I was recently reminded of one of my favorite games of all time: Final Fantasy Tactics. Felt inspired to throw a mock-up together using a few assets from the game to test how some of the most basic mechanics might be implemented.

I focused on doing as much as I could in as little time as possible and was honestly surprised at the results. It’s crazy how much can actually be put together when you have a simple and clear understanding of how things should work and aren’t trying to innovate the world – it took me less than 10 days, while working my day job, to get it to this state and yes I am very pleased with myself.

They really are just the most basic mechanics, but they’re also the most fundamental: The overall code-design separates concerns so that the core logic remains agnostic of any presentation-level objects and components, while still being able to communicate between the two layers. All of the basic dependencies are wired that could be built on to implement different abilities like ranged attacks and spells without too much trouble. I may just pick this up again and continue developing it, but for now I’m just happy I got it to this point.