A project I’m currently working on revolves around the idea of sacrificing your units in order to move forward. The opening prologue of FE11, where you have to send one of your early units off as a decoy, has always stuck with me, and I wish those opening maps were playable past Normal mode. The ramifications of choosing which unit to send to the gallows is interesting and has a lot of potential.
Anyway, this concept involves forced gaiden chapters where you must choose a unit (potentially several later on) in a camp-like environment to sacrifice due to story-related events. Who you choose would have effects on units who had bonds with them, some potentially harmful. Say, a unit gains a permanent buff, inspired by their friend’s martyrdom, or another obtains a keepsake from said sacrificial unit that has some sort of risk-reward feature. This is, of course, wishful thinking. I haven’t quite figured out the how part of pulling that sort of system off.
I’m toying with making this a completely Casual only game, because of how the story is structured with having to trim your army down and the effects of these sacrifices. Would making a game like this purely Casual be off-putting to players or alienate veterans who enjoy iron-man runs? I’m curious. Thoughts? Ruminate away.