u/Flimsy_Chain4432

Hi! I’m a game designer working with some friends on a 2D top-down action roguelike where parrying is the main game mechanic.

We are still on a very early stage in development and although we feel that our approach to parrying has been the most intuitive and straightforward, we also know that creating a system which feels great and satisfying is going to be difficult.

So far, our parry is a circle around the player which appears once the player presses the block button. That circle sticks around for a short window of time and any attacks that come to the player, melee or projectiles, are automatically parried.

That said, the main questions I have are the following:

• Our current parry is a circle. How big would you make it? Is any other shape better?
• If anyone has any previous experience creating a parrying system. Would you mind sharing some advice/tips?

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, first time posting here :) I'm a game designer working with some friends on an early-stage action roguelite and I'd love some outside perspective on our core mechanic.

The premise: the protagonist is a burned-out office worker who can't attack freely. She has to parry first. A couple of successful parries charge a bar (we like to call it burnout bar) and unlock basic attacks. Chain enough of them (4 or 5 max) and you fill the burnout bar completely, unlocking a powerful ulti. Every attack drains the bar a little, so it's a constant back and forth between parrying and attacking. If you fill the burnout bar and you use the ulti, the bar will be completely drained and you will have to parry again in order to use normal attacks.

Narratively it makes sense to us, parrying is swallowing all the corporate crap until you finally explode. But I'm aware that in most roguelites offense is always available and parry is a bonus layer on top, not the only door to it.

So honestly, is this the kind of constraint that creates interesting tension, or does it just make players feel powerless? Would you like to play something like this? If you've seen something similar land well or badly I'd really love to hear it. Thanks in advance!