This section goes over the simplicity of controls, and a bit about the base gameplay.

Overview

For Chronostasis, the goal for the control scheme was to make sure controls were consistent between both keyboard and gamepad, and making things as easy and accessible as possible. With gamepads having less buttons overall, I spent some time focusing on gamepad over keyboard and mouse controls, but still made sure both were seamless and enjoyable experiences.

This is the control scheme I came up with for gamepad users:

For keyboard and mouse, WASD, the mouse, and space are move, look, and jump respectively, as any other PC game would.
Attack is set to left mouse click, defense options set to both right click and shift, Chronostasis set to F, and interact set to E.

When looking at these controls at a glance, every button has a role to fill, so players can easily find the actions that they want to use without getting confused or overwhelmed with options. By handling the controls this way, it makes it easier for new players to jump in and enjoy the game even if they might not understand the nuance, while still leaving room for players to experiment. This also pushes the game away from requiring players to have a certain level of mechanical skill like a fighting game, and instead lets them focus on the battle in front of them.

To compress attack and defense mechanics to singular buttons, the more specific actions you can use with each are determined by context. What does this mean? For attacks, you can trigger a combo chain with more deadly attacks if you continue to press the attack button, or choose to stop and restart your combo for a safer play. For defense, when you press the button, you can choose between guarding the enemy attacks if you're standing still, or dodge out of the way if you're moving.

Did It Work?

For the most part, the control set up worked phenomenally! Everybody that tried the game was able to jump in and enjoy the experience, whether they were young, just starting to play video games, or a seasoned player.

However, it wasn't without some gripes. The control scheme did seem a little off for some that were used to other kinds of games, and while many were able to adapt over time, some players expressed frustration or questioned the idea to have one button doing all the attacks, or not separating the dodge and block actions to their own respective buttons.

Another issue players seemed to struggle with was in understanding which buttons did what on their very first playthrough. While the game itself was polished, played well, and controls worked as they should, there was very little the game did to actually teach these controls to the player, leading to many moments where I or another team member had to explain the controls as the player went through the game. Personally, while I am a fan of giving players the keys to everything at the start and not hand-holding the player too much, not having any room in-game to explain what buttons did what is definitely an issue.

Future Improvements

The first improvement should definitely be with some way of explaining the controls to players new to the game, whether that's with a menu explanation, some text in the corner of the game, or with a more fleshed out tutorial. Players should be able to start the game and immediately understand what they have access to and how they can use everything to their advantage.

For more far reaching features, the game should have settings to change the controls to how players might like them. There should be some presets available to match other games' control layout, potentially with re-binding support for people that want a more customized experience. I also do think the issue some players have with the defense buttons is a knee-jerk reaction and that they'll get used to it over time (+ it frees up more buttons), although I am considering a potential option or keybind setup to split guard and dodge if players are hell-bent on the inclusion.

For the future of the project as it relates to controls, Chronostasis does have room to grow and add more to be smushed down to gamepad controls, such as guns, skills, power-ups and shortcuts (with potential weapon switching), so I will be keeping a close eye on making sure there's enough content for people to enjoy, while still riding that balance between player expression and simple accessibility.

This section goes over the Chronostasis mechanic, where players have the ability to stop time mid-battle.

Overview

The ultimate ability that the game was named after, and sparked the beginnings of the game.
Chronostasis is a macro mechanic where players slowly build up Chrono over time, and once their Chrono Gauge is full, players are able to activate Chronostasis to pause time for all the enemies and objects in the world, aside from themselves.

Chrono is a resource granted to the player by 3 main methods:

• picking up Chrono orbs, obtained by defeating enemies
• hitting enemies
• naturally regenerating, up to a point

Breakdown

From a design standpoint, Chronostasis is meant to be a mechanic you build up to, almost like an ultimate ability. As you play, you grind up the resource, and once it's full, you can activate it and get certain benefits for doing so.

When Chronostasis is active, actors are stopped in place by setting their custom time dilation to a really low value, or otherwise changing their behavior to stay in place (such as with physics objects). Other functions can act differently depending on the state too, such as enemies disabling their hitboxes.

For some players, this benefit can be used defensively. It regenerates some of your health as it remains active, and all enemies stop, so you can use it to reposition yourself and get a better hand on the game. For other players, it can be used offensively. If you attack enemies or are able to beat them and get the pickups, you can sustain Chronostasis for longer and generate more health, but also because enemies are frozen, it is a free period for players to fit in some extra damage.

Did It Work?

For this demo, it worked out fairly well. It did great for setting this game apart from others, and there is some potential for a mechanic such as this in a more expanded game, though for this demo I'm not sure if it had enough "sauce" for players to really latch on to it as well. The game can still be beaten without using Chronostasis, even if there are some benefits to using it, and while there is some free damage, having to manage between yourself and enemies while time is running does have a more engaging feel to it.

It was pretty common for people to forget about the mechanic for a minute before remembering to use it, though in playtests, players were still using it regularly as the game was running. So it could have enough merit to using it.

Future Improvements

Chronostasis was ultimately a mechanic built for another system that isn't in this demo, where the player could shoot weapons. Players could shoot enemies in the base game, though if time is stopped, the bullets would stay in place until time resumed, where they would all collapse onto the enemy. If/When this mechanic makes its way into the game, Chronostasis will likely feel a lot differently.

With that, I think most of the features that would make Chronostasis more appealing would be based on other features/mechanics that eventually make their way into the game. More complex combos, resources, or features in a level that use the same functionality would result in the mechanic feeling a lot more satisfying to use.

Although, this mechanic does need a few small adjustments/improvements. On a technical side, this mechanic only interacts with other blueprint actors with the component attached, so it can't interact with non-actors, such as raw static meshes in a scene. From a design standpoint, some other features that could help would be to change stat values, like it does with health, to make it more viable and rewarding to build up to. Others would be turning it into more of a resource by allowing some moves to only be accessible by spending the Chrono gauge for higher damaging moves.

This section goes over the specifics about player combat, such as attack animation roles and hitboxes.

Overview

For players to attack while keeping the simplicity of the controls in mind, the attacks are (currently) split into a combo-based structure. Pressing the attack button sequentially allows players to commit to a 3 hit combo, each with their own hit counts and damage values. In order for players to access their whole range of attacks, they have to do each attack in order.

For defense, they have the option to either dodge with i-frames, or block the attack in front of them. These are two separate actions that play an animation, and the player has to commit to whatever action they do, meaning they can't cancel out of them to do an attack or another defensive move.

Breakdown

While attacks are only a simple 3 hit combo, I specficially had them serve a different role in the game's combat. Time was limited and we couldn't get a more advanced system in place, so the next best thing was to have the combat and attack animations have enough weight and differentiate themselves from each other to still make it satisfying to play.

Another aspect that I particularly looked out for was making sure that players were able to deal damage right away, almost right next to when they pressed the button. If players wanted to attack, the animation and hitboxes needed to follow suit to make sure their wish would be answered as soon as possible. Players don't want to wait for their attack to happen if they can help it. The only exception to this rule is if the attack has some other utility that benefits the player before the attack hits. In Kingdom Hearts, usually this gives the player extra defensive frames to prevent enemy onslaught, or some aspect that could potentially lead to damage in the future.

The player starts their combo with an attack for players to start getting right into the action. If the player sees an opportunity and is within range, or just dodged a narrow attack, they can jump in close and start doing some damage. The multi-hit attacks towards the end does deal some extra damage, however the player can choose to cancel out of it if they'd wish.

This move also has some blocking frames when dashing in, so if the player attacks at just the right time, they can run up and guard their opponent's attacks before continuing their offense. This also has an unintended effect where the combo isn't reset, so the player can go straight into the next attack after a block instead of having to restart their combo chain.

Since the first attack has already gotten the player closer to the enemy as a single target move, this second attack is built more for AOE damage against a group of enemies. Seeing as the main game mode of the demo is wave based and focused on mob fights, there needs to be a move to handle multiple enemies as you strike.

The final move is a flashy finisher and is the player's big reward for completing the combo. While it may seem long, the spinning part of the attack has parry frames attached, protecting you from hits, and the attack itself punishes the enemy by dashing straight forward, dealing a sizeable amount of damage to anything that comes across it.

These extra details go a long way to make sure combat does not feel repetitive, even if you're using the same 3 moves over and over. Each one has a role to play, and players can learn and adapt to them. And with those smaller details of attack cancelling and defensive abilities, both new and veteran players have things to enjoy.

Hitboxes can spawn with a specified radius, either on the player or on their equipped weapon, and they can not only deal raw damage, but also deal different kinds of knockback, regenerate some Chrono, or apply some Revenge Value (see the Enemy section for info on RV).

These extra settings give a lot of flexibility, making each hit do things a little differently to further that "attack role" style of design. And with them being animation notify states, multiple hitboxes can have differing effects, all on a single attack.

For the defensive actions, the dodge and block animations are single animation montages that can't normally be cancelled into an attack. Dodging is a one time animation that moves the player and prevents them from being damaged for a certain amount of time, and blocking has a window where attacks from the front will negate damage and shift the player to another "success" animation where the player is invulnerable and more capable of attacking.

Did It Work?

This "attack role" approach helped a lot with making the gameplay look and feel fresh without feeling like too much. With these roles, people were able to land just about every hit they wanted to, break out when they needed to, and were punished for when they over-extended, with the ocassional full parry with the scythe finisher. No attack punished or frustrated the player, and everyone felt like they had full control over the game, even if they were only just starting out (even my 5 year old nephew was able to keep up with the game and make good progress).

While the attacks did work out how I needed them to, the animations themselves were criticised for being a bit too slow for some people's liking (including myself). For such a fast-paced game and genre inspiration, the attacks need to be quick enough to feel satisfying and like you're linking up all your hits. It currently fits well enough with the enemies who suffer a similar problem, but for an action game, it definitely needs a speed buff.

For the defensive abilities, the dodge and block similarly worked as expected, but the block might need more of a focus to be used properly and more often. Players found more use for dodging than they did blocking, and while part of that was from the way the controls were set up, blocking didn't seem to do enough to satisfy its use over dodging.

Future Improvements

One of the first things to improve with the attacks to make them more satisfying are potentially replacing all the animations so they're faster and snappier. With animations, you can't just speed them up to fix their issues, they need to be re-timed to make certain segments faster or slower, and at most, fully remaking them to fit a new style.

The biggest improvement that can be made is to do away with the linearity of the 3 hit combo and expand to support more kinds of attacks. Instead of adding attacks to inputs and complicating the user experience, it should use a context-based approach where attacks change based on proximity/spacing from opponents or where in the combo your attack is. With a system like this, there'd definitely need to be more attacks to support the different contexts that trigger the animations.

Within my GAS rewrite of Chronostasis, I have started experimenting with this by using the Chooser system to select the different attacks based on combo count and values relating to the closest targets from the player. Although, it has been a little bit messy, as you can't check if an ability is equipped before choosing it.

Another part of this that needs to be extended are air attacks. There was some code in the game for handling root motion in the air or launching the character around, although there was little time to handle implement many air based attacks.

While it might be more far reaching for adding more weapons and attacks related to those, I would like to have a system in place as a secondary way of doing damage. Having a resource to spend and regain for extra attacks would work really well for expanding player expression and would help other parts of the game come together.

For hitboxes, while the method shown earlier worked out okay, it only supports a single hitbox and definitely needed an overhaul. With the developments in the GAS system, I found a good rework method, by making an array of hitboxes with their own placements and sizes, but all counting as a single hit. I also added parry hitboxes that use the same kind of functionality, where you can summon as many as you want while making it count as a single hit.

As far as defensive abilities are concerned, dodging seems like it's doing its job okay, but blocking needs to affect the game world in better ways. The first thing that comes to mind is to have a successful block cause a stagger for enemies, and likely also reflect projectiles back to the opponent. It may also have a specific "counter attack" animation that helps the player continue the pressure against the opponent.

This section goes over enemy roles and features, and how they contribute to the moment-to-moment gameplay flow.

Overview

The micro loop of Chronostasis is represented through the enemies of the game, as Chronostasis is a combat-focused experience between the player and the enemies they face. For the game to have a loop and engaging quality to fighting enemies, there were a lot of considerations taken with designing the enemies of Chronostasis.

Enemies face the player in a back-and-forth style of gameplay, where enemies try to strike while the player is watching out for their attacks and attempts to respond by punishing their moves or otherwise getting a good read on them. If they are unsuccessful, they get hit and need to try again, but if they succeed, they are rewarded with a window to punish them and do some damage with their combos. Then, after enough hits the enemies try to retaliate back, forcing the player to try and guess again, serving as a good loop between the two.

After these mini loops are done and the player defeats the enemies, they get rewarded with "prizes" in the form of orbs that refill the player's stats and resources, which in the demo constitute as health and Chrono, and allow the player to do better in future encounters.

Enemies also are differentiated between themselves by fitting into different roles, causing the player to approach each one differently. Players will have to watch their range against enemies and their attacks, which can differ depending on the opponent and what attack they throw out.

Breakdown

For Chronostasis to accurately represent this back-and-forth nature to fighting enemies, the first thing to take into consideration was making sure their attacks could be reactable. If you can't accurately guess and respond to what the enemies were doing or properly punish them, then the loop falls apart instantly. So enemies had to take longer for their attacks to come out and recover compared to the player's, so that enemies had proper windows to learn and react From without getting frustrating. We hate enemies that feel like they can just insta-kill you, so there needs to be some wiggle room for players to learn.

After that, once players do get their successful read and punish on their enemies, to prevent the player from infinitely comboing and losing the flow after getting a single hit in, enemies have a stat called "revenge value" that builds up over time as they get hit more and more. They are free to be attacked while that gauge is still going, though once it fills up after enough hits, they will take their turn back from the player and reset the loop back to the start, where the player needs to take action and figure out their opponent's next move before they can continue their assault.

As for the roles of the enemies, there were 2 that could be seen in the game - the close ranged, speedy assaulter, and the long ranged tank. The assaulting enemy likes to get close and personal and can shred you with some multi-hit attacks, while the tank typically likes to fire at you from a safe distance. Though if you do get too close with the tank, they can do some heavy damage to you.

With these roles in mind, it was critical to convey them in a well defined design and silhouette that could be read and understood by the players. For that, the assaulter has a sleeker look to them with a lot of sharp edges, implying its higher mobility and sharp attacks, while the tank has a larger and more grounded aspect to it, alluding to their stationary yet beefy abilities, and hosts a cannon launcher at the top to signify their preference for range.

(The 2 enemies in Chronostasis. Left is assault, right is tank.)

Did It Work?

The enemies went a long way for making Chronostasis feeling as engaging as it does. They create a lot of the proper flow between players and enemies, and when there's multiple on screen for players to deal with, it starts to get pretty exhilarating to pick and choose your battles against them, and trying to properly defend and punish their moves.

They feed in to the macro gameplay loop really well, too, as you kill more enemies to get more resources for a better chance of dealing with future enemies, and the hecticness continues to ramp up as the waves go by. Players enjoyed fighting against the enemies, and they would stay hooked in the moment up until they either failed and died, or succeeded and beat all the waves.

While it was good to have the enemies' attacks be reactable, they definitely anticipated their attacks for too long, leading to a lot of moments of players standing still or large openings where they could be attacked. The fast-paced nature of the game slowed down pretty significantly with these slower moves, leading to the game feeling less cut-throat and more like sitting out and waiting for things to happen.

With this, I also realized in the middle of development that with these larger times, while I thought they might be necessary, would have led to players continuously slashing at the enemies while they were charging their attacks, which would mean a lot of these systems I built out would start falling apart. My "solution" for the time was to simply prevent them from entering a stagger for the whole duration of their wind-up, which did the job, but is not a very good solution to rely on.

Future Improvements

With the basis of these systems in place, on a base level Chronostasis can do with more enemies and attacks while still retaining this gameplay flow. That said, even if a lot of the design was successful, as outlined earlier work still needs to be done to make the gameplay stand out even further.

As stated, enemies currently act and react pretty slowly for the genre they're supposed to be in, so the animations need to be tuned for a more fluid gameplay flow so players aren't just twiddling their thumbs as they fight the enemies. That, and probably also adding more attacks or replacing existing ones to be a bit more flashy and cause more effects, like better knockback or other more proper ways of pressuring the player in more unique ways.

Another is to fix up the staggering system so it's not a simple "can" or "can't" be staggered depending on the animation, and needs to be just a little more dynamic to squeeze some extra life into the game. Having certain windows to stagger is still a good tool, however it shouldn't be the only solution, as some enemies might be weaker and more frail to attacks compared to others who might strong-arm through more attacks. And even the player might have some options that are more effective for staggering the opponent compared to others, which would allow them to try and plan things better in the heat of combat.

I was able to figure out a solution for this by asking a Kingdom Hearts modder how it seems to work in that game where there's a lot more to staggering, and the solution that KH2 uses is by comparing the values of an attack with the values of an enemy's "defenses", which can be altered for different attacks and animations.

If the player's attack is able to pierce the enemy's armor, they can be opened up for staggering, and their defenses would get lowered while they're staggered. Although, if the player's attack is too weak, the enemy won't stagger. This solution seems a lot better and can influence fights in a lot more interesting ways, where players might need to plan out which moves they can use to properly stagger, while still keeping enemies from being interrupted and maintaining that flow between enemies and players.

This section goes over the overarching gameplay and features players can experience during the demo. Specifically, it will be a look at the wave-based mode and death/respawning.

Overview

For Chronostasis's play session, the general gameplay loop for players is to fight against waves of enemies, likely dying and going to the death world, where the player can choose to respawn and try the waves again, or spend a second to relax or practice the game before trying again.

For the main gameplay mode, I built out a customizeable system for spawning waves of enemies, where designers could change how many waves there are, which kinds of enemies spawn when, and how many spawn on each wave. If you defeat all the enemies on one wave, the game will take a second before spawning the next wave, until there's none left, where the player "wins".

When players die to an enemy in the middle of the game, they will be sent to another world where players can freely take a small break, choose to practice the mechanics and controls, or walk up to and interact with the object in the center of the room to respawn. When respawning, the player is taken back to the main level and restarts the waves.

Breakdown

With the wave mode itself, the game starts out with only a small handful of enemies spawned, and gradually progresses throughout the waves to spawn more and more. If you don't do quite as well throughout the waves, the game will continue to get harder and harder, and the mistakes start to pile up. There is only a small window between waves for you to take a breather or pick up some loose drops, but it still poses a challenge for players to go through.

If the player doesn't make it through all the waves, the player dies by going to another level where little exists. While other games may provide more of a UI option for respawning, I thought it'd be a better idea to have a small "playground" for players to mess around in. Having an area like this can serve the same purpose as a UI box to retry the game, but it also gives players a chance to take a longer break, and either walk around or practice some attacks in a light training room, before eventually jumping back in to the game. It also triples as an area that could be theorized about as it relates to the story.

And when players are ready, they can go up to the only item in front of them and interact with it to respawn back in the main map, where they have another try at the waves, hopefully looking to beat them in this next run.

(The death map, where it's just you, the respawn point, and open space.)

Did It Work?

On the player side, having the wave-based format within a small arena was a big success for getting people accustomed with the game, without us needing to spend any extra development time. People were battling enemies, dying, and coming back to do better in the next game after they learned a bit more about the underlying systems. The final game has about 5 waves, and most people were able to get past one or two of them before they had to retry. After a few tries, once they got a better hang of the combat, they could get through the battles more consistently and could eventually finish all 5 waves.

On the developer end, it was really easy to hot swap enemies and amounts of them. If I needed more waves or wanted to tweak things around, it was easy to change them up. Although, it is fairly barebones, and I would like to make more adjustments in the future for better support of other features seen in other games with wave based encounters.

The death area was a cool one for people to discover, and it served its purpose pretty well. For the most part, players would either just run up and respawn, or stay in the room when they were done or just wanted to take a small break. For those that tried to explore some more quickly got lost, and very few even used it for experimenting with their kit. Though, this behavior was mostly seen where the game was shown at events, where time may have been more limited.

Future Improvements

Some games have players in a pure endless horde of enemies, some have more defined waves to battle through and eventually beat, and some might just have a section of the map where players are stuck and need to defeat all the remaining enemies before they can progress. And in some games, they have all 3 systems at different points of the same game. With that in mind, I think it would be wonderful to expand these systems for more flexibility later down the road so we can reuse the wave format in other contexts.

Such expansions could be in making the waves as part of Unreal's own game mode system for a more structured eperience for players, adding infinite rounds, staggering the enemy spawns, or otherwise changing things up so they can be used in a lot of other areas in the game.

For the death area, the structure is fine, though there does need to be more general improvements, like making animations for dying and respawning, or adding more guides for the player to go to the center if they veer their camera too far away.