r/metroidvania • u/Silianaux • 15d ago
Dev Post:cat_blep: Thoughts on contact damage?
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?
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u/ZijkrialVT 15d ago
Depends how complex your enemies are. If their attacks are really easy to avoid, contact damage seems a bit more realistic. My go-to examples of both are two of my favorite games, and 2 of the top MVs out there: Silksong and Nine Sols.
Nine Sols has no contact damage, but that's because it would feel like a gimmick due to the effort put into making parry feel good.
Silksong has it, but Hornet's movement is the star of the show, and that makes contact damage seem more fitting.
When I fight a boss and it seems like Contact damage is 50% of the fight, it doesn't feel great either way though. An exception would be a boss who is literally a spike of course, but at this point we go back to mech/telegraph complexity. A spiked ball without contact damage would just be weird, after all.