Designing Kinoko's moveset

Recently, we unveiled two new moves for Kinoko - publicly, over on Twitter, and privately in our Kinoko Fan Club Discord channel - which were the dodge roll, and the spin attack. People seemed quite surprised about these new moves, so I thought we should probably talk about what else we've got in the works.

Everyone's seen the basics by now: Kinoko's running, jumping/falling, flying, and gliding. In previous video clips we've also demonstrated swimming and shooting. Those two moves aren't in the newer Godot build yet. We'd like to take the opportunity to redesign these ones, which is why we haven't brought them over from Unity yet.

The dodge roll will be the quickest and most effective way of dodging enemy attacks. Like in other games (e.g. Cuphead), the dodge roll makes Kinoko briefly invincible, so he can use this ability to pass through enemies unharmed. This will be an invaluable move particularly during longer enemy encounters, such as bosses, where it may be necessary to dodge attacks or get behind the enemy to attack them from behind.

The spin attack is Kinoko's new primary mode of offense.

When we started designing this game last year, we were only planning to give him the raygun, but for narrative reasons that never sat right with us. The game begins on Fungaia, before Kinoko has encountered his first alien, so it makes no narrative sense for him to have a raygun at that point. We briefly considered a Fungaia-only equivalent - say, a bow and arrows - but it seemed to make so much more sense to implement a second attack that would be available throughout the entire game.

As we started to add other mechanics to the raygun, such as solar recharging, we realised that any such second attack should be available at all times. The last thing any player wants is to be stuck surrounded by enemies without any means of fighting back, because they're still waiting for their weapon to recharge. That's why Chelsey designed the spin attack, a new primary attack for Kinoko which will be available from the beginning, and still useful in space even after Kinoko has acquired his raygun.

Aside from these two moves, we've got several other moves planned which may or may not make it into the game. We'd definitely like to introduce aerial and underwater attacks - currently, the spin only works on land - and we've talked about adding dives and dashes. Making the spin Kinoko's primary attack also opens up several new possibilities for the raygun. We've talked about introducing new modes or modules for it... but that's another topic for another day.

In terms of how we work, Chelsey designs Kinoko's moveset and creates some placeholder sprites, and then it's up to me to decide exactly how to implement them. I show Chelsey what I've done, she lets me know if it works the way she imagined it, and then I change it accordingly until it does. There can be a bit of back-and-forward, but since we work in the same room anyway it's a very quick and easy process for us both.

Chelsey's closed her commissions now, but she got a huge surge of commissions at the end of September when making a last call for them. That means she's still pretty busy with those, and we'll have to wait a bit longer for more Kinoko sprites.

On the plus side, all of those commissions mean more money for level art; we've now identified several possible candidates for the level artist role, so hopefully we'll be able to make progress on level art in the very near future!