finalbossblues

Monster Monday 3: Slimes!

Added 2024-06-17 15:59:02 +0000 UTC

Hello! I hope you had a nice weekend. Let's get rolling!

Today's monster is another classic-- but we don't want this to be too easy, so I'm sharing a bunch of animations to really make the most out of this simple design.

The classic slime monster is a staple of RPGs, both turn-based and action. So of course I knew that I'd have to include the slime in this series. But I've made a bunch of slimes before, and there's really only so much that you can do with it.

So in order to make this release worthwhile, I tried a couple different approaches. So today's post has a few extra sheets of bonus animations that you can grab if you might have a use for them.

My first idea was to give the slime a special attack animation. I thought that it might look good to have the slime try to squish out to hit the player when he got close.

Ultimately I don't think the animation came out quite like I imagined it, so I scrapped that idea and didn't implement it in the final design. BUT since I made the animation, I figured that I might as well include it on the master sheet-- just in case you might find a use for it.

(Here's what it looks like in motion, kinda strange...)

I did keep a few frames from the beginning of this animation, though. You can see that I made use of them as a "startled" animation that signals to the player that the slime has seen him and then goes into aggro mode. You could also potentially use this animation for when the slime takes damage.

After that didn't work out so well, I realized that it might be better to just stick with what players would already expect from a slime enemy: ultimately I decided on a classic "big slime that can split into smaller slimes". The final sheets (and the preview recordings) show this concept in action.

So with both the big and small slimes, today's release almost has two enemies in one!

You can see the gif above that shows the big slime splitting into the smaller slimes. For a slightly longer webm, here's a link to a video of me fighting the slimes.

I've also included two variants of the big slime. This is because in my original version, the big slime had a big shiny highlight on it. In-game that looked strange though, because it wasn't consistent with the visual style of the smaller one. So I made a second version of the big guy without the shiny highlight. Since I had both versions already animated, I decided that it wouldn't hurt to upload them both and give you the option.

One thing that you'll notice in the previews is that the slimes leave a little slimy "footprint" on the ground as they move around. This was easy to make-- it's just a simple little solid-color blob with a couple of variants. I'm including it so you can also recreate this effect yourself.

And lastly, I also made some unique effects for when the slimes are jumping around on the ground (one for the small slimes and one for the big slime). There's also a larger effect animation for when the big slime splits. You can see all of these in the recorded previews.

And... I think that's it! There's a lot for such a straightforward enemy. Here's the downloads:

(The first two images here simply show a collection of all of these assets. The rest of the links have more traditional sheets aligned in a regular grid. As normal, I've filled in blank spaces with color so that you can use them to see how the sheet is aligned.)

Download - General Sheets (100%):

Reminder for RPGMaker users: these animations have more than three frames, so I've arranged them vertically on the sheet. Animate them by having the event change directions and sprites. The additional animated effects are in the battle animation format so you can build the animations in the database.

Downloads - RPGMaker Format:

Okay... I think that's all of it for now. You can also expect some additional color variations when I compile all of these monsters into a complete pack.

I hope you find a good use for these!

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Previous Summer of Monster releases:

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I'll be back later in the week with something new. See you soon.

Thanks!