This week was about improving the combat / enemy design as they had no chance against the newly introduced ability Tiny Thor now possesses, the Charged Hammer.
The Hive
The hive is a new enemy type that is constantly spawning small bees that are buzzing around and attacking the player if he comes closer. They are the only enemy type for now that can fly through walls - which makes them quite dangerous for the player, because his attacks cannot reach them until they close in.
They can swarm the player but Thor can destroy hordes of them with one single well aimed throw (which feels very satisfying).
The hive itself has multiple hitpoints and will replenish destroyed swarm bees. The player has to push through and eliminate the hive to overcome this encounter.
During the development we played around a lot with different values: Move rate, aggressiveness, spawn rate and spawn cap. It seems the engine is robust enough to handle … experimental numbers :P
The Guard
This enemy is carrying a shield in front of him. As he is always facing towards the player, Tiny Thor is not able to attack him directly, but rather has to employ trick shots and clever positioning to hit him in the back, where he is vulnerable.
The enemy also launches a shockwave every now and then that will follow the ground and forces the player to jump to dodge it. To do an aimed throw with the hammer the player has to stand still, so there’s only a small window to get the shot off.
The wave following the level geometry also counters Thors newfound ability to kill enemies safely from behind a corner with the charged throw.
We don't have a visual concept for this enemy yet - so if you have any ideas please let us know. Have a look how it works:
Snakes
Our Snakes now have the ability to do a dash attack at the player when he is in reach:
Spikey Ball
The spikey ball is a nice variation of our rope (which is usually used by the player to swing around the levels): At the end of the rope we put a big spikeyball on it. You'd better avoid it if you don't want to die :-)
The spikey ball came to be by changing a platforming tool of little Thor into a threat by attaching the namesake to the end of our swinging ropes. This thing now flails around in our levels, forcing Thor to dodge it in more interesting ways than our other environmental threats (falling spikes, etc.).
Besides that we also worked on the design of the first levels again to introduce the new features and also establish a better game flow to get the player hooked sooner into the game.
As always, if you have any feedback / suggestion feel free to let me know in
the comments sections or the forums.
If you're intrigued by the game, please put it on your wishlist:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/541310/Tiny_Thor
Cheers,
Jochen
