Forbidden Joke Development Part 1: Field Phase Basics

I've began work on creating a prototype for A Forbidden Joke. I started off by blueprinting the basics of Field Phase character movement along with a quick pause menu. The buttons on the menu aren't functional yet, but I have the overall layout of the pause menu ready for adding in my own graphic assets.

Layout of the pause menu along with some on the spot ideas
for what the graphics for each button will look like.

With the character movement I wanted to give the player as much control as I could. If they were to hold the analogue stick in a certain direction there would be no delay to the character moving in that direction. To do this I've given the player character really high friction, meaning the player can change the direction they are moving in instantly as well as come to a complete halt as soon as the player lets go of the analogue stick.

With a high friction the player has full control over their movement,
both on the ground and in the air. They can also spin around
rapidly on the spot if they wanted to.

The characters movement speed is at an appropriate setting that allows the player to get around the test area swiftly, but not too swiftly. During gameplay the flow of the game might need to slow down a little during Field Phase in order to not miss any secrets, NPCs or hidden details in the environment that the players might want to discover. However, I found in a lot of RPGs that I have played I've felt the movement speed is a little too slow. To counteract this possible conclusion players might come to, I've implemented a dash button. Once the player holds down the dash button while moving their movement speed will increase. This allows players the choice to play the game at different paces more tailored towards them.

Running Right - Normal Running Speed
Running Left - Dashing Running Speed
Down the line I'm going to add a dust cloud trail that will be left behind the player as they dash 

I've also added a melee attack both on the ground and in the air when the attack button is pressed. Right now they have no animation and are simple collision boxes serving as "Hitboxes". If one of these hitboxes comes into contact with an enemy, a battle will start. Melee attacks will also be used to activates buttons, switches and other such interactive objects that will be used to solve puzzles and progress through the game.

The grounded melee attack is a quick attack that has a hitbox directly in front of the player.
The animation that will play will be the player character smashing the ground with their melee weapon

The aerial melee attack has a hitbox all around the player.
The animation that will play here will be the player character performing a fast flip and then
 slamming the ground with their melee weapon

Lastly I've created an interaction trigger. When the "interact" button is pressed inside this trigger "blank" will happen. Blank being talking to a character, inspecting a point of interest etc

You will see examples of what kinds of game objects the player will be able to interact with down the line during development, for now we have a print string check for a character dialogue trigger.

More movement mechanics will be added as I want the player to have a variety of moves to navigate the environment to help exploration be more fun. A few examples of mechanics I want are:

A mid-air dive (The character dives forward allowing players to gain more distance on jumps)
A slingshot move (The player will tilt to analogue stick and flick it in a direction to fling the player character in the direction they flicked)
Deployable Trampolines (Deploy a consumable item pocket trampoline in certain locations that allow the player to bounce up to high areas)

Next up I'm going to get down to basics on entering battle phase, player health, taking damage, dealing damage etc.