Biomorph’s Combat Proved ‘Challenging’ To Figure Out, Says Developers

Highlights

Transforming into defeated enemies in Biomorph posed design challenges like combat adjustments and hitbox considerations.
The ability to change shape added complexity to combat and required balancing enemy design for both fighting and playing as them.
Developers of Biomorph faced unexpected challenges with contact damage, hitboxes, and ensuring combat felt fair and fun.

Among Metroidvanias, Biomorph developer Lucid Dreams faced more complex design challenges due to the ‘Kirby-like’ ability of the protagonist Harlo to turn into enemies they’ve defeated.

An ability that allows the player-controlled character to change shape brings with it additional combat considerations like a changing hitbox, contact damage and movement.

In an interview with Game Rant, Lucid Dreams’ co-founders Maxime Grégoire and Francis Lapierre discussed some of the unique challenges associated with Biomorph’s titular mechanic.

Steampunk Kirby

Contact damage is the name given to the common gaming mechanic wherein the player is hurt by touching off an enemy’s hitbox. When a game includes contact damage, hitboxes and collision have to be very tight to ensure the game feels fair.

“Another challenge we didn’t see coming but became immediately apparent was that we made the game with contact damage,” the pair begin. “In Biomorph, you can have bigger monsters, and smaller monsters, so the damage on contact with the touch distance was challenging to pull off because with big monsters, we had to add bonuses to the touch distance so they’d clear enemies because they have a bigger hitbox. So, combat was complicated to pull off and bring to a state where you can have actual fun with all the monsters without feeling too constrained.”

The transformation mechanic also added an important element to enemy design in Biomorph; the enemies not only had to feel fun to fight against but had to be fun to play as, too.

“Since the player becomes the monster and uses the monster’s attacks, with some tweaks, we had to be careful to balance the difficulty and the abilities to be fun to fight against, but also so that you’ll want to kill it and take its shape and see if you can do it yourself,” they explain. “So first, we started the monster to make them fun, and then we took the monster and ported it to the player, changing the weapons abilities so they still felt like the monster, but were fun for the player to control.”

Biomorph has received a mixed critical response, holding an average score of 68 on review aggregator Metacritic.

Biomorph was released at the beginning of April and is currently available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.