I had +130 monsters, a short beginning story, and a few characters. How do I work on the monsters’ movesets, abilities, and come up with more characters?
Create a system in which you categorize ALL the movesets and abilities you have thought of.
For example, attacks would include:
- melee
- projectile
- dashes
- stunners
- etc
enemy movement methods:
- move along a fixed path
- follow the player
- jump
- dash
- teleport
- etc.
Further, projectile attacks would be categorized into:
- long range
- short range
- one directional
- multi-directional
- chases player
- etc.
Once you've got this down, just open a document and start creating
profiles for each monster.
Monster 1 (Undead ghoul)
Attacks: shoot projectiles from afar + melee attacks in close range.
Projectile attack: Shoots 1 Fireball in the direction of player
Movement type: walks along path
Health: 20 HP
Monster 2 (Skeleton warrior)
Attacks: shoot projectiles + dashes.
Projectile attack: Shoots 3 Fireballs in 3 directions
Movement types: follows the player
Health: 25 HP
Monster 3 (Dark knight)
Attacks: melee attack only
Projectile attack: none
Movement types: follows the player + jumps at player
Health: 10 HP
Monster 4 (Slime blob)
Attacks: melee attack only
Projectile attack: none
Movement types: follows the player
Health: 5 HP
Then you can recycle enemies. Take an enemy that only shoots fireballs, and change the fireballs into ninja stars. Now you've got a new ninja enemy. You can also change sprite colors, and increase or decrease health, so you create a whole "family" of enemies. For example, blue bats cause -10 damage, red bats cause -20 damage and green bats cause -30 damage.
This way, by just mixing and matching things you can create as many enemy types as you want.