Hello, my name is Kuba. Aside from being a Dark Souls  and RPG fan, I am also an indie game developer. And I’ve also been running my little dev-blog on the Fextralife forum.

Dark Souls & Judo

Today I would like to talk about in detail, the combat in Soulblight.  But before we go any further, you need to know one thing about me; I am a martial arts enthusiast :). As a programmer and game designer I spend most of my days in a dark room in front of the screen :P. This way of life is not healthy and so, to balance things out, I train in Judo. You don’t believe me? Here’s a gif of me below, (barely) performing a throw :P.

The thing I love the most about martial arts is the fact that what matters the most is not the strength, but the tactics. This is a different kind of tactics than the one you know from a strategy game though. It’s more like thinking about the plan under the pressure  of things happening right here and now. This is what I wanted for our combat mechanic to be all about. In my experience, tactics in martial arts consists of the following elements:

• Management of Strength
• Distance Control
• Balance Control

Now, let’s talk in more detail about those elements and see how they are represented in Soulblight‘s  game mechanics.

Management of Strength

You have to be careful not to use use all of your strength during a fight. If you do, you will run out of steam very fast and will be easily overwhelmed. The tactics here is about finding the right  moment to catch your breath. This element of fighting has been pretty well represented in gaming through the years by the Stamina mechanics. I’ve decided for it to be a base of combat in Soulblight.

Distance Control

Though stamina management was a relatively obvious thing, the same couldn’t be said about Distance Control. Video games often do away with “clinch combat”. This results in removing a lot of tactical depth. Suddenly, everything boils down to your attack speed and power. Meanwhile in reality, a double handed sword isn’t nearly as useful from up close as it is from afar. When you engage an enemy wielding a heavy weapon, he cannot keep swinging while in a clinch – he needs to find a way to disengage.  To represent this I’ve decided to create a “Grip” mechanic.

During combat, each character is surrounded by a Circle which represent its position on the battlefield. By pressing a button, you can light up a part of it, in the front and activate what we call “the Grip”. When your Grip touches your opponents circle, the characters become engaged in clinch combat. This maneuver, besides linking the characters together, also forces them to use a Secondary attack. Depending on the weapon this attack might be less or  more powerful than the primary attack. The one who wields a more cumbersome weapon now will be forced to find a way to disengage. The easiest way to do it, is by performing a special “Slam” action. But, be careful this maneuver burns a lot  of stamina.

Balance Control

OK, this part of the mechanics is explicitly linked to the martial art that I’m training in :). Judo is about focusing on clinch combat and can be translated as “The path of the least resistance”. The idea is that while engaged, you need to move  in a way to throw your enemy off balance so you can use much less strength to defeat him. How this idea is implemented in Soulblight ? — you ask. When engaged, you cannot move away from the enemy, but you can move around him. By implementing certain level of inertia, depending on how well armored your character is, we’ve allowed the faster character to be able to outmaneuver the heavier foes. This way you can get on the back of the heavier opponents and gain a massive advantage. Although it isn’t easy, it greatly increases your damage as well as prevents the enemy from hitting you with his attacks.

The combat in Soulblight  might look a bit Hack & Slashy at first glance, but the truth is button-mashing won’t get you far. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, I have 3 demo Steam codes reserved for the Fextralife community. If you’re interested in receiving one, let me know in the comment section below and I will send you the key in a private message.

Finally, we are currently running a Kickstarter for Soulblight,  so please visit our Campaigning page if you’d like to learn more about the game.

Cya around,

Kuba

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