CoronApocalypse #3: Running + Skills + Status Afflictions

This update is the start of adding skills and afflictions. These things would be streamlined later, but they were a start.


With basic attacks done, the next easiest thing seemed like it would be the ability to run. Each player character can run, and when successful the entire party vacates the premises leading to losing the battle. Each enemy can turn around on its own and leave the battle, forcing it’s comrades to continue the fight. There’s no logic and run prevention at the moment. In a way it’s forgiving, to have the ability to bail from any battle whenever you want. The original logic behind enemies running was giving each enemy turn a 5% chance to run, but things get changed.


The original mock-up had an infected status since CoronApocalypse is a game about a virus in a grocery store, so that was the next thing to be added. I suppose this would be more of a case that the virus is on you and not in you. The infected status doesn’t damage per turn like traditional games of this nature, instead it damages once every 5 seconds (and now more since I am writing this postmortem). The infection takes out a flat rate of base damage + 5% of health so you have a minimum of 20 turns to get disinfected, to a sink or sanitizer to remove the affliction. If you waste time with inefficiency, that’s more damage incured until you can leave the battle and reach a soapy sink savior.

Since run was added, it became far easier to add skills for turns. Enemies were given an “Infect” skill, which has a 90% chance to infect at the cost of giving up a possible critical hit. There is also an Infect All skill for the more powerful foes. In addition, each enemy has its own 5 – 10% chance of infecting the player’s characters.


Status ailments give players and enemies a specific outline that indicates who has what. The player’s interface will change the player to that color, damage numbers have that same color., bubbles rise from the afflicted. This goes a long way to make the game look more dynamic and give the player feedback. Infected and other status ailments have a minimum duration time followed by a random chance to remove the ailment.

Rudy and Mom can afflict their foes. Rudy has an aerosol flame thrower for lack of a better term that can strike enemies with a burn status. Mom’s limit can also give a burn. The burn works more like traditional poison in role playing games and can only be done to enemies. Burn gives damage for each turn at the same rate infected does. Instead of a green color it is maroon, which seems to fit the color palette better than the bright green.


Speaking of player feedback, screen shake was added to critical hits. While it would have been simple to shift the view around a central point, that would result in black pixels behind the screen. Instead, I went for a constant, always drawn surface screen, and when the screen shakes, a second screen gets drawn at 50% transparency to give it more of a static vibration. It’s probably untrue to the old school roots, but it gives CoronApocalypse a different feel to it.


Stay safe and wash your hands.

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