FutureFragments
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Regarding "easy" enemies
🕑 Added 2016-02-06 21:29:25 +0000 UTC So a lot of you have expressed concerns over how difficult the enemies in the game will be, and have said you wouldn't need powerups, enemies are too easy, need to make them harder, etc.To clarify, the Fire Level enemies are intentionally easy because that level is supposed to basically be a tutorial level, where you gain knowledge of the basic storyline of the game, you're allowed to experiment, try out the physics of the game, the whole works; it's meant to make people feel 100% comfortable with the game before proceeding into the next level.
We're not against changing some of the Fire Level enemy mechanics or damage output or AI, but for right now, we'd rather wait until you try out the rest of the levels to see if people really want higher difficulty on them, haha.
The reason I say this is because of just the Ice Level enemies alone;
- The small Celodst will have a wall jump, travel in packs of three at times, be very quick moving, and have an area of effect splash on their club hits; the wall jumping can go down or up, and they can wall jump off of the spikes on the walls, as well as land on Talia's head for an instant stun if it lands. So imagine the little creatures that teach you to wall jump in Super Metroid, but now they're your enemies.
- The tall Celodst will instantly crouch into an all-sixes crawling position, making him unable to be hit by the traditional charge shot (you'll have to crouch and shoot, which we'll be putting in the game), and when he does this, he'll unleash a huge laser that will reflect off of all smooth ice walls and floors indefinitely. We plan to have rooms with two or so of these guys in there and everything being ice mirror walls/floors, so good luck!
- The Ice Grunt will shoot a large ice chunk in an arc through the air that instantly halves Talia's life if she's hit by it, and if it lands on a surface, three ice spikes burst out of it, making Talia unable to walk on that surface for a few seconds until the ice spikes fade away, unless she wants to take damage. He'll also be able to craft an ice wall out of the ground, reflecting Talia's shots back at her to damage herself, and other enemies will be able to fire over the wall (the Ice Grunt himself, and the small Celodst can jump on the wall and vault off of it).
- The Guard Celodst will be completely invincible if you attack him with his back turned to you, and if you happen to do this, it'll supercharge his javelin so he can chuck it at you across the screen at lightning speed. However, backing up, his main gameplay mechanic is that he has his back facing you, and he slowly edges towards you, intermittently turning around and lunging toward you with his javelin; this is your only available time to attack him. Essentially think of him as a moving, tanky version of this guy; http://megaman.wikia.com/wiki/Met except you can't spam shots at him, or you'll pay the price.
- Finally, we haven't even gotten into the boss for the level, who will have control over time/space to rewind time if you try to damage him (you'll have to think of an indirect way to damage him), as he teleports around the screen, using the battlefield to form weapons of his choosing.
Of course, this isn't even getting into the later level enemies, like the Electricity boss that can literally twist the entire game map in real time (among other things) which we're really excited about (i'll do a post on him later if people want to know about him), and of course other enemies that we'd rather not spoil, haha.
Now, before anyone freaks out and thinks we're turning this into the next I Wanna Be The Guy or something else really difficult, note that this is what the powerups for Talia, both from bosses and pick-up-able powerups would be for, and even if you don't use either of those, the enemies will be carefully balanced as to not be overwhelming; contrary to the Fire Level, where the enemies were spammed around a bunch of places, these enemies will be more spread out.
There will still be large groups of them in some places, but again, we'll have you guys playtesting it as well as ourselves to balance it so the enemies feel challenging, but fair; we don't want any scenarios where you feel like you have to take damage to beat an area, or any scenarios where you feel enemies have the overwhelming advantage.
Comments
The Future Fragments Team
As we're still deciding his mechanics completely, that's about as much info as I can tell you that's concrete; he controls time, he floats & teleports around the place, and he'll be able to use icicles to attack etc.
Jonathan Marlow
Any clue you could give on what he would be like?
Jonathan Marlow
I'm really curious about what the ice level boss will be like
Miragian
Well, this certainly sounds interesting.
Jonathan Marlow
I'd rather the game aired on the side of too difficult than too easy if an even balance couldn't be found
Well, I thought fire dash has too much convenience, but if enemies would be enhanced like that, maybe it doesn't.
