Development

The development process began with my concept to make a platformer game without any way for the player to directly attack the enemies on the stage. Instead I would focus exclusively on parries using the shield. Counter attacks, block and reflect would become the main method of defeating enemies in this game I decided, and from there I built a few levels in order to test this functionality.  Initially I had a lot of trouble attempting to program and implement this behavior (swords would only be deflected in one direction, along with a slew of other issues that came with my spaghetti code). However, after I got this mechanic working for the most part (probably will update in the future to make more interesting interactions with the swords), it was fairly simple for me to flesh out interesting levels with scaling difficulty. The last level is still a bit hard, but I believe it's doable.

Playtest notes:

• Scaling on health UI
• Proximity to enemies causes forced damage, swords spawn too far away to deflect when player is close
• Tone down Level1 difficulty (initially level3 was the only level)
• Be clever with reflection (directional reflection) - not implemented yet
• Check scale of object hit OnCollisionEnter has collision point info, if <x do not block (not implemented)
• Button is intuitive
• Enemy tracking broken (not fixed)
• Change ramp swords
• Updown platform slower
• Too hard
• Fighting back? Sword, melee (not implemented)
• Add instructions/goal for game
• Heart Pickups
• Good rhythm
• Shield delay, longer shielding (not yet implemented, next update)
• Easter egg limbo (???)
• Checkpoints (not really implemented)
• More control over the game (not implemented)
• More enemy types, enemy HP (not implemented)
• Score (not implemented)
• Camera clipping plane
• Longer sword lifetime (had to balance)

Development Documents

Initial Main Character Sprite Sheet:

Initial Enemy and Sword designs:

Pixel Boy Sprite Sheet:

Enemy Sprite Sheet: