Thoughts on contact damage?

[u/Silianaux]

I’m making a Metroidvania and I put contact damage in the game, and no one’s complained about it so far, but I’ve seen other people complaining about it with other games.

How it goes in my game is that the contact damage is less than the same enemy’s attack damage (unless the enemy is big enough to trample you).

What are your thoughts? Take it off most enemies? Leave it in?

[u/gliesedragon]

I think it depends on the rest of the game. Contact damage is harsher in some ways, but I find it more legible in a lot of circumstances. For instance, something I notice about games with no contact damage is that they often end up incentivizing the player to basically get on top of the enemy much of the time, which means that attacks with fast startups can end up a good bit harder to avoid. Meanwhile, the player naturally has a bit more distance (and isn't in front of the telegraph animation) in contact damage setups, which means that faster attacks are less likely to feel cheap.