Happy Bastards: Combat Explained Part 5

PART 5 – CHARACTER CLASSES

In preparation for the upcoming release of the COMBAT DEMO, here’s the final of five dev logs that focus on explaining how combat works in Happy Bastards.

Check out Part 1 for the basics, Part 2 for the battlefield, Part 3 for the Command system, and Part 4 for Composure and how we make the bastards feel alive.

ASSEMBLING A SQUAD

In Happy Bastards, you hire untrained recruits, and you specialize each of them into a character class when they reach level 2.

Detailing the progression system is beyond the scope of this dev log series, but what matters here is that this combat demo simulates a squad of four level-3 mercs of different classes. There will be many more classes available in the full game and you’ll be in control of squad composition.

In addition to the four mercs is a captive monster, another interesting feature of the game.

Let’s see what each class looks like.

THE ALCHEMIST

The bastard with a short fuse

• Tosses firebombs at enemies

• AoE and DoTs for a deadly distance combo

• Hurt? He can heal and cleanse debuffs

THE GLADIATOR

The bastard who’s always looking for a fight

• Loud mouth that draws attention of the enemies

• Intimidates enemies and makes them flee

• Can take a beating AND provide counterattacks

THE BOUNCER

The pushy bastard

• Shoves enemies around on the battlefield

• Better yet, shove them into dangerous objects, or vice versa

• Nudges allies out of harm’s way

THE  DEADSHOT

The long-distance bastard

• Reliable ranged DPS with her crossbow

• Always looks for a height advantage for more devastation”

THE LIZARDMAN

The disposabl–errr, we mean the CAPTIVE bastard

• Captured lizardman forced to fight for you

• Tough, powerful, inflicts bleeding damage

• Must be commanded each turn

There’s more about captives that we have not yet developed and, to be honest, this implementation in the demo is not what we think will be the one for the final game. But we still wanted to give players a taste of the particularities of this cool feature.

That’s it for this series of dev logs explaining Happy Bastards’ combat system.

Be sure to try the COMBAT DEMO, available on Steam soon!

And see you on the Discord!