During early development, we made the decision to have a movement-centric combat system. That would mean our player is more concerned with spacial positioning and movement than strategy or reaction timing. This choice was a natural extension of the fact that Gnomad is fundamentally a platformer. The more interconnected these systems, the better.

The player is able to down slash on certain ‘whackable’ objects in order to pogo on top of them. This move is not original to Gnomad, but you don’t fix what isn’t broken. The pogo move allows the player to gain extra mobility at the cost of a skill check with a small risk. This move tends to provide a well balanced addition to platforming sections of the game, but poses an issue in designing combat.

It can be all too easy for a moderately experienced player to pogo on the head of any enemy repeatedly. This strategy trivializes our fights. In the future, we plan on tweaking the pogo mechanic to avoid this, or introducing pogo-punishes. These punishes would be enemies, moves, or environmental factors that discourage the player from pogoing.