Delay

I said that I had hoped to be done with Sanguine 3 this summer, but that won't be the case. Perhaps early next year would be a decent conservative guess. I've just been way too slow these past few months and I don't know what my deal is. Burnout, maybe?

Blood

I thought i'd talk a little bit about blood in my Sanguine games. Blood seems an important subject matter in a game about a vampire.

-= Sanguine =-

In the original game, Eleanor had 100 blood points in a bar that was visually segmented in two. Each human drained would yield 50 points of blood. After a few seconds, any blood over 50 would deplete away. This would act as a sort of health buffer, incentivizing the player to always want to drain more humans to fortify their defense, even if they hadn't been damaged.

While successful, it's somewhat contradicting. It's a game about stealth. Encouraging the player to absorb shots and rush through humans somewhat goes against that.

-= Sanguine 2 =-

In Sanguine 2, I tried for something more simplistic and gave the player three distinct blood points. The depletion effect was removed. Anything that damaged you caused 1 damage, and since Eleanor has to go negative to die, you had four hit points.

Because Sanguine 2 was more of an action game, there were segments without humans and a player could be stranded without any blood. Blood orbs could be picked up to revitalize the player's health and speed, except there was one problem I didn't realize until after the fact: picking up orbs was faster and more fun than sucking blood out of humans.

Each human was worth one blood. I wanted the player to have to earn full health and try to hold on to it. If you are fighting a human and take a hit, but manage to grab them anyway and feed, you break even on health exchange. But it takes time to abduct a human, run away, suck blood, and run back two or three times. I could have made humans worth three blood a piece, but then every encounter results in a full heal to Eleanor. What a mess.

-= Sanguine 3 =-

Eleanor has nine blood points in Sanguine 3. Draining a human yields three blood, while blood orbs only grant the one. Imbalance solved. But wait, there's more!

When hit, all of Eleanor's blood is ejected out of her body in a 180 degree spray. Each blood point becomes a collectable blob that sticks to whatever surface it hits. In theory, the player can recover 100% of their blood loss, but in practice, due to the complexity of the stage or enemies, the player will often lose about half of their supply.

Speed has always been a binary effect; if you have blood, you go at the fast speed and if you don't have blood you go at the slow speed. Because the player has blood most of the time, blood speed feels "normal" while bloodless speed feels like a curse. Which is intended, of course. You are meant to feel like a blood starved vampire through the gameplay.

But in this game, blood no longer grants speed by itself. Speed is only gained through feeding from humans for a period of time. This, like the first game, always gives the player an incentive to feed even if they are at maximum health because they want that speed. And speed scales; not by value but by duration. In the current formula, the player gets about 2.5 seconds of speed at 1/3rd health, and 14 seconds at maximum health (could be very subject to change).

So in effect, bloodless speed is the new normal speed. Blood haste is the rarity, granting the player a rush from the enhanced speed and attack rate. Once again, I hope to make the player feel like a blood starved vampire, but using positive reinforcement instead of negative and satisfying the intuition that more blood is more speed. Any blood collected during the blood rush effect automatically refreshes it to the new maximum.

And then there's slime. Slime is a bad kind of blood. While it does function as health, it also prevents the player from obtaining more blood or any blood rush effect. It fills your blood gauge on top of current blood, only overwriting blood if the bar has no more empty space. If the player gets a full green slime bar and adds +1 slime, they explode. Death.

The only way to be rid of slime is to get hit by a non-slime attack, causing all of the player's resources to fly out and stick to the walls. How goth, how emo to require the player to cut themselves to be free from a curse! While blood is instantly collected on contact, slime turns into an egg and hatches 2 seconds later into a randomized critter that scurries about the stage. If it touches the player, they regain the slime again. But these creatures can be destroyed with Eleanor's attack or simply be jumped over to evade them.

Overall, I feel really pleased with the new mechanics. Eleanor achieves my paradoxical standard of being highly durable or very fragile based on the enemy and the environment. Blood is more of an addiction as it ever was, and i'd hate to be the son of a bitch who has to design a game around it.