Enemy types – A design decision
Our game is fairly short and simple. The concept is that, as the player, you are supposed to kill a few enemies and then a boss to win the game. As such, we decided to use the enemies as “training practice” and make the boss the main event.
The player character has four features; movement and three kinds of attack. To help train the player in every attack, we created three different kinds of enemies. All were designed with a weakness to one of the attacks and a strength against the others. So Enemy 1 was weak to Attack 1 but neutral to Attack 2 and 3, while Enemy 2 was weak to Attack 2 but neutral against Attack 1 and 3, etc. This was to motivate the player to use all their different attacks without flat out forcing them.
For example: Attack 1 is a long-range attack meant to portray a harpoon. As such, it fires at a slow-to-mid speed and cannot take out more than one enemy at a time. Seeing as the gun is quite slow, it forces the player to make every bullet count and aim every shot. We interoperated the optimal type of enemy for this kind of attack to be one that takes only one shot to kill, but multiple enemies will arrive simultaneously and at different locations on the screen. Forcing the player to slow down and aim every bullet instead of shooting erratically. Using Attack 2 or 3 on this enemy will still kill it, however neither of these attacks can aim, which forces the player to move around to get all the enemies placed throughout and thus wasting valuable resources and time. So, while it would be possible, it is not as convenient. This motivating the player to use the attack we want them to use.
With all enemies designed in this fashion, the player would be fully trained in all the available options before facing the boss.
(Extra! My thoughts on the fact that there is a word count for school assignments is that, in itself, it not a bad thing! however, not even looking at a students assignment because they had 20 words to few feels a little extreme to me.)
Lots of love
// Maya
LocalScrub - Maya Sidén 
I think that you have a good explanation on why and what you choose to have different kind of enemies. That they are there to learn the player about what your weapons do, and that you must switch between them to be effective against them.
I think it is a bit unclear of what attack 2 and 3 works, and what they do. As you cannot aim them but still take out enemy number 1 in a more ineffective way.
Also, what valuable resources and time is wasted using attack 2 and 3 because there is no explanation other than that attack 1 is slow so you can’t just overuse it. And if all weapons can take out all enemies, is it possible to use the different types of weapon quickly after each other so that I can take out multiple enemies or is there a cooldown there?
Overall, I think it’s a valuable post about why you designed these enemy types in your game, and with just adding some insight to attack 2 and 3 would make it much clearer on why you should use attack 1 as the player instead of the other attacks.
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