Advanced Tech — Dodge

SUMMARY OF THE POST BELOW: There's a dodge move now. It's executed by pressing sprint while you close your umbrella. It is not needed to complete the game's story and but it feels very good to do

Instead of doing one big (late) post, I've decided to small ones for a bit, every one or two weeks. Expect two, but maybe there'll be a surprise.

Rainshade's combat is all about reading patterns, parrying, and countering, but time and time again I found myself wanting to include a dodge move. While parries were very satisfying, avoiding unblockable attacks lacked that same snappiness, and often you'd realize an attack couldn't be blocked until it was too late to get away. Oh, and I wanted a gap closer for a few reasons.

However, part of Rainshade's intended audience are people who typically do not play action games. Folks who adore titles like Ib and Undertale, which can punish you, but ultimately are straight-forward to play. So while I want to allow a high skill ceiling, I try to keep the controls as simple as possible, with as few buttons as possible, and adding a dedicated dodge button just... didn't feel right. Working in the balance of a dodge move, particularly ensuring spamming it wasn't faster than running, also proved difficult.

After a good deal of iteration, I took a note from 3D Mario titles, and focused on trying to make the dodge contextual, flowing organically with the rest of your movement. I ultimately settled on making dodge pressing the run button as you close your umbrella.

(It's... it's a lil buggy rn, visually. Sorry)

It feels... shockingly good to do? It's almost like a long-jump input, and since you need to open your umbrella first to execute it, it's not viable to spam for faster movement (and you'll fall on your face if you try). Oh, and it makes you feel cool. Look at that back dash! You can even cancel the dash into a parry or home run! That's cool right?? RIGHT???

You are not completely invincible while dodging. Some attacks will have a harder time hitting you, yes, but dodging through them isn't an option. The game literally checks for that. Nice try.

Wish you didn't have to release the umbrella button to dash? Enable exactly that in settings! Hitting run by mistake too much? Got an analogue stick and don't want a run button? I understand. You can make the interact button trigger the dodge instead.

There's a few other bits of advanced tech, but none of it is ever required to complete the story. Maybe you'll find it all???! Probably. I won't hide it very well.