Author: Davy
Welcome to our second update in our new Monthly Update series, a series of posts that recap our game development progress in the preceding month.
At the end of July, we had implemented the primary and secondary moves for sword-like weapons. In August, we implemented a tertiary move too — a dash. You can see it in action below.
Dashing allows players to quickly cross large distances and dodge attacks in the process.
In thinking about what a tertiary move should be, we spent some time wondering what type of move or ability would make for the most interesting gameplay.
We decided on making the tertiary move movement-related. Movement in the game is currently relatively vanilla because we don’t have equipment or items that can change the speed or style in which a character traverses across a map. As such, during gameplay testing, we found it much more fun now that we can choose how we engage with the enemy and how quickly we’d like to do so (like jumping straight into the fray for maximum action).
In thinking about future weapon classes, we will also plan on implementing a movement ability as the tertiary move.
The charged lunge now has improved pushing power on enemies, making it much more useful in situations where you’re facing a horde of monsters.
Beyond just implementing another move for sword-like weapons, we have also been putting hours into testing the combat and tweaking various aspects of combat balance. For example, we found that the secondary attack for sword-like weapons (the charged lunge) to be too underwhelming. In response, we boosted its area denial effect. Now, enemies hit by the secondary charge attack are pushed much further back, giving it greater utility in opening up space when you’re surrounded by too many monsters.
For reference, this is what the old charged lunge was like.
For reference, this is what the old charged lunge was like.
As we implement more weapon classes, we’ll undoubtedly have to revisit some of the moves and effects for sword-like weapons in order to better balance the various classes. That means there will be more hours of play-testing ahead, and more hours of fun for the team.
At the end of July, we released some updated dungeon art but it had not yet been implemented in the game. Well, the dungeons have now received a long awaited makeover.
A quick tour of the new dungeon
A quick tour of the new dungeon