Clever Girl - The most complex enemy yet

As always, this update is live now and can be played for free in browser at https://isochronalgames.itch.io/timelinegame. Updates like this will be coming out every week, so please follow if you're interested in seeing future updates!

This update mostly centers around a new enemy and the mechanics to support it:

-Fixed a bug that allowed you to start another battle while already in one

-Added support for conditional enemy actions based on position

-Made timelines and enemies move smoothly when they are rearranged

-Added a restart function

-Added a new fight, the Riptears! Based on the raptor, they attack in trios

The Riptear is interesting for a couple reasons.

It was originally supposed to come out before the Thagodon which released last week, but as I designed it I realized it was by far the more complicated to impliment. It also shared a mechanic with the Thagodon (the exposed status), so I released the Thagodon first which got me part way to the Riptear already.

When I originally decided on Dinosaurs as one of the enemy themes, I brainstormed a list of themes that would join them together. These are things that thematically fit with the pop-culture conception of dinosaurs and that I also thought would be a fun challenge. My list for dinos included slow, big hit attacks, high hp, and a lack of defense. You can see all of those in both the Chomposaurus and Thagodon.

However, the Velociraptor is too iconic to not include an analogue for, and also doesn't match any of those descriptors. I thought for a while about what I could do to make it match, but eventually decided it would work better as a foil to the other fights, testing your skills in a different way. It has the lowest health pool of any enemy so far, as a trio they make frequent small attacks, and they dodge constantly.

The first thing I thought of for raptors was the idea of them attacking in trios, with two setting up the player and then the third going in for the kill. The expose mechanic allows one enemy to set up another one to do more damage, but I also wanted to play in to the idea of them weaving and working together. This also had a mechanical reason - if the big hit enemy was always at the front, it would be too easy to kill or stun before it cashed out the expose. So I created the Movement effect, which allows a battler to change their position in the battle.

I haven't made any cards for this because the Player is usually alone and rearranging enemies has limited usefulness. I have some ideas for a summoning archetype in the future that might make use of it though.

As an aside, the first version of the Riptear was laughably overpowered - if you didn't manage to block or avoid any of the trios attacks it would do a total of 61, 150% of the players full health. I'll definitely be wary of any Expose cards I add in the future, they can stack up quickly!

Next up - This upcoming week I want to add my first archetype, one based on Grapple cards! I have some ideas that I think will be a lot of fun.

I'm going to be posting one new Grapple card on my Twitter/X every day until the next update, so give me a follow @IsochronalGames if you'd like to see those! You can also follow me here to see the update next week with the full archetype.

Gifs in this were created using ScreenToGif - thank you ScreenToGif!