Designing EverCrawl : Enemies

With EverCrawl I wanted to keep everything simple and that included the enemies. I wanted it to be relatively easy for me to add new enemies without having to spend countless hours drawing different animations for each enemy and then coding in different attacks. So in order to keep to this simplicity I decided there would be just 3 types of enemies in each biome: basic enemy, strong enemy and gimmick enemy.

Lets go through these quickly:

Basic Enemies:
The basic enemy is just that. It just sits there without moving until the player gets in contact with it and initiates combat. Can be dispatched quickly and can be easily avoided if need be.

Strong Enemies:
The strong enemies in each biome are similar to the basic enemy but they also move. The simplest form of the strong enemy is the skeleton warrior in the first biome. It's similar to a basic enemy but it moves left or right 1 tile each turn. This adds a slight level of complexity that the player needs to keep in mind when moving through the dungeon. They're also meaner in a fight so the player might want to avoid them as often as possible.

Gimmick Enemies:
These enemies have a particular ability that they use once. Either when they spawn or when they're in a particular position on the screen. The player needs to be aware of their abilities and how to handle them in order to think ahead and stay alive. One example the wizard in the first biome which charges a magic ray over 3 turns and then shoots at the player.

Man-Eater Gimmick Enemy Finishing off a Berserker!

Even if all the enemies fall into one of these 3 types, from the second biome onwards, every enemy from every type has their own little gimmick. It's a bit hard to put into words but basically it means that just because an enemy is the basic enemy for a biome doesn't mean it's just going to sit there. This helps with making each biome feel truly unique and make the player think twice about approaching all enemies in the same way.

Finally, there are also attributes to make each of the enemies feel different in a fight. Each enemy has a different combination of total HP, damage, dodge chance and miss chance which helps make them feel unique.

That covers the enemies. Should be talking about Player Classes next!