I've been working on the game for quite a bit lately. Additions to the ability system, UI, projectiles and more have been worked on. I also had my first proper play test that isn't just me trying to control 2 games at once. My friend and I spent around 15 minutes messing around in-game. Overall, it was better than I expected.
Before hand, I though the first initial gameplay was going to be unbalanced and not that fun if you're just spamming projectiles at each other. Yet when playing with another person, we both found it to be quite fun. Trying to hit our target by predicting movement, and using the abilities at the right times to give ourselves an advantage. The experience was great and I can't wait to test again, and with more people.
Archer's Fury ability. Temp extra attack speed.
Archer's Poison Arrow ability. Poisons target overtime.
Mage's Ice Shard ability. Temp stuns target.
Mage's Shield ability. Temp blocks 50% incoming damage.
Cleric's Blood Syphon ability. Temp transfer health over time.
Assassins Killing Blow ability. Deals large damage.
Above is a collection of the abilities that I have currently made. The values and stats for each are just placeholders, so what you see above won't be the final result. Each of the abilities also encourages that specific character's playstyle. The Mage has a shield and stun to encourage defensive behaviour, while the Archer has a poison arrow and increased attack speed to encourage aggressive behaviour.
Along with all this, the UI elements have also been implemented, to give the player many visual cues.
When they cast an ability, a cooldown timer appears on the ability icon, counting down in seconds.
If the ability has a temporary effect of the player, then there will be a purple bar above the icon, showing remaining duration.
The circular icon to the left, is just that character's defa
Something else i've been thinking about is game feel. In a game like this, the player needs to know if they've hit their target or when they have been hit.
So far I have screen shake when you get hit, sprite colour flashes for direct and poison damage, and a blood particle effect when a player dies.
For the future though, I currently have these ideas in mind:
- Have a red vignette for when the player is almost dead.
- Have a distinct sound when you hit an enemy.
- Have the ability icon flash or pulse forward when casting it.
- Have the ability icon flash or pulse when it is ready to be used again.
When I started these dev blogs, I said that i'll be doing around 1 or 2 a week. Well in the past 1 week and 1 day, i've already done 4 of them. This is good though as I do like making them. In the future though, i'd expect not to do this many as the time to implement new features will just keep rising. Hopefully by next week i'll have done a playtest with around 5 people, just to test how the game goes with that many people, and server issues.