Devlog 2 - Enemies & Shrines

While working on the blockout for the first level, I made some new features that I decided to add to the arena mode demo. There are also a lot of improvements and fixes that have been made.

Summary of changes:

• Improved Enemy AI
• New Enemy Types (split among 3 factions)
• Arena changes (Rounds, win state and fight selection)
• Healing Shrines
• Updated How to Play Menu

Enemy Changes

The first major addition with this update are improved enemies. The AI for enemies has been updated, with the ability for them to use special attacks and cast spells. With these new abilities, I have added additional enemy types split among 3 factions.

The first faction, bandits, are humanoid enemies that can use basic weapon attacks and special weapon actions. Different units have unique abilities that distinguish them from other bandits. Infantry are the grunts of the faction and a basic enemy to get the player used to combat, they only have a melee attack. Archers stay at range, pelting you with arrows from afar, but have a special ability to leap backwards and fire multiple arrows if you get too close. Rangers are hybrids that can use both melee and ranged attacks, and are very mobile as they dodge more often. Enforcers are brutes that can leap towards you and strike with their hammer. They also block more often so you may need to deplete their armour before being able to deal damage.

Ethereal enemies are variants of the bandits. They have the same types with similar attacks but one key difference; they are much tougher and it takes a lot more damage to provoke a hit reaction. Attacks can still deal damage to them, but most likely will not interupt their attacks. Since their attacks cannot be interupted, they have no need to block or dodge so their AI is much more aggressive. In addition, these enemies charge their attacks more often, so they unleash unblockable attacks frequently. Fighting these enemies requires the player to be more on point with their defensive actions as they cannot rely on stun-locking their enemies.

The last faction are the crawlers. The standard Crawler is much like the enforcers, but are not as tough. Crawler Spitters have both melee and ranged attacks, like the rangers, however their acid spit attack cannot be reflected back on a parry. The Crawler Titan is the first mini-boss type enemy with the most unique special abilities. They have a horn slam attack that they will often charge up to be unblockable. A swift horn stab is used to catch unsuspecting heroes off guard as it mixes them in with slow attacks and can also use it to close the distance in a charge attack. It can also shoot acid spit at the player and often charges it to rain down multiple projectiles. It also has special abilities to call other allies when low on health, turning a one-on-one fight in its favour. It also has a lot of health, and is extremely resistant to being interupted with attacks, but its huge size can make it vulnerable to charged ranged shots if the player is willing to risk charging ranged attacks at close range.

Arena Mode Changes

With these additional enemy types, I have updated the arena mode and added more fights. Now, the arena mode is segmented into proper rounds that start when the previous round ends, instead of constantly spawning in enemies as before. Additionally, when the arena mode starts, the player can choose from a set of arena challenges, each with their own enemies. 3 of the challenges focus on enemies from a specific faction, while the last challenge is an extended fight that mixes in enemies from all factions.

Healing Shrines

Healing shrines have been added to the arena. These allow the player to restore some of their health when interacted with. They originally restored a set amount of health and could only be used once each. However, when testing them out in the level blockout, I decided to allow them to be used multiple times. I thought that the original implementation would make players think to save the shrine if they only needed a bit of health and return later if they need it.

I decided to allow shrines to be used multiple times, but would have a limit as to how much health they can restore. When you use the shrine, it consumes some of its power depending on how much health was restored. With this new design, players don’t need to think about wasting the shrines as they can always restore some health, which may reduce backtracking.

How to Play Menu

I also updated the how to play menu, separating it into multiple pages and adding more info on unblockable enemy attacks and the new healing shrines. Images were also added to some of the sections. This will hopefully make the information more digestible and allow for more pages to be added in the future.