Feather Fall, an Action RPG Hack and Slash
Featherfall is an action RPG Hack and Slash. The player has four different abilities as well as a simple attack that can be used three times in a row in order to get a wider finishing attack that can strike more targets. The first ability is a dash that moves the player a short distance in the direction it is currently traveling. The second ability whirlwind attack damages all targets around the player and briefly push them back. The third ability is a crowd control ability that gathers all the enemies in range and pulls them away from the player working as both a defensive and offensive ability. There is a passive ability that adds a stacking debuff to the enemy whenever it takes damage from the player. When an enemy reaches 3 stacks of the debuff the fourth ability which is an execute becomes available. When the player uses the execute all enemies with 3 stacks of the debuff dies.
Dash
This gif is showing how the dash ability works. The player quickly dashes in the direction it is moving regardless of where the camera is looking. This makes the ability great as both a defensive and an offensive ability. When the enemies catch up to the player they immediately start to surround the player making it rather tricky to strike all the enemies with a simple attack and whirlwind attack will only hit those that are closest to the player. However, if the player first uses the dash to get into the swarm of enemies they get the opportunity to hit all enemies with both the simple attack and the whirlwind before the enemies gets a chance to spread out and surround the player.
Whirlwind
The whirlwind ability is a strictly offensive ability that swipes around the player and deals damage to all enemies that are within range, it also briefly knocks the enemies back. It deals twice the damage of a normal attack and grants one stack of the passive debuff.
Crowd control
The crowd control ability works like a tornado that the player sends out which pulls all enemies in range towards it and then drags the enemies with it as it travels away from the player. This is a versatile ability that is useful both offensively to stack all the enemies and make it easier to take them all out and as a defensive ability to keep yourself alive when there is to many enemies.
Execute
This gif is showcasing the execute ability which is only available when atleast one enemy has gotten three stacks of the passive debuff (the spears above the enemies). It is also showing how the passive works and how the abilities lowers all other abilities cooldowns. Every time an ability is used it lowers the cooldown of all other abilities by two seconds. This means that even if an ability has no clear use in a certain situation it might still be worth using to lower the cooldown of an ability that the player really needs. Likewise it is also worth keeping in mind that using an ability for that purpose alone has a chance of leaving the player vulnerable as yet another ability will be on cooldown. This is a consideration the player will have to make a lot.
Combat
In the last gif I wanted to show how the player always has the ability to turn a bad situation if he or she uses the abilities effectively and continuously chain them together.
My responsibilities in the project:
In this project I balanced and designed the player abilities and the UI. When designing the abilities I had a few rules in mind. All abilities should feel useful, all abilities should synergize with each other and finally the player shouldn’t feel as though they need to save cooldowns for bad situations. These rules helped a lot when designing the abilities and I beleive it made the abilities feel like a more coherent set of skills in the end.
