Designing unique minions and spells

Today I'd like to chat about the thought process of creating a new minion (or spells in general). And why they should be the way they are.

So a few days ago I added a new minion to the roster of already existing minions in the game. For the demo / play-test purposes I already added 3 minions that each have a different goal in the game, and I felt like the game needed a 4th one for the complete package.

Giving the player a wider choice like this adds a bit of 'Intellectual Problem Solving', a common form of fun which you also see in ARPG's like Diablo / Path of Exile for example, where you have to figure out if equipping item A or B is better and in what circumstances it is better. Because sometimes A is only better than B if X applies.

In Ultimate Wizard, you don't know beforehand what augments you are going to get in a run, so you could go for 4 Summon Crab spells and hope for the best, or perhaps spread out a bit so more augments are useful to you. And by offering at least 4 options, you are free to try things out and see what works best. Perhaps mixing minions with actual spells is the better option.

This new minion does something the others cannot do, and that makes the build diversity larger and more interesting. You might have have played games before where 2 items are so close to each other in the way they work, that it doesn't matter in the end if you pick one or the other.

Sometimes you see this in modern shooter games if they have a very large roster of weapons, there are only so many vectors in which (real-life) weapons can differ (damage, recoil, distance, for example). And if you have only 10 weapons, you can make those 10 feel very diverse. But if you have 50 weapons, some are bound to be close to each other in the way they feel due to the limitations.

Fantasy games don't have to fall into this pit, because with spells or magic in general you are not bound to existing vectors in which they can differ from each other.

The new Summon Frost Wisp spell summons up to 2 frost wisps to do your bidding. These wisps are ranged only and have their own spell that they cast called Ice Ball. Ice Ball is similar to the Lightning Ball spell, however this spell does not go through enemies but acts as a projectile. And as you might know, projectiles can chain between enemies and fork on hit too.

And because this spell is of the Ice element, it can inherently freeze enemies, which adds for another way of scaling it's usefulness!

Any new spell (or minion) should add something to the game that doesn't exist in the exact same way. These spells are also designed with at least one goal in mind that they can fulfill. And so far the Frost Wisp can be used as a damage dealer for single targets such as bosses, or larger groups when using chains/forks. And another one is making use of it's freezing ability, scaling that could turn it into a great defensive minion!

The other minions such as the crabs are useful for single target damage, but they lack the power to quickly decimate large groups. The King Crab (not available as a normal drop) is more useful for large groups due to it's water column/tornado spell, and the Fairy minion cannot deal damage, but heals you.

Looking at these minions from the core mechanic point of view, they all benefit from different augments. The basic crabs benefit from speed, cool-down reduction and crit augments. The king crab benefits from those but also any size increases, and this new minion goes best on projectile enhancing augments and frost augments.

Taking this all into account, you can expect minions in the future that deal different elemental damages, and also have a different way of applying it. Perhaps a minion could deal some low AoE lightning damage, so it's strength would be to scale it's mass shock appliance for that extra bonus damage on shocked enemies. And your other spells or minions would deal more damage thanks to that minion. Or perhaps a fire buffing minion that deals no damage by itself, but buffs all your fire damage by a percentage!

Thanks for reading! If you have any suggestions, feedback or just want to leave a comment feel free to do so!

• Rinke