Hi there, Thank heavens for RPS for showing me this wonderful game.
You're touching upon a niche that is barely touched, formation combat. Perhaps the only ones i've seen come in the form of hoplite games, but they were barely executed properly. Yours however, appears to hit it just right despite its Shmup build and with cute pixel graphics as well
I've tried the second build so far. It is easy to gain doppel soldners if you manage to play early game correctly, but mid to late game scenarios are hard to generate them as casualties are more common.
So, I think I solved my doppel soldier design problem. I didn't like what I'd made up until now for multiple reasons; my little crossbow guys with the shields felt BETTER than the zweihander sword guys but they still felt awkward. They feel effective, but not more effective enough to make them not just feel like a pointless tacked on thing. Making the zweihander guys more powerful, made them feel better, but made them TOO powerful and broke the game (once you have a couple of them you can just pound their button to beat anything without thinking).
Then I realized that your doppel soldiers are supposed to be like a power up in a shmup but I've kind of been treating them like weaker version of a "bomb" in a shmup. Usually when you get a powerup in a shmup it's not something that you have to press a new button for to activate or that you have to think of when to use, it's just a modifier to your regular attack to make it better or different in some way. So thinking about it that way, I think I'll just make them modify your normal two attacks, Pike and Shot.
So the zweihander guys, they will attack guys who are infont of your pikes when you have your pikes down, thus modifying your pike attack to make it better (kills guys pikes can't usually kill by slashing at them). The crossbow guys (arbalists) will come forward and drop their shields and loose off bolts whenever you have your shot forward, reloading and shooting when ever you're still and picking up their shields and relocating them whenever you move. I like this because it makes there a point to gaining more of them one at a time because you basically get a bigger and bigger shield that blocks one projectile but doesn't stop melee guys so it sort of fits the overall feel of the game, "you should generally deal with melee guys with pikes when your shot are endangered by them".
I'm going to try this out and see if I like it better. I hope it works out because I really don't like how you have to use a different input to trigger doppel soldiers right now and I don't like how you have to think too much about when and how to use them. It's too complicated, and it doesn't add enough.
I like that idea. On my repetitive plays, I get the tendency to spam the doppel dash, allowing me to catch skirmishers which makes me not reliant on my arquebusiers. As you've said, this is not ideal as it basically turns into a steam roll.
I'm excited for future builds with harder levels (more hordes or more elaborate enemy formations), but the demo's difficulty is adequate for now.
On later levels, do you think we'd see enemy pike blocks as well? How would pike vs pike combat even work? Two opposing pikemen having a chance percentage of beating one another?
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