Devlog 3 – Powerups

In our original proposal for prolonged, one of our main promises was a completed powerup system similar too hades and in the past week, I’ve been developing exactly that feature: Powerups.

Why Develop this now?

The reason this feature is important, and why we still want to implement it despite being this late in, is that it impacts both the narrative and gameplay originally promised.

Narrative

• It’s the idea of changing and replacing yourself with an ideal standard of what you should be, something that we wanted to reenforce though quite literal changing abilities and your own strength with addictive power.

Gameplay

• The goal that was originally promised was, was to make this game a roguelike, where the levels and abilities are somewhat random adding an amount variation to the gameplay. Powerups deal with one of the big issues we’re facing, our gameplay is rather stale. Though this wouldn’t be entirely fixed with powerups, it would be helped by adding some amount of “uniqueness” to our combat system.

The White Blood System

Concept Inspiration

This system draws inspiration from Neon White’s card-based abilities, where players juggle several temporary powerups that deplete with use. I wanted to capture that temporary power dynamic but tie it directly to our Blood Meter. With all this in mind I had some 3 core goals when building this system:

1. Minimal asset 
2. Fast implementation
3. Ease of balance design wise and coding

The White Blood System

How it works

• Elite Enemies can spawn in encounters, boasting one of there stats damage, speed, or health.
• Killing an elite enemy absorbs their enhanced stats as White Blood.
• White Blood in the player's blood meter, both visually and mechanically reinforcing the urge to keep it filled so you continue using the power.
• Once White Blood depletes, the powerup effect ends.
• Gaining more of the same type of blood, enhances its boost, showcased by icons beside the Heart Monitor

Showcasing the System

Elite Enemy Types

White Board Concepts

Elite variants can appear randomly in encounters, each with increased stats in one of three areas:

• Damage Boost
• Speed Boost
• Health Boost

They will be pretty much visually shown the same as normal enemies but with a white material (with the enemy prefab when in). In later installments I'd love to add more visual ques to elite enemies but due too time its not really possible at the moment.

(Code snippet demonstrating elite stat boosts)

White Blood Visualization

White blood is the visual showing of when the white blood is effecting the player, the idea was too show it being directly attached to the player blood, both narratively and mechanically having the player want too fill the meter with this special blood. Players will hold there powerups as long as they have white blood.

Power Icons (Work in Progress)

A planned UI feature: small icons on the right side of the heart monitor, displaying:

• The active powerups you’ve acquired.
• The intensity of each powerup (e.g., a speed icon with a small number in the corner indicating how much faster you move).