Boom-Boom Sabotage

As one of the the game designers, I was responsible for finding a way to make the combat work for a game that was based in the game's exaggerated graffiti culture.

My approach was to first ask the question, is the combat grounded or absurd?

Combat Mechanics

The first thing I wanted to sort out was the basic attacks. I needed a variety of combos that used Boom's brawling prowess along with his agility.

I had them split between grounded combos and aerial combos along with transition combos to allow the player to take the fight to the ground or air without interruption.

Next was to design a combat skill system that utilized graffiti in a seamless fashion.

One such design was the graffiti trap called Phantom, which by pressing the Graffiti button and the jump button, Boom can evade attacks and spray a thick mist to escape or turn the tides in his favor.

Another was a sticky explosive trap that not only damaged his enemies, but slowed them down to allow Boom a speed advantage when beating them down. This was done by having the player press the graffiti button and the light attack button. 

Movement Mechanics

Parkour usually is hand to hand with the graffiti culture, so we wanted to add some movement related to free-running such as wall-climbing and wall-running alongside with vaulting.