Interesting to see how other people are going about designing a game of this style, there's so much that goes into it, from movesets to scoring,visual spectacle (where you choose between being either uber flashy or more visual clear like DMC) and last but not least enemies that can actually keep up with the player and levels that are interesting to traverse. We're working on a game of this style as well (for nearly 3 years now), took us a long time to get the basic systems to into a state where we wanted them. Looking forward to seeing how your game will evolve over time!
Yeah its a genre with a lot of hidden work to be sure. I am very much still in the digging for gold and finding the basics side rn. That is awesome that you've put so much work into one already, I will have to take a look. Ty for the kind words!
You seem pretty educated and you know what you do, and I love that fact! I'm wondering how a hack'n slash and horror game can be combined together, and I suppose we'll see then in the future devlogs!
Thank you for the compliment! Yes for sure, we will get into the mixture with horror down the road but I am happy to talk a bit about it rn. The way I see it, when we talk about horror in video games we often refer to either outright horror or survival horror, but there is also action horror. Now all three forms of horror rely on atmosphere(aka vibes) and some amount of interplay between empowerment and disempowerment to convey said horror, however the degree to which they each apply that interplay is what defines them. Fundamentally, as much as horror needs disempowerment, it also needs moments of relief in the form of empowerment to provide catharsis. In the case of Occultation, I am leaning far more into the action horror sides of things. Because I believe that character action is fundamentally a power fantasy genre, I think it will work really well when the player spends significant chunks of time feeling powerful and competent only to then be exposed to bouts if disempowerment. Essentially, doing the inverse of classic horror or survival horror. A good example of this that I use a lot is Batman Arkham Asylum. In Asylum, the player feels really powerful most of the time because they are in control of most of the situations but routinely throughout the game, the strength and power that the player has is stripped away from them leaving them in situations where their combat prowess are not enough to crush the enemy, but are enough to only barely survive. The Scarecrow and Croc sections are really great examples of this occurring. In occultation, it will be very similar, the player will be essentially powerful and at certain points that power will not be enough, and in a genre that prizes itself on player mastery and power, what could be scarier than suddenly having that mastery and power mean nothing. The rest of the horror elements will be conveyed through the environment, atmosphere, side stories, and visuals. I am planning to lean heavily into a mixture of cosmic horror and body horror. TLDR: there will be sections where the player cant get catharsis or relief from combat and where they are disempowered. These sections of disempowerment will occur largely outside of traditional combat and will culminate in cathartic battles that return power to the player. Hope this answers your question, thanks for the comment and the compliments.
Am glad you made another video, the ideas of your scoring system for your game sounds interesting. The last time we talked I asked if your games was inspired by Splatterhouse 2010 and you said you would have to get back to me due to you not knowing about it, were you able to check the game out? also if you were to make the game avalable on consoles would you make physical copies? Also I want you to look up a game that somewhat fits what you`re going for, there is a hack & slash game called Soulstice, I wouldn`t say it a horror game 100% but to me it has horror elements in terms of the theme, tone and the boss designs. The developer was inspired by the anime Claymore and Berserk, I recommend you play it, if you do I would also recommend you watch the two animes before you play Soulstice just to get you hyped up to play it. I don`t know if you saw my previous message on the other UA-cam video you did so I'll just put what I wrote on there here. One of the things I think that is important is that the character design, it has to look visually appealing (sick), just like what the developer of Stellar Blade said, he think it`s important for the back of the character looks better than the front since that`s what you will see the most. Me personally if I don`t like the way the character looks that will put me off the game no matter how good the game is (and there are other ppl that think that way too). Also making the weapons you use look sick is also good.
Hello! yes I did end up watching people play through some of the games, very camp very fun. I thought the animations in the first game were super satisfying. Regarding consoles and physical copies: If I were able to get on console, that would be an awesome milestone! However, idk if I would get to do a physical run, that would depend on the nature of how I got on to consoles, and what the agreement would be with a hypothetical publishing partner. Maybe something like a limited run would be possible but we will have to see, thats still rather far out. Regarding Soulstice: I have started to hear about this game as I started work on this project but I have not yet played it. However, I freaking loved Claymore as a kid so you have peaked my interest. I have not yet seen Berserk but its been on the list of things I want to check out. Regarding Interesting Character Designs: I think I replied to your previous message as our talking points ring a bell, however if I did not, I apologize. I do remember talking about stellar blade. Though i have not played stellar blade, I broadly agree with the idea that the back of the character model should be interesting. I think my favorite examples of keeping the players back interesting are Dead Space which made great use of that space to provide the player with valuable information about their health, and Batman Arkham Asylum which used the cape to convey batman's emotional state. Especially in the case of Batman, you are in theory losing a lot of visually interesting elements by having a character in cape, but the devs did a great job of keeping it interesting by having the cape move and sway while also getting more and more damaged as the adventure went on. Rest assured I have been thinking about this a lot and while I have not landed on a final design for the the protagonist, they will not just be a knight in classical grey full plate armor in no small part because it would not be visually interesting from behind. I hope I have answered your questions, and if you have more feel free to send them my way. I will check out soulstice, claymore and berserk. Thank you for the comment!
@@gatorsoup yeah I don't have the time to make a hack and shlash bc Im trash at animation so Im making a horror game rn so I support everyone who has more time and patience to make larger games
the idea of a hack n' horror game is a fascinating one and i'm excited to see where this project goes, but i noticed a lack of ninja gaiden among your influences. if you haven't i highly recommend it specifically in regards to this project as the combat and enemy designs in those games excel at making you feel powerful and powerless simultaneously. i've never been more afraid of enemies in a character action game. for example ng black also had a problem with players turtling behind their block. team ninja addressed by giving nearly every enemy a lightning fast highly damaging grab attack, something you can't block but instead have to dodge. this adds an element of fear to blocking since yes you are protecting yourself from strikes but you're still vulnerable to even stronger attacks and need to keep an eye out to react fast enough. pair this with being swarmed with mobs of enemies, any of which could grab you the second you stand still, and you have a recipe for a player on the edge of their seat. your resonance orb/attack system also kind of reminds of ng's ultimate technique system, though ng doesn't feature a meter for it. specifically the "orb drop->super move->more orb drop->more super move" chain you were trying to avoid is actually a key feature of ng1&2's combat, though the extreme aggression of ng's enemies makes executing these chains easier said than done. the ninja gaiden master collection on steam is the easiest and most accessible way to play these games, though if you have an xbox one or series x/s the microsoft store has the original versions of ninja gaiden black and ninja gaiden 2 available, which are pretty universally considered the better balanced versions of those games. regardless of which version i really hope you take the time to play them, as i think their unique take on the character action genre could be a really positive influence on your final project.
Hey, thanks for the awesome comment. I keep hearing that I really need to give Ninja Gaiden a play. I def will because it sounds like a really good game and it has come up multiple times. It sounds like its def an oversight on my part to not have had any time with it. Block turtling is such an interesting problem with so many possible solutions. I love the idea of creating attacks that cant be blocked. I have seen that in a number of games and I was wondering if that would be a cool addition, but I hadn't done any of the legwork for it yet. I will check out the steam version of Ninja Gaiden!
The tiered special meter seems so cool. It holds so much potential to turn combat into something dynamic in a way I dont think I've ever seen in another action game. Great work!!
This just made my day. I am so happy that the radiance tier idea resonated with you. I have really high hopes for it and I am super excited to keep working on and expanding it. I am planning to have the player collect additional radiance tiers throughout their adventure and I have been coming up with all sorts of buffs for the player to customize their tiers with. I think its gonna be really fun.
Hi Gator. Great job making these videos, I'm excited to follow this project!!! Here are my 2 cents. First of all, I'm not sure if tying the block to consuming radiance might make the block mechanic feel really bad or completely unecessary so why even have a block. I think it would be smarter and more fun if instead you could punish the player by making the blockstun animation of the player be very long and only cancelable by doing a dodge. This way the player won't turtle cause the longer they stay blocking the less radiance they are gaining. The second thing is: Why isn't the scoring system the radiance system itself. If the player gets rewarded radiance meter through good aggressive play, and the meter depletes out of combat isn't that pretty much a scoring system?
Hey! Thank you for the compliment, and the feedback I greatly appreciate it. Regarding the block, haha yeah I am getting closer to just dropping it, it will really depend how December goes, but I am def starting to see it similarly to how you have described it. Initially, the plan behind this defense tax was to make the block a defensive posture with its own move set, and that is still currently the plan, but it has been tricky to fully realize. Regarding the score vs radiance stuff. At one point, the two were one thing but that just didn't seem fair because you(the player) can spend the radiance to use ultimate attacks, and getting a worse score because you used the coolest looking moves seemed really counter intuitive. However, now that special attacks return radiance when executed well, it might be interesting to revisit the merging of score and radiance into one system(it would def simplify some of the complexity for the players). Def something for me to think on, thanks for raising the point! Hope this answers your questions, thanks again for the comment. Always happy to get these kind of comments.
@gatorsoup hell yeah, I can't wait to see what you'll be cooking next, you're awesome! 😎👍 I'm going to start making an action game as well pretty soon with a friend of mine, we're both more on the artistic side but I've been learning design and code slowly and steadily. Your dev log made me realize that we would need a scoring system too so I realized that we could tie the score with gameplay changes and decided to comment!
Interesting to see how other people are going about designing a game of this style, there's so much that goes into it, from movesets to scoring,visual spectacle (where you choose between being either uber flashy or more visual clear like DMC) and last but not least enemies that can actually keep up with the player and levels that are interesting to traverse.
We're working on a game of this style as well (for nearly 3 years now), took us a long time to get the basic systems to into a state where we wanted them.
Looking forward to seeing how your game will evolve over time!
Yeah its a genre with a lot of hidden work to be sure. I am very much still in the digging for gold and finding the basics side rn. That is awesome that you've put so much work into one already, I will have to take a look. Ty for the kind words!
HEYY i'm glad you're back! i'm excited to see the continuation of your project s2
Haha ty. Yes happy to put out another one! Hopefully going to have more to show real soon!
I'm happy to see how this is coming along.
Yay! ty, happy to hear that.
love your videos, and game design approach 🙏
Aw thank you so much. I am happy you enjoy them!
You seem pretty educated and you know what you do, and I love that fact!
I'm wondering how a hack'n slash and horror game can be combined together, and I suppose we'll see then in the future devlogs!
Thank you for the compliment!
Yes for sure, we will get into the mixture with horror down the road but I am happy to talk a bit about it rn.
The way I see it, when we talk about horror in video games we often refer to either outright horror or survival horror, but there is also action horror.
Now all three forms of horror rely on atmosphere(aka vibes) and some amount of interplay between empowerment and disempowerment to convey said horror, however the degree to which they each apply that interplay is what defines them. Fundamentally, as much as horror needs disempowerment, it also needs moments of relief in the form of empowerment to provide catharsis.
In the case of Occultation, I am leaning far more into the action horror sides of things. Because I believe that character action is fundamentally a power fantasy genre, I think it will work really well when the player spends significant chunks of time feeling powerful and competent only to then be exposed to bouts if disempowerment. Essentially, doing the inverse of classic horror or survival horror. A good example of this that I use a lot is Batman Arkham Asylum. In Asylum, the player feels really powerful most of the time because they are in control of most of the situations but routinely throughout the game, the strength and power that the player has is stripped away from them leaving them in situations where their combat prowess are not enough to crush the enemy, but are enough to only barely survive. The Scarecrow and Croc sections are really great examples of this occurring.
In occultation, it will be very similar, the player will be essentially powerful and at certain points that power will not be enough, and in a genre that prizes itself on player mastery and power, what could be scarier than suddenly having that mastery and power mean nothing.
The rest of the horror elements will be conveyed through the environment, atmosphere, side stories, and visuals. I am planning to lean heavily into a mixture of cosmic horror and body horror.
TLDR: there will be sections where the player cant get catharsis or relief from combat and where they are disempowered. These sections of disempowerment will occur largely outside of traditional combat and will culminate in cathartic battles that return power to the player.
Hope this answers your question, thanks for the comment and the compliments.
@gatorsoup that's a great explanation, I'm sure you'll execute that well!
Am glad you made another video, the ideas of your scoring system for your game sounds interesting.
The last time we talked I asked if your games was inspired by Splatterhouse 2010 and you said you would have to get back to me due to you not knowing about it, were you able to check the game out? also if you were to make the game avalable on consoles would you make physical copies?
Also I want you to look up a game that somewhat fits what you`re going for, there is a hack & slash game called Soulstice, I wouldn`t say it a horror game 100% but to me it has horror elements in terms of the theme, tone and the boss designs.
The developer was inspired by the anime Claymore and Berserk, I recommend you play it, if you do I would also recommend you watch the two animes before you play Soulstice just to get you hyped up to play it.
I don`t know if you saw my previous message on the other UA-cam video you did so I'll just put what I wrote on there here.
One of the things I think that is important is that the character design, it has to look visually appealing (sick), just like what the developer of Stellar Blade said, he think it`s important for the back of the character looks better than the front since that`s what you will see the most. Me personally if I don`t like the way the character looks that will put me off the game no matter how good the game is (and there are other ppl that think that way too).
Also making the weapons you use look sick is also good.
Hello! yes I did end up watching people play through some of the games, very camp very fun. I thought the animations in the first game were super satisfying.
Regarding consoles and physical copies:
If I were able to get on console, that would be an awesome milestone! However, idk if I would get to do a physical run, that would depend on the nature of how I got on to consoles, and what the agreement would be with a hypothetical publishing partner. Maybe something like a limited run would be possible but we will have to see, thats still rather far out.
Regarding Soulstice:
I have started to hear about this game as I started work on this project but I have not yet played it. However, I freaking loved Claymore as a kid so you have peaked my interest. I have not yet seen Berserk but its been on the list of things I want to check out.
Regarding Interesting Character Designs:
I think I replied to your previous message as our talking points ring a bell, however if I did not, I apologize. I do remember talking about stellar blade. Though i have not played stellar blade, I broadly agree with the idea that the back of the character model should be interesting. I think my favorite examples of keeping the players back interesting are Dead Space which made great use of that space to provide the player with valuable information about their health, and Batman Arkham Asylum which used the cape to convey batman's emotional state. Especially in the case of Batman, you are in theory losing a lot of visually interesting elements by having a character in cape, but the devs did a great job of keeping it interesting by having the cape move and sway while also getting more and more damaged as the adventure went on. Rest assured I have been thinking about this a lot and while I have not landed on a final design for the the protagonist, they will not just be a knight in classical grey full plate armor in no small part because it would not be visually interesting from behind.
I hope I have answered your questions, and if you have more feel free to send them my way. I will check out soulstice, claymore and berserk. Thank you for the comment!
I like it its a nice spin on the hack and shlash genre
Yay, happy you think so!
@@gatorsoup yeah I don't have the time to make a hack and shlash bc Im trash at animation so Im making a horror game rn so I support everyone who has more time and patience to make larger games
@@SourPickleGames yeaaaaah its a lot of animation work. Thankfully I like animation but learning blender has been quite wild.
@@gatorsoup respect I'm scared of blender
the idea of a hack n' horror game is a fascinating one and i'm excited to see where this project goes, but i noticed a lack of ninja gaiden among your influences. if you haven't i highly recommend it specifically in regards to this project as the combat and enemy designs in those games excel at making you feel powerful and powerless simultaneously. i've never been more afraid of enemies in a character action game.
for example ng black also had a problem with players turtling behind their block. team ninja addressed by giving nearly every enemy a lightning fast highly damaging grab attack, something you can't block but instead have to dodge. this adds an element of fear to blocking since yes you are protecting yourself from strikes but you're still vulnerable to even stronger attacks and need to keep an eye out to react fast enough. pair this with being swarmed with mobs of enemies, any of which could grab you the second you stand still, and you have a recipe for a player on the edge of their seat.
your resonance orb/attack system also kind of reminds of ng's ultimate technique system, though ng doesn't feature a meter for it. specifically the "orb drop->super move->more orb drop->more super move" chain you were trying to avoid is actually a key feature of ng1&2's combat, though the extreme aggression of ng's enemies makes executing these chains easier said than done.
the ninja gaiden master collection on steam is the easiest and most accessible way to play these games, though if you have an xbox one or series x/s the microsoft store has the original versions of ninja gaiden black and ninja gaiden 2 available, which are pretty universally considered the better balanced versions of those games. regardless of which version i really hope you take the time to play them, as i think their unique take on the character action genre could be a really positive influence on your final project.
Hey, thanks for the awesome comment.
I keep hearing that I really need to give Ninja Gaiden a play. I def will because it sounds like a really good game and it has come up multiple times. It sounds like its def an oversight on my part to not have had any time with it.
Block turtling is such an interesting problem with so many possible solutions. I love the idea of creating attacks that cant be blocked. I have seen that in a number of games and I was wondering if that would be a cool addition, but I hadn't done any of the legwork for it yet.
I will check out the steam version of Ninja Gaiden!
Nice
Thank you :D
The tiered special meter seems so cool. It holds so much potential to turn combat into something dynamic in a way I dont think I've ever seen in another action game. Great work!!
This just made my day. I am so happy that the radiance tier idea resonated with you. I have really high hopes for it and I am super excited to keep working on and expanding it. I am planning to have the player collect additional radiance tiers throughout their adventure and I have been coming up with all sorts of buffs for the player to customize their tiers with. I think its gonna be really fun.
Cute character
Ty!
Hi Gator. Great job making these videos, I'm excited to follow this project!!! Here are my 2 cents. First of all, I'm not sure if tying the block to consuming radiance might make the block mechanic feel really bad or completely unecessary so why even have a block. I think it would be smarter and more fun if instead you could punish the player by making the blockstun animation of the player be very long and only cancelable by doing a dodge. This way the player won't turtle cause the longer they stay blocking the less radiance they are gaining. The second thing is: Why isn't the scoring system the radiance system itself. If the player gets rewarded radiance meter through good aggressive play, and the meter depletes out of combat isn't that pretty much a scoring system?
Hey! Thank you for the compliment, and the feedback I greatly appreciate it.
Regarding the block, haha yeah I am getting closer to just dropping it, it will really depend how December goes, but I am def starting to see it similarly to how you have described it. Initially, the plan behind this defense tax was to make the block a defensive posture with its own move set, and that is still currently the plan, but it has been tricky to fully realize.
Regarding the score vs radiance stuff. At one point, the two were one thing but that just didn't seem fair because you(the player) can spend the radiance to use ultimate attacks, and getting a worse score because you used the coolest looking moves seemed really counter intuitive. However, now that special attacks return radiance when executed well, it might be interesting to revisit the merging of score and radiance into one system(it would def simplify some of the complexity for the players). Def something for me to think on, thanks for raising the point!
Hope this answers your questions, thanks again for the comment. Always happy to get these kind of comments.
@gatorsoup hell yeah, I can't wait to see what you'll be cooking next, you're awesome! 😎👍
I'm going to start making an action game as well pretty soon with a friend of mine, we're both more on the artistic side but I've been learning design and code slowly and steadily. Your dev log made me realize that we would need a scoring system too so I realized that we could tie the score with gameplay changes and decided to comment!