This round of work touched three different parts of Castle of the Vampire: making the mobile display easier to read, giving players a clearer picture of nearby threats, and finishing a knockback system that makes explosions affect the dungeon physically.

UX Improvements

Enemies on Sight: I added an element to the HUD to let the player know at a glance what enemies are currently in sight; it’s a panel that sits in a thin strip beneath the map. Enemy colors also communicate burning or frozen status. For now, there’s an option in the settings panel to disable it but I think I’ll keep it; too many options for the player are designer cowardice, I think.

-More- Prompt: Whenever the messages area fills or when something important happens, I’m stopping the game to let the player have a better idea of what is going on – to give them a chance to read.

Extended Message log: Added a command for players to check out up to 100 messages into the past.

Status indicator color: The player’s icon is now painted in colors based on status effects (on fire, poisoned, weakened, etc).

Shorter attack animation: Made the player attack animation simpler removing the “slash” icon and leaving only the “hit” mark.

Fixed an issue which was preventing the big characters mode from filling all the screen height in mobile.

More Work in Explosions

The first change was kind of a mix between visuals and gameplay, making sure the effects of the explosion were shown on sync with its growing fireball animation, including how the chained explosions are queued so the sequence of events is clear to the player (in conjunction with the -more- prompt)

The more substantial gameplay change today was the explosion knockback; now an explosion doesn’t merely deal damage, it physically throws the player and enemies away from the blast, causing shock damage if the creature hits a wall, or another creature.

Additionally, knockback can throw creatures into hazards they might otherwise have avoided:

• Water: The player drowns if thrown into water. Creatures that cannot fly or swim drown as well.
• Pit spikes: A creature landing on spikes dies. If the player lands on them, he takes damage and climbs out.
• Flying creatures: Fliers pass over water and pit spikes instead of suffering their effects.
• Water creatures: Creatures that belong in water stay in their element.

These rules make explosions more than another source of damage. A blast near a pit, water, or a narrow passage can have consequences determined by the layout and the creatures involved. Hopefully a source for emerging stories.

I also improved the visuals of the Nova Shard item by reusing part of the explosions logic, and fixed a black screen happening when the player died on an explosion in mobile.