top of page

Enemies Abound

  • Writer: Ian Cotner
    Ian Cotner
  • Feb 10, 2018
  • 2 min read

This sprint, we are finally starting to build out levels in-engine. It's so exciting! However, there was one thing we needed to work out before things could really take off: exactly what enemies would appear in each area. It's rather difficult to design levels with combat in them if you don't know what enemies you're going to be facing.

Since this sprint is just the start of building, none of these guys are final yet until we go over things with the art team and such, but it's at least a starting point.

Another thing to understand first is that Neon Pompeii focuses on verticality and projectiles, while Florida is much more horizontal based and full of melee enemies.

For Neon Pompeii, a big theme is Mobsters and Disco. The first enemy we considered was a big, buff mobster with some huge gun that fire large, but slow moving bullets at the player. We tweaked this into a rocket launcher minion, inspired by bullet bills. The second enemy started off as a pair of mobsters. One would grab the other by their ankles, twirl around, and chuck them at the player. To make programming easier, it changed to be 3 or so mobsters throwing a fourth one between them. This disparity between the mobsters led us to the narrative idea that the mob spent boatloads of money on huge, ridiculous weapons, therefore not being able to equip all of their men.

Two Neon Pompeii enemies I came up with on my own time are an Elvis Presley impersonator who attacks with music notes, and a Disco Ball UFO that can force the player to dance. The Elvis Impersonators bullets bounce around, forcing the player to watch their trajectory, and the UFO forces the player to take things carefully or be at the mercy of other enemies.

As for Florida, we have Mosquitoes and Proud Gun Owners. Mosquitoes are basic swooping enemies that latch onto the player and drain health. The Proud Gun Owner is a person with a massive rifle that the swing at the player like a club. They can also put it up to their shoulder backwards, and use the blast to propel themselves at the player. Other concepts yet to be fleshed out include Crocodiles, angry beach goers who kick sand at you, and a some big dude who can stun you by slamming the ground before charing at you.

We also had a narrative breakthrough while designing the Frog Snatcher enemies, but I won't spoil that.

We also discussed boss ideas, but none of those are final, and I'll probably end up dedicating an entire post to their design, so I won't go into details here.

All in all, things are still going along smoothly. We're starting to build things out, and combat is shaping up to be good, with lots of variety. So far, so good.

 
 
 

Comments


Single post: Blog_Single_Post_Widget
bottom of page