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[The Translocator]

Let's say you create an enemy or level feature for a specific part of your game, and then realize later that it interacts well with a different enemy or level feature from a different part of your game. Should you use both, destroying the uniqueness of the two areas by making their level features no longer specific to them, have an area near the end of the game that uses *all* the level features, allowing you to combine them without breaking the uniqueness, but meaning you have to have higher difficulty with the combinations than you originally planned, or just not combine them?

I'm experimenting with different ideas right now and seeing what works and what doesn't, but I'd love to hear input from others.

[ThemsAllTook]

Other options: Reskin and/or slightly tweak the behavior of the thing to fit each location you put it. Shuffle the elements around so that the two you've found that work well together are both in the same area and nowhere else.

How important is it to your design to keep each area unique? I'd rather be able to apply some of what I've learned in one area to the next one than have to learn every game element from scratch each time I go somewhere new.

[The Translocator]

Thanks for the quick response.

My game is a run and gun, so to keep things feeling at least a little bit fresh there needs to be some separation of gameplay into areas. However, I think I'll probably do what you suggested and make alternate versions of the elements that are interesting to combine for the different areas, since that way I can combine them without the risk of becoming stale so quickly.

[Photon]

Mega Man games were very keen on this. They often had a subset of common enemies then small subsets of unique enemies for each of the eight stages. Finally, the final fortress stages would freely pull from all the enemy sets to create new scenarios that took advantage of previously unused combinations. There's the potential to keep things fresh by causing the player to change their approach to familiar enemies while not totally throwing them in hot water (reskinning may cause a loss of familiarity, though not necessarily bad depending on what you want.)

[gunswordfist]

what kind of run n gun?

[The Translocator]

what kind of run n gun?

The gameplay is like the platforming from Megaman plus weapons similar to those in Quake (as well as the normal pellet gun) with ducking like in Zelda 2 and Metroidvania progression.

Right now there are only three enemies (hives that spawn a bunch of bugs, horizontally firing turrets, shield robots, and slimes), slopes, environmental hazards (blocks that move when you're in their "line of sight", spikes), lava and water, but only because I want to make them work exactly as I want them to before I add more. I initially planned on having the shield bots stay in the second area and the hives stay in one of the later ones (I'm making all the areas simultaneously so I don't get bored.) but I just discovered how much synergy there is between shields and hives- so I'll probably use them together near the endgame. I think I'm going to vary the turrets a bit between areas, though, to keep things fresh.

[Alec S.]

My suggestion would be to wait a few levels before re-introducing the earlier enemy.  That way the player can have a moment of "oh, hey, that guy is back."  It still feels like something from the earlier level, rather than something that just started showing up during that first level.