In the December Kickstarter update, we showed a few animations of both Kevin and Linda performing some pretty new moves (And a sweet gif of some Dark Claws in cute little Santa hats. You should def check that out). What you witnessed there were the results of Combat Stances! We have been focusing on the hack n’ slash aspect of combat for the past couple months. We wanted to give players more choice, but not to over complicate things by adding additional buttons. Combat Stances were our eloquent solution to increasing combat depth, but not difficulty.





Two Stances

Each character has two Combat Stances. They have their Primary Stance in which the two attack buttons perform basic attacks and then their Secondary Stance which is triggered by a button press. While in Secondary Stance, the player can experience additional passive abilities as well as two new attacks that replace the standard abilities.



More Personality

Each Secondary Stance is the embodiment of the character’s personality and an amplification of their fighting style. Take Kevin - He is a highly dexterous character, always moving and attacking from all angles. Some enemies may just assume he is invisible as he is hard to keep in eye sight.



In his Primary Stance, he has his basic Knife Attack which assaults the enemy in a frenzy, and the Fan of Knives which launches throwing knives in all directions. Both attacks support a quick and adaptive play style, but his Secondary Stance takes it to a whole new level.



First, when activated, Kevin becomes invisible and gains a momentary speed buff. In this form he can move about the battlefield with relative ease as he formulates his next barrage of punishment on completely unsuspecting enemies. His two new attacks in this form are Execute and Shadow Dance. Execute is a devastating singular attack from the darkness while Shadow Dance allows Kevin to rapidly teleport between enemies dishing out the pain between them all.

Kevin is a fast and stealthy character. His Secondary Stance just cranks it to 11! (Necessary Spinal Tap reference for the year completed!)





Simplicity over Difficulty

It was vital that combat didn’t become more difficult from additional buttons. By adding additional buttons, players have to memorize more. Kevin is a great example. He would need an additional three buttons to include his Execute, Shadow Dance and Invisibility. Each requiring a separate cooldown. This didn’t sit well with the fast paced action. It just bogged down the experience and fun factor. By grouping the attacks into stances, we could combine cool downs and allow the player to focus on what they do best - mercilessly killing the Corrupted!!



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Till next time,

CoM Team