What MushRog is, in one page of decisions

Today MushRog got a name and a design document. It’s an online 2D pixel-art RPG: a public town where everyone meets, and combat in rooms of up to 4 players. Each player brings a team of 2 characters and swaps between them in the middle of a fight.

Why

We wanted three things that rarely show up together: the town feel of Ragnarok, the piece-by-piece equipment of MU Online and the elemental reactions of Genshin. What ties them together is the character swap. One character sets the boss on fire, you swap, the other hits with ice and the damage doubles. Cooldowns keep running on the character in reserve, so swapping well is a skill, not a shortcut.

We decided early that the game is made by two people: a dev and a pixel-art artist who joins six months from now. That shapes a lot. The scope of the first prototype is small, equipment art is the biggest cost of the project, and each system has to prove it’s fun before it gets networking.

The main decisions

There are seven elements and eleven reactions, and order matters: fire on ice is stronger than ice on fire. Bosses have their own permanent aura, so a fire boss is immune to fire, and every ice hit on it triggers a reaction.

Equipment shows up on the character piece by piece: helmet, armor, pants, gloves, boots, weapon, off-hand and cape. Levels go from 1 to 500, but nobody levels up automatically. XP comes in tomes that drop from enemies and can be used on any character in the account.

Equipment chests spend keys, one per hour, with a vault for people who play once a day, and playing is never blocked. The Esporário is cosmetics only: no power bonuses, no 50/50, with a guarantee at 30 pulls.

Next step

Prove that swapping is fun in an offline prototype before writing a single line of networking.