Mayhem Arena: Concept explained

Hello everyone!

I'm just going to quickly summarise what Mayhem Arena is all about.

Mayhem Arena is a Battle Royale Arena Brawler where you fight with items and their unique behaviours to throw off the opponents. Like Super Smash Brothers, you have a damage percentage, and the higher the damage taken, the further you'll fly away.

Two heavy inspiring games are the already mentioned Super Smash Brothers series, and Rayman M/Arena. I used to play those games quite a lot when growing up, and I wanted to both pay homage and create a game that includes what I 'missed' in those games.

Right, so developing this game has been quite a challenge. I needed to add AI characters and have them behave in the same way as you would expect with other players. The complexity in these AI characters is something I am really proud of, since they constantly make the same decisions as players will given the scenario.

A more in depth mechanic is the Item System. It has several mechanics working together, which result in giving players random items each time, just like in Rayman M/Arena, and with that the players will need to figure out a cunning plan to attack.

In Mayhem Arena, each character is able to go Mayhem, which is built up by taking damage, damaging others and some items give a select amount of Mayhem experience. The Mayhem Level decides, once you go Mayhem, how strong your temporary buff is. You can go all the way up to Level 7, and each level will give a greater boost than the previous level. You will run faster, do more damage, take less damage, and your item's abilities are also affected by your Mayhem Level.

Mayhem Arena has gone through quite some changes over the year:

 These are pictures taken from the very beginning. For debugging purposes I added the damage on top of each player, and the Mayhem Meter, which indicates what Mayhem Level and the experience you've got.

The ball on the screen is the early Homing Bullet, which the name suggest, will chase your opponents and will explode and launch them on hit! :)

 I managed to knock someone down the hole in the middle. This means that they will lose one life. Once all their lives have been depleted, they're out. If not, they'll respawn on the map after a short time.

The square in this picture is the early Item Generator. This thing will give you a random item when walked over it. It is up to you how to use it!

 This is the first iteration of the battle stage selector. You can easily set the stage, the amount of AI you're fighting (with a maximum of 7, since there can only be 8 at max) and the lives that every one has.

 These are pictures taken on a different battle stage. This stage has more holes in it, and it is considerably smaller. I made three differently sized stages just to gauge which size would be generally the nicest to play on. So far, the first stage seems to be the best, but with all the planned changes in the future, that could change.

In the early days, the explosions would send anyone flying in an odd strange line. For debugging, it did work.
Later, this was changed to a favourite and luckily in-build mechanic: RAGDOLL!
Now anyone blasted will flop around the screen helplessly. This really does bring a very comedic effect. :)

These are the current stages I've made. These won't be available in the release of Mayhem Arena, since they're just here for tweaking and debugging.

On this thread of tweets, you can find more pictures of Mayhem Arena over the past year!

pic.twitter.com/0lA4p0zy62

— Lunatinc (@_Lunatinc) July 21, 2018

In my previous entry, I've added a video which shows the game play of Mayhem Arena back then.
Right now, I'm overhauling some mechanics to work smoother, for instance the aiming mechanic.

I hope you enjoyed reading up, I'll see you in the next update!

Joris