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Designing Powerful Combat
One of my largest design goals was to make the player feel powerful as a wizard. Magic is inherently awesome, and I wanted to exemplify that fact through the combat's design and feel.
Originally, players would have one basic attack and a spell they picked up in the dungeon, fueled by a mana bar for each cast. However, I found this design too limiting for the player's offensive potential. I changed my approach, increasing the number of available spells from two to four. Additionally, I gave each spell a cooldown, forcing the player to adapt their playstyle when spells were unavailable.
To add to the player's power fantasy, I added a dash mechanic to make combat feel snappy, as well as a dynamic camera and screen shake to sell the impact of more powerful spells.
Spell Design: Great Fireball
The Great Fireball is the player's strongest offensive option. Its utility in combat and application of the wizard power fantasy can be broken down into five sections: Raw Power, HitStun duration, Knockback force, cooldown duration, and VFX design.
Raw Power
The Great Fireball does the most damage out of any spell in the player's kit, exploding on contact with any enemy and killing within 2 hits on average. Early playtests of the game showed the fireball dealing too much damage (e.g. 100 hp damage on enemies with 150 health), so I decreased the damage to 50 hp per hit to ensure players weren't clearing enemy waves too quickly.
HitStun Duration
If enemies didn't stagger after getting hit by a massive fireball, the wizard power fantasy falls completely flat. As such, I made the hitstun long enough to ensure that enemies didn't recover too fast, allowing players to pick them off with their other spells in case it didn't annihilate them immediately.
KnockBack Force
The fireball packs a massive punch, and it absolutely needed to send enemies flying across the room to showcase that. As such, I gave the spell the most amount of knockback force in the kit. When deciding the number to use for knockback force, I also had to take wall collision into account; too much force would trap enemies in walls, breaking the game as a result.
Cooldown Duration
The fireball's immense power needed a cooldown to balance it out, preventing the spell from being the player's sole win condition. I tested values between 3 and 8 seconds. At 3 seconds the fireball dominated every encounter; at 8, players felt punished for using their best spell. 5 seconds hit the sweet spot; frequent enough to feel like the wizard's signature move, rare enough to make the other spells matter. The other three spells in the kit were designed around this window, with each one serving a distinct role while the fireball recharged.
VFX Design
The fireball went through three different iterations of explosion effects. I saw to these three iterations personally in Unity's particle editor, despite not being a tech artist by trade. At first I tried a quick flash effect, but it immediately felt too small and weak for the fireball's power. I tried a large spark effect next, but play testers noted that it felt more like a beam effect than a fireball. I learned two lessons from these iterations: the explosion needed to be big, and it needed to be "fiery". For the final iteration, I drew a quick ember in aseprite that would dissipate over time, then used it as a particle texture that would rotate as they moved further away. After adding some screenshake to the mix, the final result looked exactly the way it needed to be.
Unconventional Mechanics
Part-Time Warlock's hook lies in its humorous premise. Therefore, I ensured its mechanics and progression system reflected and satirized "adulting".
I took a unique approach to roguelike gameplay loops; players can only progress through each stage of the game once they've paid their rent in gold Their earned gold is also used to purchase upgrades in their apartment, incentivizing players to earn above and beyond their base paycheck.
Player rewards also play into the adulting theme. For instance; I designed one of the reward rooms as a common workplace break room. The reward is a refrigerated cup of coffee that slows down time.
Old Combat Design
New Combat Design
Great Fireball Showcase (cooldown reduced)
Cooldown reduced for demo purposes. Actual value is 5 seconds
Knockback + HitStun Showcase
Fireball Cooldown Showcase
Fireball VFX Progression
Fire Particle Effect (Iteration 3)
The player's apartment
The "workplace" reward room
Role
Lead Gameplay Designer, Lead Gameplay Programmer
Description
Magic doesn't make you immune to adulting. Part-Time Warlock is a top-down, 2D dungeon crawler about a wizard fighting monsters to pay his rent... lest his landlord steal his soul.
Year
2022 - 2024
Genre
Dungeon Crawler
Technologies Used
Unity, C#
Platform
PC
Part-Time Warlock
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