Armored enemies, trans visibility and new sprites
Hello again! I spent most of the last two weeks getting some rest and doing my taxes for the year, but I'm back and I'm making more progress on my new game!
Armored enemies
Last year I prototyped a few different designs for enemies who could block your attacks, such as enemies who blocked all attacks from the front or enemies who always blocked unless you hit them during the startup or recovery frames of their attacks.
They all felt like too much of a chore to fight, so I gave up on the idea. But recently I found an old design document I wrote in early 2022 for an action roguelike based on Chessplosion's Dungeon mode, which is what eventually turned into the game that I'm making now. Almost all of the ideas in that old design document were either outdated or already being used in my new game, but there was a neat idea for an enemy who could block an attack!
If you hit the enemy once, it goes into a stunned state for a couple of seconds. You have to hit the enemy again during that stunned state to break off its armor, at which point you can fight it like a regular enemy. So it has the benefit I wanted from enemies who can block attacks (you have to focus on them for a couple of seconds to open them up) but without any of the fiddliness that comes with having to move behind them or wait for them to do a specific attack.
I prototyped this and it felt great! The only problem was that I wanted a version of this new enemy type that shot projectiles, a version that threw bombs, a version that did melee attacks, and a version that did pretty much every other enemy behavior that's already in the game. So I made a robot palette for every enemy type, along with a stunned pose and some stars that circle around their head when they're stunned:
I don't plan on filling an entire room with armored enemies like this because I don't want them to become a chore to fight, but it's fun to add one or two of them to an encounter to act as high-priority targets. I hope you like them too!
Transgender Day of Visibility
Transgender Day of Visibility was on March 31st. I was feeling good about myself that day so I posted a photo of myself on cohost! Please forgive my bathrobe-over-a-sweater look, it was really cold in my apartment that day:
This was the first time I had posted a picture of myself anywhere since publicly coming out as trans. Everyone was really nice to me and it made me question why I had ever worried about it so much in the first place. It's super comforting to know that so many of my online friends and acquaintances now know what i look like and are cool with it. Thanks everyone!
New Sprites
Lots of the features that I worked on before my vacation were using placeholder sprites, so I've just started to go back and draw some real sprites to replace them. So far I've drawn some new stairs (both upward and downward), shop carpets, and a shop Sold Out sign:
I'm especially proud of those stairs. I know they just look like any other videogame stair sprite but they were hard for me to draw!
Anyway, that's pretty much all I've worked on since coming back from my vacation and doing my taxes. Outside of work I've been listening to the PURE MIDI and Jungle Fatigue compilations (they're good!) and playing the Ys: The Oath in Felghana boss rush (it's great!) and Elephantasy Flipside (it's probably good but I'm very bad at it!).
I'm going to go draw some more sprites, and hopefully after that I'll be able to start making some boss fights. I hope you all have a wonderful couple of weeks and I'll see you next time!