This week I finished off Challenge Mode, and started working on unlockable characters! I even streamed some of the work, which will be on my Twitch channel for at least a couple weeks. Obviously, that video and this post will contain spoilers for one of the unlockable characters, so I’m keeping spoilers after the break just in case you care about that kind of thing.

In the original Bleed, most characters just added small twists to the gameplay — the idea being they’d add new challenges for experienced players. They weren’t generally well-received and looking back, probably all felt samey. This time, I’m making an effort to have unlockable characters that are varied and interesting, and one of the most wildly different characters is…

…Valentine! Just like Bleed 1, the primary antagonist is an unlockable character.

As you can see, she flies, and is surrounded by a colour-switching shield! Using Valentine will be familiar to anyone who’s played Ikaruga.

In case you don’t love Ikaruga as much as I do — you change the colour of Valentine’s shield at will, using it to absorb bullets of the same colour. Absorbing bullets charges Valentine’s energy meter, and when it’s full she can unleash a devastating laser beam attack.

Valentine does come with some downsides — she can’t slow time or air-dash (the slow-time button switches her shield, and the air-dash button fires the laser.) I think this makes sense balance-wise, since the shield is her defensive option, and ideally the power of her laser should even out the time lost to movement. It also makes sense code-wise, since I want to make all the unlockable characters work with my existing replay system — which means controlling them with only the inputs Wryn uses.

There are other balancing factors I’ve tried to account for. For example, you might hope that by spamming the shield-swap you’ll absorb anything that comes at you. The shield takes a moment to appear after swapping though, so you need to be skillful with your play.

There are lots of other little details that need to be accounted for, too. Lasers use special collision-detection code already, so they needed to be modified to work with Valentine’s shield. They charge her up pretty fast, and they also push you around a bit if you aren’t careful. Other details include her little billowing scarf you might notice in other gifs, and her single-shot bullets being more precise than the constant stream.

In case you can’t tell by my endless jibber-jabber, I’m really enjoying designing new characters. I’ve had so much of the game mapped out for the last 2-3 years, and so much of the work is/has been slow iteration, that it’s really fun to actually design and implement some fresh new systems and rulesets for a change!

I hope you’ve enjoyed getting a little taste of what the unlockable characters might be like. None of them will be playtested or balanced, but I’m hoping to have them all designed and implemented by the end of next week. We’ll see though — as you can tell, a lot goes into each one!