Creating the Charge Attacks

As our team moved into the final quarter of our development cycle, we knew from all the feedback we had received thus far that we needed to rework or improve our combat system. One idea that was tossed around much earlier in the conception of the project was alternate attacks, and in reworking our combat system, this idea was revived. Instead of having just an alternate attack, we decided to create an attack that would be charged up.

This charge attack would further enhance the beat attack system, where players must attack on-beat to deal a significant amount of damage. If the the player hold an attack from one beat to the next and releases on that beat, the player will unleash their character's respective special attack. When timed correctly and in succession, these attacks can be quite devastating to enemies.

Designing the attack was relatively easy, as we'd already had the idea of alternate attacks in our head. The hardest part of the design process was deciding what attacks each character should have, especially since each character has their own unique attack profile anyways. We decided to take the "feeling" of each character and push that for their charge attack. This meant a heavy hitter like Bass would have a large, high-damage AOE attack, while a precision marksman like Harmony would have a rapid pinpoint attack.

- Alexander "Hawkins" Croom

Harmony's charge attack