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Devlog #2 ~ Gameplay
Three words: holywater demon crosses
Alright, we´ve a story now and some background informations. Let´s think about the task and the gameplay. Since there are many, many games whose task is, to collect things (for the most time pages or keys ;) ), I´d wanted to do something at least slightly different. On the other hand it shouldn´t be too complex, due to my time and programming skills are limited.
After a couple ideas, which included searching for relatives in the occupied city or exorcizing the demon, I came up with the goal to bless the crosses of the city with holy water. In order to prevent it from becoming a basic collecting-mission I gave the player 3 phials of holy water, which can be refilled at stoups. Now the player need to search for the crosses and the stoups as well, which means it is quite much about orientation and remembering where you had been before. It can happen that you find a cross to bless, but only have empty phials.
To make all this a little more complicated, I gave the player the opportunity to throw a full phial at the enemy. The phial breaks and is lost, but the demon retreats immediately. This gives the player a short advantage, but lowers his chance to complete his mission. (Don´t worry, the demon is going to come back soon and will be quite annoyed how he got treated by the priest.) The enemy himself got an endurance system. When he gets close enough to the player he´ll switch from walking to sprinting and emit a loud cry. While he´s sprinting he is slightly faster than the player, but the priest got more endurance in total. So the demon will be faster exhausted than the player, and continues walking again. The player´s walking speed is higher than the enemy`s one. During many gameplays I noticed that the demon is very consisted and the players have difficulties to shake him off. Therefor I implemented a 20% chance that he goes away to engage the player from a different direction next time.