Summoning Survivor | RLIZA’s blog

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Design Background

The theme for this Ludum Dare game jam is "summon", which means to call forth. Inspired by Vampire Survivor, we wanted to attempt an anti-survival design that could reflect the theme of "summoning" and verify the feasibility of the gameplay of an anti-vampire survivor. However, after contemplation and discussion, we found that such a game might offer an RTS-like(Real-Time Strategy Game) experience, which could be a bit too complex for a short-term project in a game jam. Therefore, we decided to simplify its operations, allowing players to focus on summoning-related decisions, reducing the pressure on controlling the summoned creatures, and truly enjoying the fun of summoning. The core gameplay loop that should be presented in the end is to summon monsters, defeat enemies, and advance, and the game is lost when the demon king's health is reduced to 0.

Design Approach

Control Method

After deciding on the game genre, we needed first to consider how to control the demon king. In traditional RTS games, players often need to move the camera to overview the battlefield and manipulate some units to perform specific actions, ultimately achieving certain strategic goals. We hope to simplify this, which includes two aspects: the movement of the demon king and the act of summoning. First, we simplify the player's control part, allowing the player to control the demon king to move in a vertical direction. By simplifying from two dimensions to one, we hope to reduce the pressure on the player's information input side, allowing the player to focus more on summoning. In addition, we attempt to control the behavior of the summoned creatures through simple AI, allowing the player to summon monsters to fend off the hero's attack and push forward. In the end, we settled on this control method that simplifies movement and emphasizes summoning and began prototyping.

Summoning Method

After creating the most basic summons, we felt that simply summoning different types of monsters wasn't particularly interesting, as we hadn't yet considered the cost and benefits of summoning. Common economic systems require a lot of time for design and iteration and may shift the player's focus on learning. Because they would spend more time and energy thinking about which monsters to summon and meticulously managing the in-game economic resources, thus neglecting the fun of summoning itself—which is not the design we wanted.

Inspired by HellDivers2, our programmer proposed a summoning method—summoning could be implemented by detecting through a series of key combos, with more complex commands able to summon stronger monsters! This suggestion truly inspired us—we could combine the cost and benefits of summoning with the method of summoning itself. Thus, the summoning cost could be reflected in time, meaning players would need to spend time thinking and choosing the summoning method and then performing the corresponding input operations. In this process, players would face certain risks, such as enemies getting very close to the demon king, time being very tight, and players failing to summon monsters if they make a mistake, leading to game over. On the contrary, if the summoning is successful, they can obtain powerful monsters and continue to advance, which well reflects the principle of risk and reward coexistence! With this excitement, we continued to think about other summoning methods and ultimately designed four types of summoning: clicking the mouse, drawing patterns, sequence key inputs, and voice inputs, with the ability of the summoned creatures and the benefits of summoning increasing in order—directly proportional to the difficulty of completing the summoning with this method. Through this design, we hope to guide players to gradually try new summoning methods. To familiarize players with various summoning methods as much as possible, we designed different draggable UIs to display different summoning methods, making these interfaces as distinct as possible, and trying to create a mysterious experience akin to "summoning."

Clicking Mouse

Clicking the left of the mouse is the most basic summoning method, and the summoned monster's strength is relatively low.

Drawing patterns

Drawing patterns can summon more advanced monsters. But you need to draw a line which is long enough!

Sequence Key Inputs

Through key presses, players can summon two types of creatures: turrets and demon warriors.

Turrets can serve as powerful ranged units, repelling enemy units and combating enemy ranged units, helping players better defend an area.

The demon warrior, as the name suggests, is a mirror image of the enemy unit warriors that the player could summon. It can act as an elite melee unit to help the player advance.

Voice Inputs

After designing the first three summoning methods, we realized that players lacked a powerful emergency measure, such as a skill to clear enemies within a specific area. Therefore, we decided to design a meteorite spell, which means voice inputs could summon meteorites to launch a wide-area attack on enemies.

Resource Limitations

After implementing the four summoning methods, we found that without resource limitations, players tend to become dependent on one specific summoning method. Although there is no economic system, we still hope to avoid this situation and guide players to learn other summoning methods as much as possible. Therefore, we decided to add a resource bar for each summoning method, such as an overheated bar for mouse clicks. When this summoning method is overused, it will overheat and become unavailable until it cools down and then can be used again. The other three summoning methods will enter a cooldown state after being used once and only can be used again after they finish cooling down. Through this design, we have constructed a relatively stable and reasonable summoning system.

Enemy Design

Drawing inspiration from traditional DND (Dragon and Dungeon) class designs, we created the most basic four professions for our enemies: Warriors, Rangers, Mages, and Clerics, each possessing abilities for melee attack, long-range single target attack, long-range area attack, and healing, respectively. By designing these diverse abilities, we hope that players will contemplate the priority of their attack targets, meaning players need to strategically summon powerful monsters in certain locations to eliminate high-threat enemy units first. At the same time, since we want to maximize the fun of summoning, requiring players to summon as many monsters as possible, we decided to make the enemies more powerful—equipped with higher attack capabilities and health, providing a greater challenge for players.

Warriors

As the most basic enemy units, they can only attack a small area in front of them; and with a high amount of health, they serve a certain frontline function.

Rangers

As the most basic long-range enemy units, they can inflict relatively high single-target damage, with a low Max HP, they will try to evade the summoned monsters. So, players need to focus their fire and eliminate them as quickly as possible.

Mages

As powerful enemy units capable of area-of-effect(AOE) attacks, they can cast fireballs for widespread damage; they have low HP and can use a backward flash to evade monsters. It poses a higher threat to players, so it should be prioritized as a target to avoid a significant depletion of summoned monsters.

Clerics

As a support unit for the enemy, it can restore the health of enemy units; it has low health and will try to find and heal teammates whenever possible. By healing enemy units, it can extend the duration that enemy units stay on the battlefield, thus having a lasting impact on the number of the player's summoned monsters. Therefore, players need to eliminate this target as quickly as possible.

Enemy Towns

During the intervals of advancing, players might feel bored, so we decided to introduce some random events, such as generating enemy towns on the way forward. Enemy towns will continuously deploy enemy units, and after capturing a town, a group of enemy units will also appear, bringing new challenges to the players.

Existing Problems and Feedback

The player's strength and sense of achievement are reflected in skill and resource accumulation, so we need to design corresponding in-game and out-of-game resource systems to build a long-term growth experience and motivate players to continue challenging. For example, some players may prefer to stay in place rather than move forward, which is because we have not built an effective in-game growth system and out-of-game resource system. Similar to Vampire Survivors, if players can gain more experience after defeating enemy units to strengthen their summoned units or upgrade their summoning methods, or if they can gain more currency or money after advancing a greater distance, then players will be more willing to move forward.

In addition, based on feedback and suggestions from some players, different UI pages may obstruct the view. We can adjust the game pages and layout, such as referring to the UI layout method in Papers, Please.

Possible Iteration Directions

Continuously adjust the values of summoned units and enemy units, as well as refine the respawn mechanism of enemy units, to ensure a smoother player experience and avoid significant difficulty fluctuations.

Implement an in-game upgrade system and an out-game resource system to enhance players' sense of progression and motivation to advance further.

Revise the UI layout for a clear and efficient presentation of information within the game screen.

Summary

For this game jam, we aimed to create a real-time strategy (RTS) game with an anti-vampire survivor theme. Departing from traditional economic systems, we integrated summoning mechanics with associated costs and benefits, resulting in a more pronounced "summoning" experience. Furthermore, this project highlighted the importance of maintaining a clear and unobstructed UI design that enables players to quickly access relevant information without confusion. Through involvement in part of the gameplay design, programming tasks, and art asset production for this project, I gained valuable insights into formulating effective and reasonable design requirements. Overall, it was an enriching experience.

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