(Original post can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/38500711)

Hi everyone! ^w^

Null and I took a good chunk of last week to go over our design document to update it and work on a bunch open design issues we still had.

In the Sneak Peek we included a bunch of photos and pictures from our work this week!

MONDAY & TUESDAY

Monday and tuesday we went over our ideas list for abilities we had for Kincaid and decided on a final set of abilities.

We focused on three main areas:

• Movement
• Melee Combat
• Blaster

MOVEMENT

A big issue we had was with the movement. We felt like sliding, rolling and then, another ability we need, the dash, would be in conflict or make each other obsolete.

Right now you can pretty much spam dodge roll, which makes balancing and enemy design difficult. So we played around with some ideas for balancing the dodge roll and open up design space for a Dash ability.

The design we came up with, which we will test in a prototype this week is as follows:

Dodge rolling will get "tokens" that need to recharge. We are going to play with the amount, but the idea is that you can dodge roll once or twice and then you have to wait until a token becomes available again after a short cooldown.

We're not yet 100% sure if we are happy with this decisions, that's why Null will figure it out using a prototype.

Dash will also not give you i-Frames, so you can't just dash through an enemy. The dash ability is mostly for dodging certain attacks, projectiles and getting across cliffs.

Double Jump was pushed down in the ability progression we came up with. When we started development, it was one of the first abilities we implemented because we knew for sure that we wanted it in the game.

But in terms of the final game design it makes no sense to get it this early because it opens up way more to the player than a dash or something else would.

So that's movement.

MELEE

Next up is Melee Combat and we had a lot of ideas surrounding this. All viable, and potentially fun, but very different.

So instead we approached the issue from the other side and asked ourselves what's fun about Kincaid right now. And that is a medium to fast speed combat. It certainly feels more like a classic platformer, and less like a more slow and deliberate soulsvania game where the focus is mostly on learning timings and parrying.

The ideas we want to play with here are:

Make the third attack a real combo where you have to get the timing right to do extra damage.

Introduce charged melee attacks.

A charged melee attack can be used as a mini-dash+attack, a bottom slam or an upper cut. Charged melee attacks can also smash certain rocks to open up pathways.

BLASTER

The blaster sits at a very odd place right now. Null made it initially to see how it would feel to be able to shoot. Right now it just stuns and interrupts enemies shortly and opens locked doors.

We let ideas for the blaster marinade and went back and forth on cutting it or finding a place for it.

We could only tell that it feels good and right for the gloves to have a blaster, they just need a job. And a balance.

What we came up with is this:

Kincaid will have glove energy that charges up from melee attacks. The blaster (among some other abilities) can deplete the energy.

That way it is not just an unlimited thing you can spam.

Also there will be three ammo types:

• Stun (which just deals damage)
• Chain lightning (which deals damage that gets passed on to surrounding enemies. It does less damage but is great for taking out things like swarms of little flying insects for instance)
• Ice (which can be used to freeze enemies. Some of which will turn into a solid block you can jump on)

We had some other ideas for the blaster, but they were either too violent for the tone we are aiming for (roasted kobolds?) or they were too puzzly, situational or redundant (for example a bubble shot that would trap enemies in a bubble which would double as a one-use platform!).

WEDNESDAY

After we had the ability progression, our focus went to world design. We knew what Kincaid was going to be able to do fully decked out, so how does it overlay with our world design and the plot?

The first planet Kincaid is going to visit will be the jungle one we are working on right now.

After this the world opens up a little and we want the player to have two planets to choose from and both of them should feel different. You can also mix/match and jump back and forth between planets to make extra use of newly acquired abilities.

THURSDAY & FRIDAY

The remaining days we talked about secondary elements that interface with what we worked on early in the week:

• Upgrades
• Currency
• Hub World
• Cut Scene ideas
• Side-Quest ideas for each planet
• Game Modes

I'll talk about those in more detail later!

Web Build Bugfixing

Null also worked on fixing bugs in the web version of the latest Patreon build. You can expect an update on that on Tuesday or Wednesday, but looks like the biggest issues have been addressed!

Upcoming Poll

We're going to have another poll! You'll be able to choose from four of the minor NPCs who gets to have some fun with Kincaid first! More on that tomorrow!

Cheers, Cookie & Null