The player must survive against endless hordes of Revenants for as long as they can. More Revenants are spawned each wave, and the player can eliminate them with abilities. Health and mana management are also of utmost importance. Should the player's health deplete to 0, they will lose the game.
The abilities are designed in a way that provides the player with sustained utility such as faster movement, healing, and area of effect damage. This facilitates a fast-paced gameplay where the player is constantly making tactical choices in combat instead of mindlessly clicking abilities to reap benefits. For instance, a movement ability can be used to dash away from a horde of Revenants, creating space to safely activate a healing ability. Conversely, an area of effect ability can be used to create more space for the player to achieve the same effect.
I garnered inspiration from the combat of games such as Kingdom Hearts and God Of War, as these games design combat in such a way that encapsulates the personality of their protagonists. For instance, Sora utilizes fast, graceful movements to deliver a flurry of attacks. Kratos prefers to deliver killing blows with minimal, brutish attacks. With Avernus, I wanted to encapsulate years of combat experience by animating him so that he puts his entire body weight into his swings and dashes to maximize the leverages of his blows.
Avernus' magical hammer, Purga, allows him to restore 5% of his mana after the last swing of "Divine Onslaught".
Clicking three times enables Avernus to deliver a three-hit attack combo. The last swing hits multiple enemies.
Avernus channels the speed of lightning to dash forward, demolishing anything in his path.
Avernus draws energy from the depths of Acheron, restoring 30% of his health and summoning an ethereal hammer that kills enemies around him for 20 seconds.
Avernus summons the Hammer of Perdition, oblitering enemies in front of him with hellfire.
Avernus summons the Hammer of Salvation, bringing upon a thunderstorm that decimates everything in a large radius. He heals 100% of his health.
I found that role-playing games that rely on abilities to drive combat, such as Dragon Age: Origins, were too repetitive. It was mostly static, wherein players would stand in one spot auto-attacking an enemy while occassionally pressing other buttons to activate abilities.
I implemented more dynamic a combat system where players could swing their weapons manually instead of auto-attacking. To divert away from the passive nature of clicking abilities in older role-playing games, I developed a more engaging ability system that provided players with utility and tactical benefits.
I gathered playtesters of various gaming experiences, ranging from avid role-playing gamers to non-gamers. This was done to investigate whether players from both ends of the spectrum were able to quickly grasp the game mechanics to formulate unique strategies with abilities.
To facilitate fast-paced gameplay, cooldowns for abilities were relatively short and the mana costs were low. This caused players to spam abilities without much drawback; for example, players were able to use their ultimate ability, "Salvation," multiple times in one wave.
Such exploits were resolved by balancing the mana cost and cooldown in relation to ability's power. Abilities like "Salvation" were given a high cost and cooldown due to being able to wipe out multiple enemies in a vast radius, as opposed to abilities like "Perdition" and "Thunderstride" which dealt damage to enemies in a much smaller radius.
Playtesting results depict that the spawn rates (the spawn time and spawn amount) during the initial phases of the game were too fast, which caused players to become overwhelmed during the first few waves. Thus, players were blindly using abilities and playing very imprudently due to frustration.
This was addressed by decreasing the spawn time from 0.5 seconds to 2 seconds per Revenant spawned. The amount of Revenants spawned per wave was also decreased slightly. As a result, players were able to ease into learning the game's mechanics and the purpose of each ability.
Initially, each swing of "Divine Onslaught" restored mana and was able to hit multiple enemies. Many players resorted to just using this ability due to its low risk, high reward nature. Thus, the other abilities were ignored due to putting players in a compromised state when using them.
To remedy this issue, "Divine Onslaught" was altered so that only the last swing would restore mana and deal damage to multiple enemies. This made players manage their mana and time their attacks more prudently. As a result, the other abilities began to see more usage.
Players were able to quickly grasp that the abilities synergized with one another. A common tactic was to utilize "Thunderstride" to get away from a horde to safely use "Hellfire Flux."
This was exactly what I intended to invoke in my game design. What I also noticed was veteran role-playing gamers would use the map's terrain to their advantage - they would position themselves in narrow pathways to create choke points and use area of effect abilities to flush out large hordes.
I wanted to challenge myself and create a 3D role-playing game in my first game engine, Unreal Engine 4. I gave myself four months to incorporate all of the aspects I loved about role-playing games and develop a simple, replayable game with engaging and satisfying combat mechanics. This project was also a means for me to further bolster my skills as a game developer and designer.
I scripted the entirety of the game including the enemy AI, the wave system, and the combat system. From this, I was able to become a more efficient scripter - I could now utilize visual scripting as a testing method to create pseudo-scripts before programmatically coding them in future projects. Thus, being able to visualize how scripts were linked together enabled me to understand the programming side of scripting more.
The process of this project was never linear, as I constantly iterated on this project based on feedback from playtesters. In hindsight, it was extremely ambitious of me to create a 3D game on an engine I've never used before.
Even so, I was able to overcome the steep learning curve by setting goals to accomplish by the end of every week, be it learning how to efficiently use the Blueprint System or learning how to animate characters. I would dedicate at least 2 hours of my day reading documentation and watching tutorials.
From this experience, I also learned the importance of perseverance. There were days where I would ask myself, "Why am I doing this? This is too much for one person." Nevertheless, I conquered that mentality in hopes of seeing my vision come to life and seeing players enjoy my game.