Taylor C. Hadden — Game Designer

Not Hogging It

Overview

This prototype was an exercise in recreating the mechanics of Messhof's Nidhogg game. It was built in the Flixel framework over the course of several weeks in the summer of 2011.

I implemented the movement, stances, lunging, and sword throwing mechanics of Nidhogg. With these core features in place, the fundamental goal, being able to play with the core game design, was complete and the project stopped being developed.

Play the Prototype

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Right Player: Left and Right to move, Up and Down to change stance, B to stab or throw, and tap Down to pickup a sword.

Left Player: A and D to move, W and S to change stance, Z to stab or throw, and tap S to pickup a sword.

Mechanic Breakdown

The design abstracts fencing into three core principals: movement, guard stance, and lunging. A player can block a lunge by being in the same stance as the attacker, often disarming him — a disarm is dependant upon the size of colision between the swords.

The different colors on the characters each show the different sprites that make up the full character. Rather than creating animations for all possible combinations of actions, separating the elements up into the sword arm, torso, and legs allows for a wider variety of motion without large amounts of animation work.