Game Dev - Upcoming Enemy Designs

Development has been slow, but I'd like to dedicate more time to this project. One of the biggest obstacles holding me back is the messy collision system, but it might be cool if that's something I can make little bits of progress towards while also working towards new features too.

Of course, it's tricky determining what exactly I should do. There are a lot of little ideas, but none of them are vital and a lot of the basic gameplay engine features are already represented. So I'm currently thinking about my biggest criticism of the latest demo - the lack of difficulty, or rather, the lack of diverse interactions.

You can play through the current demo by simply holding right, occasionally whipping, and also jumping - with your eyes half-closed. That is to say, you don't have to THINK very often, and when you do, it's not within a sequence of diverse "problems" to solve. Another issue is that, unlike the inspiration (Castlevania NES), our screen is much wider, and Elayne has both a longer whip and the ability to carry two sub-weapons... So there's a bit of power creep here; Elayne is very strong and few encounters are currently capable of giving her trouble (without resorting to enemy spam).

So I think we need a few more enemies - especially any that can challenge the length of Elayne's long whip.

One of the upcoming prospective enemies is the Undead Knight, who's pattern is straightforward. He will move back and forth, and thrust his sword forward at the end of each stride. Although it is a basic pattern, I do hope that his thrust can catch players by surprise.

Another is the Demon Babe, who is a work-in-progress. She was designed first, intended to serve the same function as the Undead Knight, but ended up evolving passed that concept. So I've not decided what to do with her yet. Coming up with interesting, but simple, ideas is a pretty tough. Without a strong idea, she might end up on the back burner for a bit...

Neither of these enemies have any code yet.

I still need to come up with a few more enemies - like an airborne enemy that swoops down.

I keep thinking about how I'd like to incorporate a bit of daily dev work into my life, and maybe even streaming it (as boring as that would be), but there's a bit of friction that always makes jumping into this kind of work difficult as of late. Do I want to even try to jump into something if I can't be certain that I'll be able to make solid progress? That sort of thing.

As an aside, I still have not re-acquired my ability to receive money on Patreon. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that within the next few days.

Don't forget to eat & sleep.