Combat Jr is the multiplayer versus portion of our action RPG The Moon Fields x Combat Jr. While TMF is inspired heavily by the original Zelda, CJr is inspired by faster paced games like Hotline Miami and Bomberman. We hope to mirror all the items in TMF in CJr and vice versa, so we built Combat Jr to be the testing grounds for it.

As of November 8th, we have 22 items and 8 armors implemented and most fully functional gameplay systems are in place. At the end of development we expect something along the lines of 80 items and 20 armors. Right now we are looking for feedback, let's plays, or even just a few sentences of what sticks out and is the funnest portion of the game for people that aren't us and our close friends.

If you have a few gamepads lying around (PS4, XBox 360, most dual analog PC controllers), please check out our game and drop a few words for us here or on our page's forums. We will periodically open up the following key if we feel as though we need more feedback.

https://interdimensional.itch.io/combatjr/download...

Our roadmap is as such:

• Tweak major gameplay systems (e.g. shield stun)
• Add Match scoring
• Single player demo
• More items
  • Pebbles
  • Chain Claw
  • Triple Fire Crossbow
  • Shields with attacks
  • More Area control
  • Implement a magic system

I almost forgot. Each of the six stages is going to have its own methods to either knock players out or force combat if a match lasts too long.

In the previous version of Combat Jr the tie breaker was always a meteor shower no matter the stage. This version we are thinking of making individualized stage hazards. Ravine will have a lightning storm. Temple will have the meteor shower. Sun Prarie might have a prarie fire ala bomberman? Dungeon might have enemy baddies swarm in and overwhelm the players. There are still the Training Grounds and Gate stages and we don't know what could do to "force" a victory. Enemies underground in the "fields" and weather effects outside could be a theme, but we just haven't decided on the full extent of it.

We are working with the attacking/blocking/stun system, so I'm going to do a quick write up to gather my thoughts.

Each attack has various values regarding damage and stun. For our purposes here we have a value we can call stunLength that is an amount of time that an attack can stun the enemy if it connects. For instance, a Moonblade stab has a stun time of 14 frames while a Moonblade step-back-slash has a stun time of 25 frames.

When an attack is blocked we introduce two new values. The first value is stunReflect which comes from the shield doing the blocking. The second value is stunMultiplier which comes from the inside the weapon itself. Hard shields have high stunReflect values, and pokey weapons have high stunMultipliers. These rules could break: e.g. I could make a squishy shield that sucks in an enemy's weapon or more spammy weapons like the KingsSword might stab but still have low stunMultipliers.

Anyways, the calculation for stunning yourself on being blocked is:

stunLength * stunReflect * stunMultiplier

So shields with low stunReflect will be larger shields that I want players to feel comfortable spamming AGAINST and weapons with low stunMultiplier are weapons I'd want players to feel comfortable spamming WITH. And on the opposite end shields with high stunReflect are the best blockers while weapons with high stunMultipliers will need to be precisely aimed or they'll get owned.

We're Youtube streaming in 30 min (6 CST)

https://www.youtube.com/interdimensionalspacewizards/live

Last night's stream (start it around 1hr):

If you still haven't checked it we have our free itch.io key turned on here: https://interdimensional.itch.io/combatjr/download...

Please check it out and comment!