Experiment: Finishing-Grabs

An interesting idea came up to me on Discord a bit ago and I wanted to give it a shot.

One of the design problem HRT and CATC faces is how to integrate H-attacks in its combat system. The grab system HRT inherited from the first Heroine Rumble (and subsequently CATC) works well in a 1v1 or in a versus game setting, but is not ideal for more asymmetrical action games.

Take HRT for example, the player often face a dilemma on whether to bother utilizing H-grabs on enemies at all. There are many drawbacks: from getting interrupted by other foes, to having to strip their armor, to having to fill a separate bar, and the overall ineffectiveness compared to just defeating the foe normally.

I believe the root of the problem stems from the bi-directionality of the grab system, meaning that the player and foes play by the same grab rules. Regardless of how exactly the grab mechanics work, any bi-directional grab system will either be too punishing for the player or not effective enough versus enemies. 

Therefore, I decided to try an asymmetrical grab system, meaning that now, player grabs and enemy grabs will play by different rules. This idea come from the FPS game, Doom,  with it's Glory Kill mechanic. I'm not sure what to call mine yet, Glory-Grabs is one possibility, Finishing-Grabs is another, but it might lead to confusion with the grabs with the type "Finisher."

Here is how it works:

When the player deals enough damage to enemies, they will now enter this new Dizzy state. While in the Dizzy state, the enemy cannot act for some time. If a player is near a Dizzy foe and presses the Grab key, they will now initiate the Finishing-Grab.

There are several key differences between Finishing-Grab and regular Grabs:

• The player is fully invulnerable during Finishing-Grabs.
• Initiating A Finishing-Grab will trigger a small knockback to push away pesky enemies that block view.
• The Finishing-Grab is short in duration, intended to only last a couple of seconds of animation.
• The Finishing-Grab deals a large amount of damage, enough to 1hit KO almost all enemies. (Considering maybe boss-like enemies takes a couple Finishing-Grabs to defeat)
• Bypasses the grab-hair stage, to make the entire process more fluid.

I whipped out the old Beat-Em-Up/Brawler mode, and implemented it: https://twitter.com/Enlit3D/status/1445954829168250883. As a Beat-Em-Up game, it's still missing a couple of things, but the important stuff are functional. So this month's "action game experiment" will likely to be a Beat-Em-Up rather than SR-VersusMode. If this mechanic works well, I may port it back to CATC in the future.