Home About Me Resume Email Coming Soon

The Maddening Mercy
by: Derpy Doggo Digital

Encounter-Designer

Gameplay Trailer

Game Summary

The Maddening Mercy is a muder mystery visual novel with a bullet hell combat system when confronting suspects. Gather evicence, find the culprit, and confront their arguments to win.

How I Contributed

As the sole combat designer of the game, it was my job to raise the engagement and polish of the games combat. When I joined the project halfway into it's development, I pitched and created all of the concepts for the "Themed Attacks" featured in the games combat. I also created and balanced the variables that control the general bullet attacks and pacing in both of the encounters.


Early during production, the (at the time) one boss relied exclusively on its generic attacks randomly selecting from various bullet patterns. My goal after I joined the team was to make the fights more memorable, which is what the Themed Attacks were designed to do. Themed Attacks were initially inspired by other Bullet Hells such as Enter the Gungeon or Undertale, as I have found that these are often considered the highlight of their respective games.

Wireframe concept art of various attacks created by me

As a result, I drew inspiration from their design methodology and created them to act as metaphors for each of the characters that use them. I ended up documenting and creating concept art as seen above for the programmers in order to eliminate any possible miscommunication.

Gameplay Footage from before I joined the team

Gameplay Footage two weeks after joining the team

Gameplay Footage of both bosses in the release build

After a mechanic was implemented, I would iterate upon the exact variables in order to balance it. Not only was I responsible for making the attack have its intended feel, but I also utilized variables and probability to balance the attack itself. I spent a long time continuously fighting that specific attack in my own custom scene in order to verify that the data was accurate.

The editor I would use to customize the Notes themed attack

Screenshot of the test scene I would use to simulate attacks

Each fight would also happen in various phases. These phases were designed to control the flow of combat and to avoid overwhelming the player with new attacks. I was able to mess with probability here as well to best showcase all of the unique attacks that fight had to offer.

The editor I would use to customize the phases

While testing the encounters on my own allowed me to catch most problems early, playtesting ensured that any problems I accidentally overlooked could be quickly corrected. On my first attempt, player feedback was noticeably split halfway between some thinking the (at the time only) boss was too weak or the boss was too challening. While there was high demand to make the combat more challenging, we decided instead to appeal to the visual novel fans instead as they are the intended audience of the game.

Utilizing user feedback, I decided to make Bill's fight easier to act as a tutorial boss whereas Lorelei's boss was intended to be the game's challenge. Playtesting once again proved however that, while I correctly adjusted Bill's fight, Lorelei was created to be too hard so her attacks had to be nerfed.

Anonamous Google Forms user feedback from live playtesting

Back to homepage