Hot peppers and blue mice
Hello! I spent these last two weeks prototyping ideas that might improve Hyper Bun Buster’s arcade mode before I start working on the final version of it.
Blue mice
Up until two weeks ago, the blue mice enemies used to electrify themselves, chase towards you for a couple of seconds then stop and recharge. Although they were interesting to fight against if they had you pinned you in a corner, they took a long time to approach you from a distance. Having to wait a couple of seconds at a time for the invincibility to end was a bit of a pacing killer too.
So I reworked them! I tried out all sorts of extreme changes but ended up going with a fairly minor one: they now use regular movement to chase after you, and once they get close to you they charge up a quick-moving attack:
They’re one of my favourite enemies to fight against now. They can chase you down faster than before, you don’t have to spend anywhere near as much time waiting around for them to attack, and they thankfully kept their unique niche of being able to attack you around corners.
Arcade-style combat encounters
Up until now, almost every room in arcade mode followed the same basic script. You would walk into the room full of enemies, and after you defeated most of them a few reinforcements would quietly spawn in randomized positions.
This was okay, but I wanted to be able to do more with the reinforcement waves. Lots of my favourite arcade games have waves of enemies spawning on timers, at specific positions, and sometimes with specific bespoke behaviours. I wanted to be able to do things like that too. For example, I wanted to spawn lots of mice then challenge the player to try and clear as many of them out as possible before a wave of cats jumps out the water in a a preset formation and starts attacking immediately.
The only reason I hadn’t already tried to do this was that I could never decide what to do if an enemy jumped into position and landed right on top of the player. After thinking it through, I decided to make them bounce off the player’s head:

And yes, that means you can juggle them:

In the spirit of making more memorable combat encounters, I added a hot pepper item that makes you invincible for a few seconds and damages any enemies who you run into. I love traditional “turn invincible and run into enemies” powerups but this is somehow the first time in my career that I’ve added one to a game I worked on!

With that in the game, I started experimenting with lots of new combat encounters. Some spawned enemies on timers, some had extremely tricky layouts, and one was inspired by the gameplay of the parts of in Resident Evil 4 where you’re stuck in a house and zombies are crawling in through the windows. You can see some of these rooms here:
Now that I’ve made a huge pile of arcade-style combat encounters, I’m pretty confident that I can build some exciting and memorable arcade mode stages. I’m looking forward to giving it a try next week!
Anything else?
It’s my birthday tomorrow! You can save 50% on my games on Steam or itch.io for the day.
Hyper Bun Buster character designer NomnomNami just released the demo of her adorable upcoming game Syrup 2: Candy Alchemy RPG! You can get it on Steam or itch.io.
I made a Bluesky account, although I don't plan on using it for anything other than occasionally reposting big news about my games (e.g. announcement, release date announcement, release).
Nowhere People - Save Some is a fantastic EP that I bought after hearing it on the radio a few days ago. Give it a listen if you're interested in Herbie Hancock-adjacent jazz fusion.
Other than that, I've just been playing lots of Final Fight. The more I play it, the more I like it. I'm sure I'll have much more to say about it when I eventually manage to clear it, but it's easily already one of my favourite games I've ever played.
I’m going to go get some sleep so I can celebrate my birthday in the morning. I hope you have a wonderful couple of weeks and I’ll see you next time!