In Draco-Mancer, you play as a Dragon-loving Necromancer who seeks to bring back the Age of dragons by exhuming their bones, reanimating new Dragons, and conquering nearby dragon-hating nations.

The gameplay is split into 3 main functions that tie into each other:

• Excavating Fossils
• Combining Fossils & Dragon Management
• World-Map Control

The gameplay is split into a cyclical game loop that involves managing your time and resources to defend your dig-sites, and attack nearby settlements to expand your domain through draconic rule.

Fossil Excavation

Taking heavy inspiration from Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum’s underground mining system, excavating fossils challenges players to uncover as many fossils as possible before the dig-site’s integrity breaks.

Pokémon Diamond & Pearl’s underground mining system

Each Dig-Site has the following properties to differentiate themselves:

• Quantity of Fossils
  • Each Dig-site is guaranteed at least 1 Fossil, but can have multiple, up to 4*
  • More “difficult” dig-sites are likely to have more Fossils
• Quality/Rarity of Fossils
  • Certain Fossils are rarer than other fossils
  • More “difficult” dig-sites have higher-rarity / higher-quality Fossils
• Rock type
  • The dig-site has a rock type that layers on top of themselves. There are currently 3* rock types.
    • Dirt (Weakest)
    • Stone (Moderate)
    • Obsidian (Strongest)
• Excavation Tools:
  • Hammer/ Chisel → small, medium and large
  • Brush
• Structural Integrity
  • Dig-sites can have different “health” values that determine how many hits the site can take before the wall is destroyed.
  • More “difficult” dig-sites have lower “health” values, meaning there is less room for mistakes
• Time Cost
  • Each dig-site consumes a set amount of time each day.
  • These values are not transferable to “real-time”, rather, an in-game “day” takes a set amount of time, and each site takes time out of this restriction
    • This also limits how many dig-sites Players can attempt per day
    • The time amount is reduced from the total regardless of how many fossils are excavated or if the dig-site breaks
  • More “difficult” dig-sites have larger time costs

These factors are a way for us to tune the difficulty and reward of various sites to convey a sense of progression and incentivize searching for higher-quality dig-sites.

Players have 3* different mining tools: A Pickaxe, a Chisel, and a Brush. Each of these tools has a different size and strength. Size affects how many tiles are hit per click, and strength affects how much damage each hit does to those tiles.

Certain Tiles require a higher-strength tool to break and be damaged, while other tiles require more precise and weaker tools to excavate safely.

Each hit on this screen applies some damage to the dig-site’s structural integrity. This value is tracked as a “health” value that is reduced with each hit, scaling with the damage from the selected tool. If this value reaches a threshold, the dig-site collapses and all unclaimed fossils are lost.

Players can try a number of dig-sites each day cycle, so long as the time cost value of the dig-site is less than or equal to than the remaining duration of the day. For example:

• Each “Day” has 12 Hours of time to act
• Dig-site A takes 3 Hours, Dig-site B takes 6 Hours, Dig-site C takes 9 Hours.
• If the Player chooses to try Dig-site C first, that would leave 3 Hours left, meaning, if they wish to continue excavating, they can only choose Dig-site A.
• Alternatively, players could try Dig-site A first, leaving 9 Hours in the “Day”, allowing the player to try any of the listed Sites afterwords as they are all equal to or less than 9 hours.

Players do not have to perform excavating to their maximum amount each day. There should be a “progress-time” or “continue” button available in the site-selection screen that allows players to move on to the following section.