the overall setting and writing. I, Salty, am doing the more game-y parts, like balance, layout, and the actual C++ part.

Presently the prototype is a few months out. I want to overhaul the combat system some more. Navigation is mostly complete but will likely need a few more backgrounds, we’ll know for sure once the final product is ready. I have further ideas on how to handle the navigation part but we’re making a prototype to see if people are interested in this kind of gameplay.

The combat system actually uses a lot of RoP’s guts with a number of small changes I may go into in a later update. Dialogue is also using RoP’s basic talk sprite system.

So there you have it, the semi-reveal of Project Carnation. If you love it or hate it, let us know on Discord or email or just, flag me down in the street and yell at me from a rolled-down window. Do whatever you want.

Fan Art

Here we have SX-399 and Unit 499323, or as they are now called, CR-2-2 and CR-2-3! Brand new secrebots ready to serve. Please don’t look further into their pasts, they’re fresh off the assembly line!

These were drawn by Dias and you can find their DA pages here and here. Thanks, Justinkombat888!

The upcoming Windthrall form hasn’t actually been concepted yet though the base enemy has. So local maniac Xandrasubmarine asked, what if they were cool as hell. Here’s the answer. This is what Jeanne would look like if she merged with one.