Exploding clockwork penguins and other gameplay changes
I spent the last two weeks making the enemies look better in my new game, and making lots of tweaks to its gameplay mechanics:
New and improved enemies
I animated a second enemy type: penguins! They slide at you in a straight line until they hit a wall like the rooks in Chessplosion, and I love the way they turned out. I also added wind-up clockwork keys to the enemies' backs, for a few reasons: it makes them cuter, it makes it easier to see which way they're facing at a glance, it gives all of the enemies a unifying theme while still letting me draw a bunch of random cute creatures, and it makes me feel slightly less guilty about hitting them around with a hammer:
There are lots of gameplay tweaks in this video too. You move a bit slower than before so it's harder to run away from bad situations, but your hammer attacks have way more hitstun so it's easier to fight your way out instead. Enemies flash when they're one hit away from being KO'd, and hitting a KO'd enemy a long distance makes them explode in a 3x3 square when they hit a wall, taking out other enemies in the process (thanks Boghog for the suggestion!).
I'm really happy with the way the game currently feels! I'm moving on to animating more enemies and learning how to draw visual effects, so I can add hitsparks and explosions and all the other things that are missing from the above video. I still haven't made any of the improvements to the player sprite that I talked about in the previous newsletter, so I should give that a try at some point too. But things are really starting to come together!
And that's all I've done since the previous newsletter. Hopefully I'll have some new characters and visual effects to show you in the next one, but as someone who has barely done any pixel art vfx animation, it's hard to know how long it will take to learn everything. I'd love to know what you think of my penguins and if you happen to have any tips for learning low resolution pixel art vfx (especially hitsparks) and I'll see you next time!