Interesting combat in a farming game

    February was Combat month. This means that I had to setup attack hitboxes, special moves and enemies. I didn't design and implement as many enemies as I wanted. So far there are 9 "normal" enemies and a "boss" one. There is definitely room for more content there and, besides, some enemies not done yet are crucial to the main story.

    Since the game's atmosphere is more akin to this of a suburban gothic 90's TV series, a certain degree of realism is expected of the game world. Sure, there may be mysterious entities and a hint of otherworldly powers, but their impact will be much greater when contrasted with a more down-to-earth environment. Would the encounter of killer BOB by the main characters in Twin Peaks be such a harrowing event if in the rest of the series we watched townsfolk fighting zombies?

    Simply put, I cannot afford to insert skeletons or ghosts to fight in your day-to-day explorations. Most enemies should be "threats of nature", like animals or insects. But, even so, there are workarounds for more unsettling encounters. You see, a long time ago, an inhabitant of Gleaner Heights had this peculiar fascination with building automatons...

    Combat is pretty straightforward: You swing your axe, hammer, sickle or hoe at foes. The sickle has a "swing" style, while the rest of your tools tend to strike the spot in front of you. One major difference from other farming games is that you can charge your tool and move at the same time. In the farming part, you upgrade your weapons in order to break tougher materials, affect a larger area (like cutting more patches of grass at once with your sickle) or consume less stamina. So depending on the tool level, the more time players hold the tool button down, the more their tool gets "charged up" and the more powerful the effect will be upon release. In combat, those very same upgraded tools can deal more damage or have a larger hit area. Moving while charging your tool allows for much greater maneuverability and more intense battles: Enemies can act faster, since you can be on the move even when preparing a strong atrack!

    Attacking while running will perform a dash attack. Possibly unlocked with a tool upgrade or skill, attacking again during a dash attack will follow with a 360 degree spinning ground slam. Each tool has a different area of effect but the overall outcome is pretty devastating.

    Attacks can be avoided by rolling. You roll by tapping the run button. As a fan of the Souls Series, it's pretty awesome to see that you can run and roll under an enemy projectile and then immediately follow up with a dash attack. Rolling can get you out of harm's way quickly, but it costs stamina.

    I had many thoughts about stamina consumption and how depleting it would affect the game. Initially I considered going the classic Harvest Moon way: Stamina reaches zero, you pass out. But in a game like this, where you can go down a cave and fight a lot, this approach is very limiting. Sure, you can eat stuff and gain back some stamina, but pausing combat every now and then to chomp down stuff to avoid passing out feels like a detracting chore. Then I thought about regenerating stamina, again like in Dark Souls. But this would make the farming part trivial, and this is primarily a farming game. So I devised the following scheme:

    You have a Health meter and a Stamina meter. Using tools in your farm or in combat consumes stamina. More powerful tool uses cost more stamina. If your stamina reaches zero you can still perform basic tool actions and probably run and roll at reduced efficiency. Using more powerful attacks at zero stamina will eat up health instead. If health reaches zero, you pass out and wake up in the clinic with the Doctor and his snarky remarks. He is quite old, after all, and he's seen quite a lot...

    As a final note for combat mechanics, I chose not to go with the "enemies touch you, you lose health" approach. I know this is a game, and games have conventions: Yesterday I was tired. I looked up but there was no depleted stamina bar above my head. But the "bad enemy touch" approach just feels too goofy and Super Mario-esque to me this time. Enemies are solid entities. They can't pass through you, you can't pass through them. Abandoning the bad enemy touch design, you gain two benefits: First, you are forced to think of interesting attack patterns when designing them. Making the enemy itself the source of damage just kind of forces you to go down the easy path, make every enemy head towards you and maybe add a token bullet shoot every now and then. But now you have to devise special moves for when the player is too close or far away. Second, you get this risk-and-reward approach playstyle: You know that is safe to stay close to an enemy. Will you be able to land a hit or two before skillfully dodging its sweeping attack? Again, I think this approach makes for more interesting combat gameplay, where you don't just have to avoid generic enemy graphics with generic walk animations.

    So with the combat system explained, here are some of the enemies you will encounter in Gleaner Heights.

Hedgehog

Hedgehogs are not tough animals to fight, but they can raise their spikes when you are near them and can roll into a spike ball and charge you.

Boar

Boars have a lot of health and will charge from a distance. Evade and counterattack before they charge again.

 

Slime

I was conflicted about the presence of slimes given the down-to-earth approach laid out above. But for some reason, they don't look all that supernatural to me. It's just a bizarre life form, not some undead horror. They throw blobs at you but aren't dangerous overall (at least the common, green variety). More powerful slimes may require more...acidic approaches to be utterly destroyed. Did I mention you can use your watering can to sprinkle more than just water? :)

Worm

Worms are an exception to the "bad enemy touch" rule (or lack thereof). When you approach them, they tend to head towards you, damaging you with their touch. They're worms after all.

Maneater

A dangerous plant: It shoors homing toxic spores and can burrow underground. This one will put your rolling skills to the test.

 




Bat

Bats circle you and emit a damaging sonic wave. May prove tricky when fighting more than one at a time.

 




    More enemies will populate the world of Gleaner Heights. To the west of the town there is a vast area known as the Hunting Grounds. But that's probably a story for another post. For this post, I would like to conclude by saying that I really liked the idea of flexibility in movement, not just in combat but everywhere. The original Harvest Moon for the Super Nintendo had your character jump over fences. Some of the subsequent games ditched this idea, so I'm putting it back in: You and your horse can jump over fences!