PROJECT ERIS is a 2D top-down action-adventure mobile game, where the player progresses through levels that have interesting puzzles to solve, all while combatting the unknown. Throughout the game, players will be utilizing various mechanics to solve puzzles, finding meta physical creatures to battle and earning rewards to show off their triumphs.

Throughout this deep dive, I’m going to talk about three key features that make this project stand out, details of current and future development shenanigans. If you haven’t checked out the actual project page, you can do so here.

Let’s Talk Features

Character Abilities

Off the bat, characters can have up to three different abilities. Light, Heavy and Super. Some characters have all three, some have only two of them and some have none of them. From Light to Super, the different abilities generally go up in potency and have increasing cooldowns the more potent they are. So, if you have a rather strong Super Ability, you might wanna think twice before using it. Might be a while before you can use it again.

During development of this system, characters needed a way of differentiating their abilities, how did it interact with the world around them? To get around this, I implemented ability behaviours. These behaviours defined how an ability would interact with the environment around it. Behaviours included but not limited to are: area of effect (AOE), releasing projectiles, summoning objects. The behaviour of an ability mostly defines what its power fantasy is about. 

However, two different characters can both have an AOE ability, what makes their abilities different from each other? A challenging aspect of this system was trying to make each ability feel unique from other abilities of the same behaviour. An answer was the Effects System. This system is associated with the Character Ability system, which means each ability can have its own set of effects defined for it. The result of this was having an ability behaviour that could have endless effect combinations to make it actually feel different from another ability of the same behaviour.

Boss Battles

Bosses. You either get along with them, or you hate their guts. The goal for boss battles was to create a fight that felt unique for every boss and to create an enticing moment-to-moment gameplay for the player. This motive is heavily inspired from some of Destiny’s grandest raid bosses. If any of you reading this have played some of the raids from those games, you’ll know what I am talking about (I’m looking at you Last Wish).

Since this game obviously isn’t on the scale with something like Destiny, I broke down what Destiny had done with its boss fights and scoped it down by a lot. I identified and implemented three key concepts: pre-damage phase setup, actual damage phases and wipe mechanics.

In the pre-damage phase setup, players do a series of tasks in order to ‘set up’ the fight with the boss. The setup includes utilizing different mechanics to advance the fight which eventually starts a damage phase against the boss. When a damage phase starts, the player is given a window of time to do damage to the boss all while being left to their own devices. During this time the boss will be active, how the boss behaves during this time will be up to the specific boss in question. Once a damage phase is over, the player will have to go through the pre-damage phase setup again in order to start another damage phase (if the boss isn’t already dead that is). Wipe mechanics are specific set of rules that are met in order to fail a boss fight, a failure condition that is triggered. E.g. not inserting the right key into a terminal will cause a wipe. When a wipe happens, players will have to restart the fight from the very beginning.

Loot

While playing, combatants can drop items that can help the player and also can be used to enhance their characters. Items have a certain probability to drop when you defeat a combatant. Some items drops all the time, some have a rare chance of dropping. The probability of an item dropping correlates to how valuable that specific item is. If the item in question is somewhat overpowered, you can be sure that it will be a rare drop. 

For the demo, you won’t expect to see any crazy rewards that you need to chase. But the goal is to give players loot to chase for. E.g. enemy combatants frequently drop health pads but a certain boss drops an item that, upon consuming, constantly regenerates the player’s health for 30 seconds.

Current Development Shenanigans

Right now a demo is set to release pretty soon, the estimated time frame is late February 2023. It was originally estimated to release in November of 2022, however that was an over estimate and hence the demo release had to be pushed back.

Obstacles arise when going through development. This project is no different. Bugs pop up and then are fixed a day or two later, only to have even more bugs show up. Development has been rough, but things are slowly coming into place now that a demo is around the corner. 

Currently, I am just fixing bugs and trying to have a stable build of the demo that doesn’t crash every so often. I am also using this time to make sure the assets in the demo, like enemies, environment and art, are of a presentable quality. The intention here is that publishers will probably try this demo out and when they do, it should be of presentable quality.

Future Development Shenanigans

Next month, I am going to start setting up a Kickstarter campaign. The goal with this is to have the funds raised from the campaign aid development of the project to a completed product.

While the demo is out, I will be listening and collecting a lot of feedback. A primary way I will be doing this is through a forums page that users can post their feedback on. This forums page is still a work in progress but should be up by the time the demo releases. I won’t only be looking at forums though. Other ways I will be collecting feedback includes our socials. Why not post some feedback on Twitter, maybe Discord too (discord server coming soon?)

I will be fine tuning the demo and polishing it to the brim based on all the feedback. After that has been done I can start contacting publishers where the demo can be presented in a pitch meeting.

A Final Note