Game Mechanics

Four-Friends is a turn-based, hex-based, strategy game.The player competes against the game in a pre-built scenario, with the objective of generally clearing the board of interpersonal problems, while maintaining friendship scores between the Friends and fulfilling the specific objectives of the scenario.

Challenges
Clearing the Board: The main challenge of the game is prevailing against the overwhelming odds of defeating groups of enemies with the limited resources you have available, while not losing any team members. Factors in the challenge include:


 * Limited actions per turn: Each team member may make one action each turn or move. This is a huge factor in strategic thinking.


 * Limited hit points: Each team member can only take a few hits before dying. The player must use their resources intelligently to prevent, heal, or redirect damage to his or her team members.


 * Score is calculated at the end of each successful scenario and is based on number of moves made, number of hit points remaining per team member and real time spent on the game.

Friends:
Friends are the player controlled game objects. They rest on spaces in the hex grid and each turn may make a Move and/or an Action. They each have a friendship score that represents the strength of their bond to the group, and a unique ability that can be activated and changed by proximity to other friends.

Friends come in four types, inspired by  some of the personality profiles of the Chinese zodiac: Dragon: Friendship 6, Attack 1, Move 2   The dragon is charismatic but self-centered. As such it's a powerful but dangerous character. Its attack is potent but can be just a lethal to its friends as it is to the enemy, representing its powerful but abrasive personality.

Dog: Friendship 3, Attack 2, Move 2 The dog is fiercely loyal and comitted to principle, but reckless and moody as well. The dog has a ranged attack, but is vunerable to melee attacks, representing its fierce but tenuous commitment to its friends.

Goat: Friendship 5, Heal 3, Move 1 The goat is sensitive, thoughtful and creative, but naive and self-sacrificing. The goat is essentially the healer of the group, able to restore the friendship of a Friend, but unable to attack.

Ox: Friendship 6, Defend, Move 1 The ox is industrious and patient, but narrow minded and judgemental. The ox has very little willingness to deal with problems head on, prefering to simply outlast them. Therefore, he does very little damage to problems, but can go into a defensive stand as an action and become nearly invincible.

Enemies:
The enemies in the game are straightforward. They are weaker versions of the player's team members. Their strength lies in how many of them there are. The early levels of the game feature around twice as many enemies as there are team members. This number climbs to 4-5 times as many enemies in challenging configurations as the player completes more and more challenging levels.

Maps:
There are a range of maps in the game. They range from early, simple maps that have all or most of the enemies coming at the team members from the same direction, to maps that separate the team members from each other and force them to fight to reunite and survive.

Move:
Conditions: A Speed stat at 1 or above, adjacent space to move to.

Outcomes: Moves a friend across the map, changes relative proximity of player to other game elements.

Attack:
Conditions: Can be done by Dragons and Dogs. There must be a problem within range.

Outcomes:  Reduces the health of the target. May have other effects determined by proximity of other friends, and enemies.

Defend:
Conditions : Can be performed only by Oxen. Outcomes: Makes them practically invincible to attacks from minor problems for one turn. If an enemy can attack Ox, it must. The Ox cannot be healed while it is defending, however.

Heal:
Conditions: Can be performed only by Goats Outcomes: Restores the hit points of a friend.

Special Effects
Every action type can change depending on the proximity of friends. Each friend modifies one action of another friend if they are adjacent to one another on the game board. When a friend's action is modified by the proximity of another friend, it becomes more effective at removing problems, but becomes damaging to friendships. This creates the primary conflict of interest that makes the puzzles exciting: the player must combine characters to become strong enough to clear the board, but the more he or she does so, the more he or she risks destroying his or her own friendships.

Dragon Special Effects: Dog Special Effects: Goat Special Effects: Ox Special Effects:
 * Pro: All adjacent friends have the effect of their Action (Attack, Defend, Heal) increased in efficacy by +1
 * Con: All adjacent friends will take damage from Dragon if he attacks.
 * Pro: All adjacent friends gain +1 range to their respective Actions.
 * Con: All adjacent friends take x2 damage from incoming attacks.
 * Pro: All adjacent friends gain +1 hit point per turn passively
 * Con: All adjacent friends do have the effects of their Actions reduced by -1 in efficacy
 * Pro: All adjacent friends take -1 damage from incoming attacks
 * Con: All adjacent friends lose -1 move