Summer Attacks
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What you see above is the summer enemies in a summer room. In an autumn or winter room, they would be pretty basic enemies, only hitting you with melee/ranged basic attacks. Since it's summer, however, they both have special abilities. The summer mage can trap you in a bunch of thorns, while the knight whacks you with a special attack which deals extra damage and pushes you back (often into some of those thorns, which means you take damage from those as well).
When testing this out, we thought it worked pretty well. Our main concern, however, was that occasionally the mage doesn't trap you with enemies as much as you get hidden away from them: you're essentially unable to take damage until you've cut your way through, as the enemy attacks won't reach you in there. Now, while this makes the battle a bit longer, it definitely doesn't increase the difficulty by much.
To counter this, we have decided to try allowing projectiles to pass through the thorn bushes and are looking into a way of having the knights trample through them, so they can get to you even while you're trapped.
When testing this out, we thought it worked pretty well. Our main concern, however, was that occasionally the mage doesn't trap you with enemies as much as you get hidden away from them: you're essentially unable to take damage until you've cut your way through, as the enemy attacks won't reach you in there. Now, while this makes the battle a bit longer, it definitely doesn't increase the difficulty by much.
To counter this, we have decided to try allowing projectiles to pass through the thorn bushes and are looking into a way of having the knights trample through them, so they can get to you even while you're trapped.
Autumn Attacks
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Ooooh boy. One look at that gif, and you understand how broken the autumn attacks currently are! Basically, the autumn mage has a special attack which creates whirlwinds all over the room which can pick you up and move you around. It can also pick autumn knights up - with deadly results, as you can see! An autumn knight in a whirlwind gains increased speed and will lock on your character until the whirlwind disappears. Currently, it's impossible to escape... :)
While we think this mechanic is definitely fun, we're currently thinking about different ways of adjusting its difficulty. Perhaps the knight will stop chasing you once you've been hit by him once - or perhaps his speed should be slow enough so that you can escape if you're quick enough? We'll see!
While we think this mechanic is definitely fun, we're currently thinking about different ways of adjusting its difficulty. Perhaps the knight will stop chasing you once you've been hit by him once - or perhaps his speed should be slow enough so that you can escape if you're quick enough? We'll see!
Winter Attacks
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Yes, the winter enemies have special abilities as well! And as if that wasn't bad enough, water freezes over when it gets cold, causing you to slip around horribly...
It might be hard to tell from this gif, but the mage ability is to create a shield around enemies. If you touch a square, it will deal a bit of damage before disappearing, so it's best to poke it from afar with your sword (or a spell). The knight on the other hand slides across the room with ease, spear first, dealing extra damage as he passes through.
It might be hard to tell from this gif, but the mage ability is to create a shield around enemies. If you touch a square, it will deal a bit of damage before disappearing, so it's best to poke it from afar with your sword (or a spell). The knight on the other hand slides across the room with ease, spear first, dealing extra damage as he passes through.
The Combos
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Most enemies will act pretty normal when you fight them. Only those of the same season as the room you're in will do their special attacks, so the season changing orbs will have a huge impact on what happens in any given encounter. There's one "slight" issue with this, however, and that is that if you feel the summer enemies are the easiest, you can go ahead and kill all of them and let the room stay in its summer version while dealing with the rest of the enemies. By doing so, they would never get a chance of using a single special attack!
To counter this we have decided to add another enemy. We haven't decided what it's gonna look like yet, but it has one main mechanic: it can change the season of a room and turn off the season orbs for a duration after doing so.
Now, wouldn't you simply go slay this thing before it has a chance to do anything? Well, that could take a while. We plan on making this enemy resemble the wisp of Flying Temple in its movement pattern, but in an extreme version - which means it's gonna be super fast and difficult to catch! It also won't deal any damage, but will only serve to disrupt the seasons of the room you're in, so in some cases, it might actually be worth keeping it alive and deal with its season changing ways.
Of course, that's what we hope will happen, since we haven't actually put it into the game yet. Thankfully, since it will be such a minor enemy thing, it shouldn't take that long to get a prototype of it up and running.
Well, this took a long time to write! Time to get back to testing!! See you on Monday~ :D
To counter this we have decided to add another enemy. We haven't decided what it's gonna look like yet, but it has one main mechanic: it can change the season of a room and turn off the season orbs for a duration after doing so.
Now, wouldn't you simply go slay this thing before it has a chance to do anything? Well, that could take a while. We plan on making this enemy resemble the wisp of Flying Temple in its movement pattern, but in an extreme version - which means it's gonna be super fast and difficult to catch! It also won't deal any damage, but will only serve to disrupt the seasons of the room you're in, so in some cases, it might actually be worth keeping it alive and deal with its season changing ways.
Of course, that's what we hope will happen, since we haven't actually put it into the game yet. Thankfully, since it will be such a minor enemy thing, it shouldn't take that long to get a prototype of it up and running.
Well, this took a long time to write! Time to get back to testing!! See you on Monday~ :D
this looks absolutely incredible. i love the mechanics at play here. great work!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I hope you'll enjoy playing it as well :)
Delete"While we think this mechanic is definitely fun, we're currently thinking about different ways of adjusting its difficulty. Perhaps the knight will stop chasing you once you've been hit by him once - or perhaps his speed should be slow enough so that you can escape if you're quick enough? We'll see!"
ReplyDeleteShield blocking him once bounces him back and slows his momentum, but shatters your shield and requires you keep running.
Perfect guarding him dissipates the whirlwind completely.
Interesting ideas! Shielding him currently slows him down a bit, but your ideas sound really cool. We'll see what happens! :)
Delete