Each enemy serves two masters, flavour and gameplay. As the game is a cartoonish work of fantastical satire, there’s a lot of leeway in terms of logic and plausibility, but the enemies must spiritually represent their real world counterparts. More importantly, they must work within the combat sandbox.
I knew from the start that the antifa would damage the player when close through their repulsive stench, and throw bottles full of urine at the player from a distance. That certainly captured their essence, but didn’t serve much of a gameplay purpose. They could be trivially stymied either through circle strafing or taking cover, making them a kind of glorified trash mob character. Still, I knew there was the seed of something better.
The bottle of hot urine is on a very short list of AoE weapons in the hands of the enemies, and is the strongest area denial weapon in their arsenal. Unless the area of effect is massive, that serves little purpose when the player is running about out in the open, and none of the bottle is not thrown with a lead. I decided to lean into what they already do well, and make them an expert in flushing the player out of cover.
After a long while trying to figure out how to get them to curveball the piss bottle between the pillars and hit the player, I decided to, at least for now, avoid the entire situation. The new version of the urine bottle works kind of like a mortar, going over the pillars – technically phasing through – and landing wherever the player was standing when they were tossed.
Immediately after throwing they leap in the direction of the player and give chase for at least a few seconds. When the gap between them and the player grows too large, they run away to a safe place where they can urinate into another bottle, and start the process over again. This process can be infinitely interrupted by chasing after them and hitting them while they pee, further incentivizing the player to get out in the open.
To further cement their role as a punisher of cowering players, they get hitstunned upon taking any real damage, and lack a threatening long range attack. The combination makes them extremely vulnerable when the player has line of sight, as they are screwed when caught out in the open. However, that means the player must break cover, at least relative to that particular enemy.
Just like in real life, they’re extremely weak on their own. However, they get stronger when grouped en masse, and when combined with lawyers and militarized police, as we see in the above gif. The lawyer provides a thick shield, which massively buffs their leap. This allows xir to easily flush me out of cover, where I am exposed to the incoming projectile fire from the militarized police, who otherwise wouldn’t be much of a threat to me.
Yes, I stole sprites from other enemies. Plenty more work of all kinds must be done with this enemy type, but like I said before, I’m reworking these guys in passes. Right now they fulfill a valid niche, and I’m happy with where they are at.
