Combos in my Planetary Roguelike Game!

// Pushing Action Gameplay

I've added a combo system to really help push (no pun intended) more action in my game.

There's still the element of playing tactically, where you pick your fights and use the environment to your advantage, but I just ultimately want to prevent hide and seek gameplay. I already have other ways to prevent this such as:

1. Making the first enemy encountered in the game to seek the players
2. Starting a celestial event like a meteor shower that forces players to keep it moving

A combo counter is just another layer of this and it makes the experience more rewarding.

// Rewards

When players successfully chains a certain amount of kills, I'm designing it so that they get coins to buy upgrades or heals.

If they're really good, they get rewarded with an increased max health or a plain heal.

These rewards are given right away.

// Breaking Chains

Combo chains break when:

1. the timer runs out and the player hasn't killed an enemy
2. the player gets hit

// Small Details

It's like a mini-game within the game.

It adds another challenge, but doing combos is not the focus I want for the gameplay, so I try to express this in my design by not showing the counter unless there had been 5 successful chains.

I don't want players to be afraid of dropping combos.

The same rewards can be earned by focusing on collecting coins.

Again, the combo system is just another challenge.

// Conclusion

Lots to be done still.

Subscribe to support development of the game and check out the rest of the series where I do a major overhaul of Alpha: Omnipresence!

— Renz Rivero

// October Contributors

Special thank you shout out to the following ongoing generous supporters of my work, making a difference in the world and mine.

• Laura Milligan
• Jacob Huang
• Andrew Abrook
• Faiz Prasla
• Armaigne Rivero
• Joshua Ravasco