This is a very spectacular game for a game jam! Graphics and controls feel very polished and the plants are a neat idea. The animations must have been a lot of work. I think the dragon could do with less health (or a health indicator), I bashed it for about 17 minutes until I won and I wasn't sure if I was making progress. How does the dragon AI work? It seems like a complicated thing to do.
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Thank you very much!
In my opinion a health indicator takes away the tension in the fight, but I wanted to add at least a damage indicator for when you struck the dragon so you might have a notion of progress at least.
The animations were a lot of work indeed but the dragon AI took way more work. During development, I tried to study about behavior trees to make a more flexible AI but I wasn't able to make it work, so I just structured the AI with a basic state machine which is way less complicated than behavir trees. It is composed of a main state that chooses what kind of attacks to make and the attack states controlled by animation (Godot is perfect for this btw).
Thanks for the info! Behavior trees are a thing that I always wanted to learn about, but put off because they seem so complicated. I've noticed that Godot's animation system is pretty powerful, and I've been thinking about using it for similar purposes (different attack, block and stagger animations on a player character). Now your dragon makes me want to give that another try.