Different forms of defensive tactics

[Rxanadu]

I'm making a game which rewards players with special abilities after killing enemies, similar to the Mega Man series. The thing about these abilities is they're defensive in nature. For example, the first boss rewards the player with a shield ability to protect from projectiles, while another boss gives the player the ability to deploy a decoy to distract enemies. Unfortunately, I've hit a bit of a rut when coming up with new unique abilities (i.e. no duplicates or slight variations of previous abilities). 

 

The game I'm making is a twin-stick shooter with an emphasis on manipulating AI during combat, similar to the upcoming Galak-Z (aside from the aforementioned Mega Man-like abilities gathering system). While the game will have different weapons (earned by defeating mini-bosses in levels), the game also allows the player to complete the entire game without picking up any new weapons. Thus I included the defensive abilities to alleviate any stress doing a one-weapon run of the game. However, despite having numerous ideas for different weapons and their uses on the battlefield, I've been struggling to make any other defensive abilities for quite some time. The best I can think of is making the player temporarily invisible, but that's just a variant on the aforementioned decoy ability.

 

What kind of other abilities can you guys think of to fill up the roster of defensive abilities in my game? I'd like to know, as I don't want my game to be nothing more than a brain-dead shoot-em-up.

[Ninety-Three]

To list a few I've seen:

• An always-on bullet-time bubble that makes nearby projectiles slow down.
• Regular old bullet time.
• An activated ability that destroys all projectiles on screen.
• I once played a bullet hell where there was an ability that prevented nearby enemies from shooting. It made for an interesting tradeoff: stay near groups to disable their weapons, but then you have to avoid crashing into the enemies you put yourself near.
• Leave a trail of fire when you move, damaging enemies that touch it. Normally this is just a way to get more damage, or trivially kill fragile enemies, but you mentioned the game is about manipulating AI, and if the AI were programmed to not just charge headlong into a fifty foot line of fire, I could imagine it being used tactically.
• Lastly, I've never been a fan of this one myself, but if you're on a healthbar instead of one-shot kills, there's always the old "retaliate when damaged" ability, which you can have trigger any effect you want.

[Spenny]

I really like Bayonetta's defensive gameplay. It's a single button press to dodge an enemy's attack, and doing so with perfect timing grants you a bullet time bonus to attack enemies. Maybe there is something there for you to take.

[itsamoose]

I don't know if this qualifies as defensive but a few games use polarity (red damages blue, blue damages red, etc) like Outland and some famous shoot 'em up whose name escapes me right now.  Have you though about defensive movement abilities?  Something like a dodge, teleport, position reversal, grappling hook, etc.  I would imagine looking through the heroes in some of the more popular Lords Management games would gather some cool ideas.  Off the top of my head I would suggest chaff/countermeaure of some sort, mind control, reflecting shield, time rewinder, an ability that traps bullets to be released later, a vortex/local gravity pull, and an ability that splits the ship apart then pulls the two pieces back together.

[Mawd]

I think itsamoose has a good point with looking at how Lords Management games deploy defensive abilities.

I like the idea of a shadowstep where an illusion is placed at the initial point the player stands in while they are teleported backwards a short distance. The illusion could taunt, tank the hit, or simply be a cool afterimage for the player.

I guess that's more of a thing for games with melee in them although there are still applications for a shooter.

You could for example have an ability that freezes foes in a short area while making them immune from player damage to avoid a complete ez mode while still offering creative ways to dispose of them.

I'm assuming its a 2D game. You might want to look at a game like Strider which does fun things with player abilities and defensive timing while keeping the main combat attacks the same throughout.

You could also look at a game like Mark of The Ninja for manipulating AI in nonviolent ways.

Even just the ability to do a double jump or something more like a wall grapple would be a good defensive ability. Having unlocked movement based abilities could also help with player exploration as parts of a level are made available.

 

I'm shooting in the dark though; I never played Mega Man.

[Gaizokubanou]

I really like Bayonetta's defensive gameplay. It's a single button press to dodge an enemy's attack, and doing so with perfect timing grants you a bullet time bonus to attack enemies. Maybe there is something there for you to take.

 

Yep, if your game is fast enough, a super simple mechanic that is layered in timing context can do wonders.

 

@Rxanadu

Another thing you could explain to us is exactly what the enemies are doing to you as a player... defense is all about lessening the oncoming attacks, so it would help to know exactly what kinds of attacks are heading towards the player.

 

And there are many ways to deal with projectiles.  You mentioned a shield that protects player... protect how?  Does the projectile disappear?  Does it slow down the projectile?  Does it reflect the projectile?  These might sound like lame 'minor alterations' but if game is hectic enough (twin stick shooters ought to be, slow ones are often really dull) this is all pretty critical and layer them in with more abilities and it's even more important.

 

Like you said you weren't too impressed with possibility of adding invisibility cause it's too similar to decoy... if your game has AOE abilities and melee enemies, decoy can be significantly more useful to bunch them up for easy killing.  Or if enemies shoot in such wide pattern that even with decoy you are in danger of getting hit by strays... maybe invisibility would turn the ai 'off', again completely different.

 

Regardless, all this is just too speculative without knowing more details about the rest of the game, like how entities in the game moves and attacks.

 

Edit: Maybe I came off too aggressive, so I'll try to do something more constructive by sharing examples of why specifics matter a lot when I 'announce' my game in progress here in few days instead of just being a hardass.