The FlyBot came to be as I was thinking on how to create an enemy that needed to be very different to the first, ground based, grunt I implemented. But since then it has become what I consider the most iconic enemy in the game. Other in the team have a different opinion. To each his own, I guess
.
After the first pass at implementation, the FlyBot came with three modifications. One of them was a
head cover that allowed it to withstand four frontal hits before shattering, and that gave the brittle enemies a little bit of staying power.
The other two modifications were incompatible between them, since they were weapons (the head cover is compatible with every other modification the FlyBot has, since it doesn't take the weapon slot). One of them, the one in the render above, was the
drill. FlyBots with a drill charge towards Heart after a short warning period. It´s a fast, long charge, and yes, you better get out of their way!
The second weapon can be seen in
this early video, along with the drill and the head cover (also notice how murky and brown the game looked like then!) As you can see, the cannon is a ranged weapon that happens to hurt the enemies as much as it hurts Heart. It brings new dynamics to a fight with a cannon FlyBot, since normally you want to kill this enemy last, so you can use its attacks to damage other enemies (but be precise when timing those rolls, or you can get caught in the explosion).
With those three modifications done, the first pass at the FlyBots was done. I kept working on other parts of the game that needed attention, before returning to them a couple months ago. When I came back it was time to create the color variants (I'll explain in a post soon how these colors serve as visual shorthands for enemy resistances) and give them two more weapons so they could offer more varied gameplay.
The first of these new weapons is the
Saw. It differs from the drill in that it's dangerous when the FlyBot is not charging towards you. See, it damages Heart on contact, so you have to be careful about hitting the enemy from a long enough range. And when they hover over you, they deny you the ability to jump (well they don't deny it, but you better not jump...). It might look harmless now, but when you fight them in-game, you´ll realize how vicious they are...
The other weapon (if we can call it that) is a little different.
The Field Enhancer doesn't hurt Heart, but it makes the FlyBot hover over another enemy, creating a shield that makes said enemy invulnerable. The only option is to attack and kill (or drive away) the FlyBot so that the shield deactivates. This Field Enhancer is the first weapon we implemented that actually allows enemies to interact with each other in meaningful ways. This allows for more varied waves for the player to beat, and for emerging behavior and strategies to appear during gameplay.
