Hello Brawlers and welcome to the first Mayhem Brawler Developer Diary of 2021! 2020 was hell-of-a-year wasn’t it? But we all have made it (woohoo!) through and glad you are here to read this!
Today we are going to talk about the combat mechanics of Mayhem Brawler.
Basics of Mayhem Brawler
Mayhem Combos
In beat ’em up games, there are small tricks that help to balance character damages with combos. When looked back in history, Golden Axe, Final Fight, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are clear examples of these methods. For example, Haggar had a 3 hit combo with powerful attacks, and Cody had 4 decent hits while Guy had 5 agile but less damaging hits. The more hits a Character’s combo takes, the less damage it deals. Overall, the combo timer and total damage dealt in one combo are very close to each other.
The same goes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too. Donatello had more range and damage than the others but he was a slowpoke, Michelangelo, and Raphael on the other hand short-ranged and fast while Leonardo was an average of them. Our approach is pretty similar to them on this subject, just more mathematical. Star is able to finish a 5 hit combo while Trouble blows a 4 until Dolphin delivers a 3. But they all deal 60 hit points worth of damage with their combos. Combo times may vary a little but they are so close to each other.
Also on the survivability side block is vital. If you don’t understand how blocking works in Mayhem Brawler, you sure will die a lot. Or be so agile and surprise us because that’s also an advanced option to play mayhem brawler as you please. You don’t necessarily need anything else to Brawl in Mayhem but your fists and block.
Dash
According to Captain Serkan (Who is the designer of our game) a character being a slowpoke is the worst thing possible in a Beat ’em Up. The peak point of the genre is Captain Commando and the genre kept the same without adding on too much afterward. There were weapons, mounts, and the dash system in Captain Commando. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs used the system too. Actually, “dash” is an old system, it even exists in Renegade (1986) which is the first-ever beat em up with Z-depth.
Afterward, the dash went extinct for some reason. Maybe it was because of the reason developers wanted to extend playtime by forcing the player to walk or they wanted levels not to be rushed. In Mayhem Brawler, we have a dash system too. We derived the dash strike and dash jumping strike. So we can say we used the Captain Commando model here too. We gave importance to our characters’ mobility and that’s how we provide it.
Advanced Combat of Mayhem Brawler
Superpowers of Mayhem Brawler
There we have a power bar/special attack bar in Mayhem Brawler, it holds up to 3 charges and fills by fighting. While dealing damage fills it a little less, taking damage fills it faster. We didn’t want to players lose health for performing special attacks so we decided on this bar.
Breakables
Breakables are able to lifted and thrown for damage as well. Most of the beat ’em ups use breakables in only one of those ways except Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. We think it’s pretty cool.
Weaponized Combat
Let’s get one thing straight. We weren’t planning to have useable weapons in-game. Since our characters already have superpowers, instead of spending workforce and resources on weapons, we preferred to spend it on superpowers and new moves. After the Xbox Summer Game Fest in 2020, players forced us to have a weapon system over extremely high demand. Instead of having a very complex weapon system just like SoR, we made weapons only to be able to pick up after defeating the carrier of the weapon. Enemy minion is defined with the weapon integrated and you need to kill the enemy for picking the weapon up just like how it was in Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Weapons also appear in breakables, but rarely.
In Mayhem Brawler you can take weapons from the ground and use them on your foes as we mentioned before. Also, certain characters can lift tires, barrels, and even wooden containers as throwables depending on their strength level!
Melee Weapons
Melee weapon combat system is very similar to unarmed combat. When you pick up a weapon from the ground, it’s available for you to use it however you please like a throw or hit until it runs out of durability and breaks.
Ranged Weapons
Ranged weapons are not something that is common in the Beat ’em Ups universe except Captain Commando and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. We decided to add them in Mayhem Brawler but of course, limited with “ammo”. Because using a firearm so frequently in a fighter game wouldn’t suit the Beat ’em Up spirit.
Bosses of Mayhem City
For boss attacks not being based on an “invulnerable” state, we did our best. It’s still arguable how much we succeeded. Before bosses perform a special attack, normally they enter an “invulnerable” state and start the beating, our point was making it variable.
Mayhem Brawlers hates Cheapers!
We developed a system “Anti-Cheaper” for bypassing “Stun Lock” (stun-lock (also called stunlocking) is the act of spamming the character’s hit pattern without ending it properly and immobilizing to prevent an enemy from fighting back or escaping) cheapers (cheaper is the kind of player who practices methods of cheap-fighting which is defeating the enemy with exploiting the game’s bugs or certain moves forever without really fighting the encounter). However, the development process for the Anti-Cheaper shield still continues but it will be out with the game.
That’s all for this developer diary, while we are developing the beat ’em up of our lives for you guys, we hope you are staying safe in your homes and being happy, playing games. And if you still haven’t added Mayhem Brawler to your wishlist, be quick and do it brawlers, grr!
– Your friendly neighborhood superhero developers.