Frayed Knights 2 Development Update

We were huge fans of the first Frayed Knights, Jay Barnson’s indie dungeon crawler from last year, and today he’s gone into detail on the updated combat mechanics to feature in the sequel.

So I took these two ideas from our home dice & paper game, and early Magic: The Gathering, and probably a little bit from D&D miniatures and 4th edition, but I hit upon an approach to handling combat in Frayed Knights 2 (and most likely 3) that will improve upon the experience in the original. I thought I’d run it past you for additional feedback. So here we go.

The general play changes to this: The player takes a turn. The AI takes a turn. This continues until the end of a ’round’ where round-by-round effects take place. For their turn, one side can play an available character in their group, and / or (in the player’s case) choose a drama star effect, attempt to flee, or even pass. In fact, near the end of a ’round,’ if one side has a lot more characters than the other, that side may get a few extra turns in a row, though at this point I’m not guaranteeing that every character will get a chance to act every turn. At the end of the round, certain effects (like durations) are updated, and the combat continues with a new round.