De/Man Devlog 1 : Welcome to De/Man

The Mortal Realms have grown incredulous. Man no-longer fears or respects the greater powers above. In an effort to 're-educate' Mankind, Satan dispatches his one and only daughter to wreak havoc among their lands...

What is De/Man?

Hello and welcome to my brand-new Devlog, where I will be chronicling the development of my solo project De/Man. Now you're probably thinking to yourself, What exactly is a De/Man? Well...

De/Man will be a fast-paced top-down shooter with an emphasis on using the weapons of fallen enemies against them. You play as the titular character and daughter of Satan, De, as she travels the realms of man, leaving chaos in her wake. Being a Demon grants De a couple of special abilities that will aid her on her quest for destruction, such as the ability to imbue weapons with random effects or pull distant objects towards her. Lets discuss these mechanics in more detail...

Player Mechanics

When it comes to mechanics, player movement is arguably the easiest to discuss and implement, so lets start there. De moves just about how you would expect for this type of game. You can control her movement with WASD, and her rotation by moving the mouse around, pretty standard stuff.

Something that is slightly less standard but still pretty standard is De's Blood Dash. De gets 2 charges of her dash, which can be used to dodge incoming attacks or close the gap between her and an enemy (once enemies are implemented of course). The catch is that these charges can be replenished by killing an enemy (hence the name). This should give the player an incentive to quickly hop between targets, using the dash gained from one victim to rapidly approach another.

Another standard feature for top-down shooters is, well, shooting. De can shoot her current weapon with Left Mouse, and can grab weapons from afar using Right Mouse. These weapons will eventually drop from enemies, but as they aren't implemented yet, white cubes will have to do. Grabbing a weapon you're already using will replenish ammo, but grabbing a new weapon will allow De to pick it up and imbue a Demonic Attribute onto it.

These attributes can range from simple things like a small increase in accuracy (Focused) to more interesting effects such as pushing the player back each shot but giving increased damage (Punchy). These effects are categorised in multiple tiers from Common to Godly, and with 26 attributes across 7 weapons already implemented, there should be plenty of variety when it comes to gunplay!

Who is De?

After all this talk about what De can do, you may be asking yourself who De is. Well, De is you. Rather, she is the player character in De/Man. But by now you've probably gathered that, so let's discuss her as an actual character, shall we?

This is De, or at least my messy first concept for her (this is the part where I state that I am primarily a programmer, not an artist). As the daughter of Satan, she is obviously a Demon, and because of this she doesn't exactly respect the life of humans. In fact, just like the player, she views her quest to the realms of man like a game, caring little for the reasons why her father sent her there. As you can see, she's a little insane which should hopefully make her a fun and interesting character to play as.

Footnote

Thank you for reading my first Devlog! If you want to keep updated each time a new post comes out feel free to follow me on Twitter. I hope to update this blog roughly once a fortnight, but will likely post smaller miscellaneous updates to my Twitter.

I'm also considering making a TikTok, although I'll probably leave that until I have more game to show. Until then, I've been HarFrog, thank you again for reading!