COMBAT DESIGN

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed designing action combat for Steel Salvo and Twin Cores, and exploring a more strategic approach with my personal ongoing project Critical Overload.

Designing Combat on Twin Cores

Twin Cores is a co-op rail-shooter where each player controls a spaceship on a shared screen. We designed a section of the game where the two ships merge into a single, larger ship. In this fused state:

One player controls the weapon and aims with a cursor.
The other player controls movement and dodges incoming threats.
Once the weapon’s ammo is depleted, the players automatically swap roles in a mechanic we called the Switch.

Because the fused ship splits control between the two players, the level design and enemy patterns had to push the pacing higher to make the section exciting. This resulted in a lot happening on screen at once, so the Switch mechanic needed to be instantly clear. Playtesting revealed that adding a large on-screen SWITCH prompt and briefly slowing down game time helped players immediately understand the change.

In this section, players can find a mix of obstacles to dodge, basic enemies to maintain pacing, and a miniboss that requires multiple Switches to defeat.

And to challenge both players simultaneously in the fused state, we designed the Snake.

The Snake is an enemy made up of multiple destructible segments, giving satisfying feedback when shot.

Its health is tuned so that a focused player can destroy it in one magazine before switching roles for an engaging micro-loop. The snake attacks by launching bombs with clear on-screen warning markers, ensuring the movement player can focus on dodging without being overwhelmed by the visual chaos of explosions and effects.