Cut Content: Enemies

Okay, so this is a pretty broad category of features, so it wouldn't be right to say that enemies are completely cut. Really, it's just this specific approach to enemy design that didn't work out very well- and so these placeholder green moving blocks were removed from Antarctic Alcove and replaced by bomb blocks. The two GIFs above were recorded in the summer of 2021, while the GIFs below were all recorded in January 2022.

Originally, this Antarctic Alcove had three focal mechanics: pinning, icicles, and these basic green goomba-like enemies. The idea was that you had to burst into them from behind or above in order to defeat them; a simple stomp wouldn't do anything. In practice, it was hard to force interactions with these grounded enemies, as the player would often be able to avoid the entire path the enemy walked.

Here, the player needs to kill the enemy by triggering the icicles from above. However, this wasn't very obvious in playtesting, and players would often just try to brute force through the enemy. (And it would sometimes work!)

This specific room was annoying for playtesters, as the enemies were never really a threat, but they would sometimes push the player into the icicles. In hindsight, I should have made the enemies instantly kill the player- like the icicles, which were very annoying when they didn't do that.

When the intial level draft was completed, I wasn't very satisfied with the use of these basic enemies. They barely interacted with the level's focal mechanics, and were more annoying than interesting. Because this game could be played at any speed, room elements that moved on their own would wind up at different positions from attempt to attempt, (as the player would move at different speeds during each attempt), creating a feeling of inconsistency.

Learning from this experience, I do have some ideas on how to sidestep these pitfalls next time- and even how I might attempt a boss fight. For now though, I think I'd rather focus my efforts elsewhere.