I made a video about designing enemies for Epic Battle Fantasy 5 and other RPGs.
I’m gonna try to do a lot more of these on different topics, so follow me on YouTube if you care.
Also, feedback is appreciated!
Kupo Games
Web and mobile games by Matt Roszak.
Do you want to make regular Youtube videos? If you do so, I’ll gladly subscribe to you! I’m really interested by channels that tackle on game design (like Mark Brown’s channel), and if you, an actual game maker, do that, it’ll be very interesting. So, I want to give you my feedback, both on the video format and on the content.
:smirk: The video :
– You have a really high quality video, do you use a camera ? It’s nice and you have a good angle to see interesting stuff in the background. That’s neat.
! In the other hand, I felt that the sound quality wasn’t as good as the video. Do you use a mic ? If you want to make videos on a regular basis, you should probably invest in a good mic, audio quality is always more important than video.
! Also, what you say will be more impactful if you do editing in your video. I really believe it should add dynamism and your content will be more stuctured, too. You can put pictures around you to support your remarks, for example. (as a non-native english speaker, I advise you to write your parts “Step n°1”, “Step n°2”, etc., it will be easier to follow)
– Did I mention you’re handsome ? Because you’re handsome.
:smirk: How do you design ennemies :
– Making design that allows players to easily guess their weaknesses and resistances is clever. It seems obvious but I can see many RPGs with neutral design that can’t really allow the player to think much about it, so it’s good that you’re taking this in consideration.
! It may be a dumb idea, but have you considered to make conterfeit ennemies, ennemies that lures the player into thinking they have a particular weakness, while being resistant or absorbing it? It should be nice near the end-game
– It’s nice to see that you’re really looking forward to make unique types of ennemies. I don’t know if it will be evident for the player to feel that diversity, but it’s still a great idea and I’ll be happy seeing new ennemies.
– Trying to make new gameplay mecanics for the ennemies is neat. I love the concept of ennemies deflecting spells, for instance. Fighting ennemies that plays diferently really add depth in the game, and you’ve already done that in previous games (for example, the monoliths and their charging attacks). Keep going!
! Speaking of deflecting spells, what about making new effects on the 100+% elementary resistance ? For example: A player/ennemy that have an “absorb” type will absorb 20% of the damage value if they have a 120% elementary resistance, while a “deflect” type will make the opponent take 20% of the damage instead. It can allow you to imagine more defensive stategies, like “protect”, where the player/monster would have 20% boost in defense, of “magic’, where they would absorb 20% of their PM.
– Attack patterns. This is a really great idea. You often highlight the fact that strategy is more important than stats in your games, and having ennemies with different behavior will allow players to modulate strategy according to the ennemies (currently, the player has to change equipment more than strategy), and I really feel that this is totally in the spirit of your games. I encourage you to experiment those, it’s a cool idea.
– Also, having different AI for humanoid, beasts, or monsters is also a great idea. It will add depth and a certain feel of realism in the battles. I like it a lot.
– Also also, you came up with interesting strategies. Aiming for the weakest elementary resistance, aiming for the last one who attacked, that’s smart. I’m sure you can find a lot more interesting ideas and I wish you’ll be able to make them in EBF5. I don’t have ideas to submit, sorry :bleh:
– I don’t personaly think reskin is a bad thing, or a lazy process. On the contrary, it allows you to make more ennemies because it takes less time animating it, while still being different. And because of that, having reskins that make monsters more complex and more difficult is a brilliant idea.
! This idea of having a simple ennemy, and then facing a different-looking, more complex ennemy should be really, REALLY interesting for the cats and cats in castles, in my opinion. It’s totally personnal, but I’m convinced they are the most fitting ennemies for that.
I hope it will give you some ideas, I really tried to highlight the positive and give you advices, while making it clear and easy to read. Also, I know my English is good but not perfect, I hope it’s still understandable.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m just using the microphone on my webcam at the moment, which definitely isn’t great. I should try getting a new one. I don’t want to edit the videos because that’s more effort than I’m willing to put into this at the moment.
If you want some insperation for enemies theres these 2 awesome side scrolling spaceship shooter games that have insane boss battles and are fun as hell to play. There’s Phalanxe for the SNES and Einhander for the PS1.
My favorite part is how the enemies break apart as you chip away at them like how you made the golems arms fall off. They aren’t exactly bullethell games but it gets pretty hectic.
Also, are you considering making one of the characters be able to dual wield? Or maybe be able to put a weapon into a special slot that adds properties to certain skills?
love it but
OHHHH
that audio quality though.
You mentioned how the mirror monsters might reflect things, I think it might be like the reflect status in other games, bouncing back magic or damage, hopefully if such of an effect is on monsters, the players can also have the status with either spells or equipment.
That kind of effect adds a lot of strategy both when an enemy has it or when you have a way of adding it to players, like in the Final Fantasy games reflect blocks magic which is both good and bad at the same time (attack spells don’t work, but at the same time healing spells are also blocked, and both get either randomly bounced to the other side or back to the caster). Damage reflect normally is used against physical attacks and sends it back to who attempted the attack, again fun to try and work around that for both players and enemies.
I also wonder what other tactics might be needed with the new monster scripting coming up, it going to be fun experimenting once EBF5 is released.
Awesome! :yay: i would love to see these defiantly subscribed and waiting for the next and i like the ideas you’ve come up with based off the desidngs on the monster dictates how they fight and act and not just being mindless enemy’s and just hit whatever they fancy maybe this can be linked to equipment as well? i think you mentioned about the slime trident sword that it makes small slime run away but angers big slimes maybe other equipment can cause different reactions to enemy’s like a thunder weapon acting as a lighting rod causing all electric base attacks to hit that player? looking forward to the next video stay awesome! :shades:
The enemy design in EBF4 was great, although there are a few things that confused me a bit, like the black turtle enemy being resistant to bombs. Is it just me?
Don’t worry, I don’t understand it too!! :bacon: :bacon:
It would have been great to have some visual examples of the enemies you talked about.
Always fun to hear something behind the scenes. As for feedback I can only give you some small tips.
One thing I noticed is how you look a little more to the bottom right in comparison to the camera. You did keep
it to the point. For me it seemed ro last just long enough for all the stuff you were covering.
I’ll be sure to keep checking for these.
I could get used to this on a weekly basis :hurray: