18/10/2022
Tears of Magic - Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is this game close enough to Breath of Fire to become a legal issue?
No, there will be no problem with that. Capcom owns the Intellectual Property (IP) of Breath of Fire, which includes the character specific designs, lore of the world and some textual content, like key words, catch phrases, the name of the game and so on. However, they don't have ownership over animal-based races, or over characters that can transform into dragons, which are the main similarities to Tears of Magic. Blue haired protagonists are also not copyrighted and are also common in many titles; Legend of Legaia, Dragon Quest, and Wild Arms, and many others.
2. What are the main differences between Tears of Magic and Breath of Fire?
The protagonist of Tears of Magic is not silent. Instead, there is a personality system built around Kaiser that affects cutscenes and dialogue choices. You can also customize the gender of Kaiser, skin color, hair color, and the outfit, allowing you to role play the game and be the writer of your own story instead of just reading someone's else story from a book.
Another key difference is the lore of the game, which has no connection to that of Breath of Fire. For example, the Quickfeet Clan is composed of feline races, but they are not Worens. The Quickfeet have their own culture and history, and even their appearance is noticeably different from the feline race of Breath of Fire 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
There are also several differences in core mechanics, including the affinity system, relationships, how dragon transformation works, skill growth, crafting, tag attacks, danger sense, geo effects and the battle assistant. Tears of Magic has multiple layers of customization for battle parameters, which is in line with our core dynamic of role play, allowing you to be the hero you want to be.
Our game also uses high-definition pixel art, with dynamic lighting and a perspective camera, which makes it highly unlikely for someone to mistake the graphics of one game for another.
3. What are the main similarities between Tears of Magic and Breath of Fire?
Both settings have a world with anthropomorphic races inspired by animals, and both settings have a dragon protagonist.
Minor similarities include fishing mini-games, the possibility to learn skills from mentors (called masters in Breath of Fire), and the ability to learn skills from opponents with the protagonist. However, skills learnt from mentors and opponents in Tears of Magic have an evolution path, unlike Breath of Fire where they are immutable.
You can also see some similarity between the tag attack system from Tears of Magic and the combo system from Breath of Fire IV, but tag attacks work more like Unite Magic from Suikoden or dual techs from Chrono Trigger. The dragon system also has some similarity to the dragon genes from Breath of Fire III, but in Tears of Magic you get new forms and traits by socializing with party members and increasing affinity to them.
4. Isn't it too early to release this Kickstarter?
We just finished the concept stage recently and entered development stage. The goal of this Kickstarter is to allow us to go full time on development (we currently develop on our free time), to fund the composers, and to hopefully hire new members to increase the overall quality of the game and reduce our workload. We could wait more six months to have more content to show, but that would also delay the release of the game by at least the same amount of time.
5. What happens if the Kickstarter does not succeed? Will all our dreams get crushed?
We believe Kickstarter will be a success, but if we fail to reach our goal, development will proceed as it has been before the campaign. We got some increase on our Patreon that will allow us to keep going for a bit, and after six months or so, we would restart the campaign with more content and more visibility. There are also other options, like working with a publisher or getting alternative fundings to pay for music.
6. How does dragon transformation work in Tears of Magic?
The dragon transformation system has the following components:
- There are multiple forms. Nine of them are based on traits of your allies, unlocked after you get certain affinity with them; and four other forms based on Kaiser, unlocked with story progression.
- Each form can be customized with three traits, which is based on the magic of your allies. You can unlock traits by having those allies as members of your party, or by having high affinity while they are not in your party.
- One of those traits define the initial skill your dragon will use when transforming, like a breath of fire, taunt, AoE heal or a de-buff, for example. The other traits define the characteristics of the dragon, like his attribute bonuses or passive skills.
- Each form has some pre-defined skills to use in battle, as well as some extra skills based on the selected traits.
- To promote more transformations, you get a free cast of a skill when transforming, so your turn is not lost. After that, the transformation drains some of your mana, as well as a tiny bit from your allies, every round. The transformation ends after your mana runs out, when Kaiser gets knocked out, or when if you decided to use the skill to return manually.
7. How is the turn-based system of Tears of Magic?
Each turn of the combat flows as follows:
- First, opponents will define their actions internally and change battle animation accordingly. If they are planning to cast a signature skill in this round, you will see a red circle under the targets (danger sense), so you can react accordingly.
- Then, you can define the actions of each of your characters, in any order. Each character with selected action will change animation to show they are ready to attack.
- To create a tag attack, you just need to perform the two actions that can be combined in sequence. After selecting the first action with a character, you will see the skills that can be combined with a visual indicator in the list.
- After you select your actions, then the commands will be executed based on the order you chose. Opponents act first if they surprised the party, otherwise you will always have the initiative.
- After both party and opponents acted, then the assistant will perform its autonomous command, like healing an ally or de-buffing an opponent.
8. How does crafting work?
Instead of changing weapon and armor directly like traditional RPGs, you instead upgrade your equipment with new components. Components include the material, three runes and a monster core.
- There are different materials for each tier, and they suit different roles in battle. For example, you can use a sturdier material on your armor, to increase defense and the likelihood of a character to be targeted. Another option is to use a lighter material to increase speed, allowing you to cause more critical hits or deflect enemy attacks. Some material might be resistant to an element, while other materials could bring some penalty in exchange of a higher benefit.
- Runes are magic effects that can be added to a weapon or armor. They usually give minor effects, but when combined in the right order, they become enchantments, granting effects like life steal, chain lightning on hit, guardian angel, thorns, among many other. It works in a way similar to runewords from Diablo. Keep in mind that runes have different tiers, and they also can drop in imperfect condition (without maximum statistics).
- Monster cores are usually dropped from strong foes, like bosses, and give a unique effect that represents the essence of that opponent. For example, you could get a monster core with the essence of poison, that when equipped to your armor, allows you to gain a strong buff when you are poisoned, and apply poison by the start of the combat. Another monster core could cause your attacks to cause an AoE explosion, but make you take a minor part of the damage from those attacks. By design, monster cores should change how a character is played instead of just adding an extra bonus.
- The name of your weapon and armor will be based on the components. For example, Dylan could have the "Titanium Vampire Anchor of the Forest King". The first part is the material, followed by the enchantment (combination of runes), then the equipment name, and then the monster core.
9. What about minigames? How does fishing work? Will there be cooking or township?
Yes, there will be fishing, cooking and township.
- Fishing works similar to Breath of Fire 3 or Stardew Valley, in which you need to keep the fish inside a moveable bar in order to capture it. However, there will be an added mechanic for fish energy and line tension, in which the bar reduces in size as you reel in (holding action button with the fish inside the bar). If you hold reel button while the fish is out of the bar, then the line tension will increase, and it will break if it reaches maximum. You need to release the button for a moment for the bar to return to normal size, and to reduce tension on the line.
- Cooking works by combining ingredients into food. The food can then be equipped to characters individually to increase some non-combat statistics, like health or mana healed after each battle, experience bonus, and even combat affinity if it has their favorite ingredient (like meat for Benji). Some rare ingredients allow food to have effects on battle statistics, like a specific buff at the start of combat, or resistance to some element. There are three tiers for each ingredient, and they affect the final tier of the food, increasing the bonuses. You can only get tier three seafood by fishing it yourself, for example.
- Township works similar to Suikoden games, except that you cannot have everyone invited to your town. You will have slots for specific roles / tasks in the town, and different options for each of those slots. For example, you can either bring fishermen to solve the food problem of your town or use the slot for farmers. That will change an area of the town and NPCs you can interact, as well as extra bonuses like access to different ingredients for cooking. The same logic applies for the store, which can be a blacksmith or an alchemist. The inn can be owned by NPCs of different clans, and that affects the inner architecture of the tavern. You can also bring the arena minigame to your town!
