Why 'fuck around and find out' became the backbone of Arco's combat

Psst. Over here. Do you know a cheeky sort with a passion for unbridled mayhem and adorable two-dimensional llamas? Alright then. Best tell them to have a gander at Arco.

The new tactical action game from publisher Panic and development troupe Franek Nowotniak, Max Cahill, Jose Ramon Garcia, and Antonio Uribe is out today–and all signs suggest it's going to be a doozy.

It's a sweeping tale of revenge where decisions can shape the outcome of an adventure laced with magic and forged in bloodshed. Arco's emotive pixel art visuals offer an immediate hook, but it's the RPG's simultaneous turn-based combat system that has us particularly intrigued.

In brief, the system works by allowing players to choose an action while time is frozen. Their enemies will do the same. Those actions will then play out simultaneously before the cycle begins again. It's a system of action, consequence, and reaction that becomes unpredictable thanks to the inclusion of anarchic abilities and items that can sometimes defy the flow of time.

Choices made throughout your adventure will also raise the stakes. Each playable character has a guilt level. As that increases, the emotional strain will physically manifest as hostile spirits that hunt players on the battlefield. These supernatural foes don't subscribe to the laws of physics and can pursue players even when time has paused. The more inner demons you collect, the more difficult your skirmishes will become. Heavy stuff. But those llamas should take the edge off. 

Searching for the sweet spot between control and carnage

Sitting down with Game Developer ahead of launch to unpack Arco's combat system, Nowotniak, Uribe, and Garcia said they wanted to create a system that felt truly "dynamic." They felt combat in other action titles often relies on rapid button presses or reflexes, which might be fun for those who can master that specific craft—but can also feel restrictive. Conversely, bread-and-butter turn-based combat was too sedate. The team didn't want players to be forced to watch turns unfold rather than being an active participant. So, they combined the two.

That core concept didn't fluctuate too much during development, but there was still plenty of room for fine-tuning. "The first time we [implemented combat], it was very slow," says Nowotniak. "We made you control the exact movement in the turn phase. You had to drag the mouse around to draw a line you would follow. A lot of controls were very slow and exact, while later, we realized you could just click somewhere to [queue an action]. We didn't need to micromanage every little thing."

Another challenge that threatened to derail proceedings was the failed inclusion of a combat time bar. The team canceled a side quest that would have incorporated a timeline that told players what would happen during each turn, asking them to counter those actions. It was, in theory, a twist that turned combat into something more akin to a prophetic puzzle. But it just didn't work.

"I think the main problem was we we're trying to implement that while trying to figure out a lot of the combat itself," says Nowotniak. "If we made the combat from the start into what it is now and then tried to add it, it could have worked. But we tried implementing too many features at the same time, and then if one of those didn't work, the other had to change."

Nowotniak explains that keeping skirmishes smaller in scale worked better in the long term. That's not to say things won't get hairy. Death will come for players eventually, and that could have been a problem.

"We wanted to make sure that players know there isn't much consequence to dying," says Nowotniak. "It's a linear game with different paths. It's not like a roguelike where you die and get pushed back to the start. [...] We wanted players to try different things and fail—but then try again. Because the combat shines when you play around with it."

The consensus was to try and avoid punishing players for experimentation. "It's not turn-based, so I think if players are approaching it in an Into the Breach kind of way and studying the situation for 10 minutes, it's not that kind of game," says Uribe. "It's more just 'fuck around and find out.' Make the mistakes, because if you get killed, it'll happen fast."

Uribe says the combat system is fluid in a "chemical" way. There are items and abilities that can chain together to create rampant, unpredictable carnage. The reality is you really have to fuck around to find out. Even if that means flirting with your mortality.

"For example, there is an item where, if you throw it, it creates a gas cloud. Then if you shoot an arrow through that, it poisons the arrow. Then if it hits an enemy it poisons the enemy," Uribe continues, outlining how those sequences can unfold. "We don't tell you these things, but you might discover [a lot of situations like this]. There are some combinations even we probably haven't discovered. That's where I think the game shines."

There are currently "way too many" items, abilities, and possible combinations to list here. So, to encourage experimentation and dissuade those players with a tendency to horde items until the credits roll, Arco will be generous when it comes to dishing out the contraband. Environmental hazards such as exploding cacti and bear traps have been deployed to tempt players to live a little. The title teases players with the question, 'What if you just did this?' and dares them to find the answer.

As the team mentioned earlier, death will also pass in a flash to avoid creating a vicious cycle of negative reinforcement. "I think the biggest thing you can take away from players is their time," says Nowotniak. "So we tried to minimize the time between [death] and starting again." He says the team even tried to implement an 'undo' button that would essentially allow players to rewind time if they perish, but ultimately, it had to be dropped due to production constraints.

There's also the hope that players will feel compelled to share their barmpot maneuvers, creating a llama-riding community of chaos merchants who can push each other to greater heights. Experimenting on your own is fun, but devising a system that compels players to record and distribute their unique brand of tomfoolery on the World Wide Web could perhaps deliver another level of success for a group of intrepid indies. Wouldn't that be something?