Darkborn is a hack and slash game with platform elements developed by Starquake in which the combat shows the double nature of the character that the player must adapt to his style of play
Status: Abandoned – Oct 2017
Combat designer
I was the main designer in charge of combat and characters design in this project, designing and implementing several mechanics
Fighting Engine
In the Bax & Rowny and Darkborn projects, I designed a combat system that allowed to set on the time of the animations: the instants of impact, type of hitbox, damage, recovery, buffer input, transition to other attacks or states of the character and enemies…
Together with the programming department we integrated a own engine on UE4. We developed the system in the first project and we optimized and evolved it in Darkborn, allowing any designer to design and prototype any action or state that they wanted to implement for a character without the need to involve art or programming in a simple way modifying a few centralized parameters
Dash in / dash out
The core mechanic of the game, I designed the dash of the character, letting him to change from angel mode (ranged combat and crowd control combos) to demon mode (melee and high dps combat)
When the player changes form from angel to demon, he makes a «dash in» into the enemies. When changes from demon to angel, the character applies a «dash out», throwing him back. Additionaly the dash can be used to move across platforms
One of the features of the dash out is that the character will not be able to fall over edges, because the player does not usually see the area behind the character
Attacks, combos and skills
I designed and implemented all the attacks and combos of the player, focusing the angel combos in low dps and crowd control enemies, like stuns, attract them to a point, kick out, raising them… The demon combos were designed for close combat, focusing in high dps to few enemies or normal dps to a crowd of enemies
The skills were designed in base of the same values, with angel skills focusing in slow down time or healing, and demon skills in destroy enemies
Enemies design
I designed the three enemies who are in the level. All the enemies warn of their attacks so the player can use the dash for evade all incoming damage
I focused in design a putty melee enemy with two attacks, one weak and one strong, which can be placed in crowds
Other enemy was intencionally designed for being beated by combos between angel and demon forms. Without disabling combos of the angel, the enemy can fast counterattack the demon
The last type of enemy was focused on range combat and in disabling the player in aerial combos
Boss design
The boss was designed with an intimidating appearance and fast attacks that require a combat style with quick character form changes and good use of dash mechanics
Javier Hernando Bollain 