As promised in my last devlog (also we're trying a new format here for this post apparently it works better) lets talk about game design decisions I took for SOAR.
Since it is the most "finished" aspect thus far, lets talk about BRAWL, and why I took some decisions I did
So I already talked about it on other platforms, but lets talk about Attacks in SOAR but also turn order.
So in SOAR, every player turn has two phases.

Overture, which is when you move and attack, in any order, you may use a basic action instead of attacking.
And Epilogue, which is when you use either a basic action or an ability (which come from your stance).
You have to do the Overture and then you have to do the Epilogue, and you cannot freely switch between them.
Before the public playtest, you had to pick between an attack and using an ability or a basic action, but I gave it a long thought and decided to change it.
Here's why: It opened up the design space for stuff a LOT more.
First, making sure everyone could attack once every turn as a default assumption meant I could try and get this game out of a pretty bad mindset I often see in tactical games: Death as the best control.
Many games actually stop this mindset from being effective by having strong control effects or support effects, Lancer comes to mind for me right away as someone who's had a lot of experience with it.
They get around this by making control VERY strong or by also making it a thing to build into, much like damage.
I do not, however, have the patience to design such an intricate system for my first go at game design (this is my first actually full system I'm releasing after all).
So I ended up deciding, no matter what, players get to attack "for free" every turn they take, which also fits the vibe of beat them up I wanna evoke with this.
Gating movement there is also something that took me some thinking, but I think i like it like this, as it means you either use it to engage or get in range, or you use it to disengage if you already placed yourself well last time, I think overall it kinda helps putting disengaging as a niche for abilities but also helps push people closer and closer together as a fight goes on.
The Epilogue phase is this way also as a way for me to design abilities that work with the context of free attacks, for example it allows me to make stuff like the Beetle Style prepared swing a thing, it couldn't be if it existed in a world where you can use stance abilities before you can attack, at least not as is.
As a beat them up type TTRPG, I didn't really have room to pretend this game wasn't going to be about a damage race, while it might have things down the line that make it less so, I think designing it like this also means people immediately know what they're getting into and also means I can deliver a more consistent "feel" to the combat, no matter what someone builds as a character, they always get to attack every turn, so I can design around a baseline of damage being put out too.

Anyway that closes off this first devlog, hopefully that was interesting, I hope.