Holo Swarm Summary
Thought I'd write out most of the things implemented in the minigame so far.
Maybe I shouldn't call it a minigame anymore cause like most games I've been involved in they turn out to be bigger than expected, lol.
Anyway, I'm going to write out everything implemented in the game so far, then maybe I can do daily logs from here on out.
Starting out
You pick a healer and a creature, then you're supposed to survive waves of enemy creatures coming your way in an "endless" map, meaning you can run in any direction as far as you want.
The creature sprites have been made a long time ago from an artist, they were meant for a similar game as this but it got too expensive at the time and it was using unity, instead we're now using godot and claude to code it.
Your creature auto-attacks with type-based moves and you try and dodge incoming ones by running to the side and positioning yourself accordingly, your healer (which has a missing sprite for now) runs after you and is passive towards the enemy creatures, i.e. they ignore the healer and just focus on your creature that you control mainly. There are buttons for a couple healing abilities, they need loading time to go off and you need to stay in range for your healer to get the heals to land on you.
Creature Roster
We have 17 base creatures currently, i.e. no evolutions in place yet. most have unique animations for idle, walk, defeated and for later even a revive one.
We have 9 different type creatures in the game so far: normal, fire, ice, bug, grass, water, electric, ground and flying.
Only 6 are available as playable starters right now, the others appear as anemies in a purple colored hue.
Here's a roster of the moves created by claude:
| Type | Starting Move | Secondary |
|---|---|---|
| Normal (melee) | Scratch | Fury Swipes |
| Normal (tank) | Headbutt | Rollout |
| Fire | Ember Burst | Split Inferno |
| Ice | Ice Picks | Blizzard |
| Bug | Poison Sting/Trail | Poison Bomb |
| Grass | Bullet Seed | Cactus Throw |
| Water | Water Jet | Bubble Beam |
| Electric | Chain Lightning | Ball Lightning |
| Ground | Earth Slam | Rock Slide |
| Flying | Mininado | Wind Arc |
Most of these moves are created by myself (my ideas) but named and coded by claude.
The combat system
- auto attacks which fire towards the nearest enemies on its own cooldown
- dash - sprint forward while being immune to take damage during it
- type effectiveness - creature types damage each other in varying effectivity
- crit - normal to many games, when you crit you deal 1.75% damage
- dots - damage over time, some moves such as ember burst, poison sting and scratch can leave you taking damage for a few extra seconds
Elite's & Bosses
We have introduced Elite creatures that spawn with 3.5x more Health Points and deal 2x more damage and are larger than other creatures, they also do 2 unique moves vs normal creature's 1 and they drop extra coins
Bosses will be on the last wave in only one map so far, they have 8x more HP than regular creatures and are way bigger
Healers
Forest healer, starts at 100 mana with two abilities: Healing Touch and Rejuvenation, one is a direct heal while the latter leaves a healing over time buff which heals you over a 5 second duration
Ocean healer, starts at 140 mana with a direct heal as well as one hybrid that is half instant, half over time
Healers will auto follow the player unless they get near a gathering node where they'll go and stand next to it waiting for your command to attempt to gather or skip
Progression
In-game progression where you level up by collecting coins dropped by enemies, upon leveling up you get to pick one out of three offered stat boosts (runspeed, crit chance, attack speed, hp increase, etc)
Permanent progression where after finishing a game or fainting in one grants your creature and healer xp as well as some holo dust.
Energy system
Time-based energy that regenerates even when you're offline. Healer has max 60 and generates 0.1 per minute while creatures have max 30 and same regen rate. Costs 5 energy for both healer and creature to start a run.
Crafting and Gathering Professions
- xp progression for all, early on you may fail at extracting and crafting items until your skill level goes up, this means you may lose a lot of materials at the cost of learning.
Currently there's Herbalism and Mining for gathering professions and Blacksmithing and Alchemy for crafting.
Gear system for healer
13 equipment slots to equip items on your healer with stats such as mana pool, heal power, mana regen and Luck. Some items bind to your healer, some don't. Items can be recycled to receive some materials/holo dust back.
Here's some stats about UI & Mobile created by Claude as I got tired of writing:
- Portrait-first design (1080x1920)
- Virtual joystick with tuned dead zone — reaches full speed at ~28px drag
- Touch buttons: DASH, HEAL, REJUV/SURGE, GATHER, SKIP, POTION, ELIXIR
- Pause screen doubles as a stats inspector (all creature stats visible)
- Crafting screen with tabbed professions: Crafting (Blacksmith / Alchemy / Recipes) and Gathering (Skills / Refining)
If you wanna test the game in its current state
You have two options:
Desktop Windows, requires you downloading a rar file with an .exe and .pck extension, you can do so on itch.io: https://acidyo.itch.io/holo-swarm
Mobile Android, requires you downloading an .apk file and you may have to change your settings to allow for non-checked files to be installed (since it's not on the playstore yet, etc), you can download it here: https://acidyo.itch.io/holo-swarm-mobile
For everyone else, it's fine if you don't wanna risk downloading/installing unvetted files, you can just wait until the game is further along and released on platforms you're more familiar with.
Your progress is just for testing now anyway and the game isn't linked to our servers to save your progression online.
For those who've been helping me test in the past, there's two new updates uploaded just recently to both desktop and mobile if you wanna check what's changed!
Thanks for reading and your support!