You already know how Vegelypse was made, and we’ve introduced the antagonists. Now it’s finally time to present the protagonist or rather “protagonists”.
As you learned in the previous devlog, the idea for the game would never have existed without a few spontaneous ideas of vegetables full fangs that splashes screen with their pulp. But quickly early in early sketches those creeps were joined by an anthropomorphic cactus. And you already know the rest of the story.
View game pageThe first Cactus sketch may not have been particularly impressive, but it set the direction for the entire game.
The Cactus design evolved with every new sketch until it finally took the form we wanted for Vegelypse: we knew from very beginning it should have a short body, stubby legs, and disproportionately long, powerful arms. But were fighting for a bit with all minor tweaks, proportion of eyes, height of attach limbs, or how to set up stripes and spikes. Find the fidelity that will put extra charm into this fisty succulent. The perfect fighter.
And then there’s the full range of emotions written all over his face. As we mentioned, cartoons shown on television in the 1990s were a major inspiration for us. Their characters had wonderfully expressive and flexible faces capable of conveying every emotion imaginable. We wanted to achieve the same thing with the Cacti. That why from very begging we were testing various expresive emotions in design, from various angles.
The next step was to create a move list and assign the right animations to each attack. We came up with plenty of ideas for strikes and acrobatics the Cactus could perform, and with them came a whole stack of sketches. Here are just few of them.
Because all of the game’s artwork is drawn by hand, creating old-school frame-by-frame animation was quite a challenge and require hundreds of drawings. As enthusiasts of this style and medium, we can proudly say that the initial reactions from players who tested Vegelypse were extremely positive. And we are even more convinced that this is the right direction for our game.
Once we had finished working on one Cactus, we decided to keep the momentum going. After all, what kind of co-op beat ’em up would it be without a diverse cast of playable characters?
From the start, we knew that first Cactus would be a typical “rushdown” character: get close, strike, retreat, charge into the crowd of vegies, and so on. So we decided it would be good to have someone on the team who could fight from a distance. While sketching, the idea came up that the new character could not only fire projectiles (long-range attack) but also strike with an energy whip (medium range). We liked both options.
But for this to work, we had to move away from the control scheme of the first Cactus, who have two buttons for attacks and third one for dodges. Modify it so Cactus E have all three buttons for attacks. We still found a way to keep mobility, using special energy actions.
We wanted to have clear visual differences that were also influenced by gameplay aspects. The second Cactus is more corelated with Sun Energy, so it has flowers. Those grow on head and hand. Cactus uses them to absorb and generate energy for various actions, like whip or as blast from cannon-like arm similar to Mega Man. Players will be able to find lot of option to use this energy control for synnergy with other characters.
Speaking of, there will be more characters coming to Vegelypse. At launch, we want to introduce you to the entire Cactus family - each character with a distinct appearance, unique abilities, and a different playstyle that may help in the fight against the bloodthirsty vegetables.
But until then, we’ll let them remain in the shadows.
In the next episode, we’ll tell you a little more about the world of Vegelypse. And things there are far from cheerful…
Remember to add Vegelypse on your wishlist :)