Our last dev log (which was almost a year ago, phew!) tackled the evolution of our cameras. The zooming camera feature was a late addition to the game, but we felt it was absolutely necessary to have because it made the game look and feel way better.

When we got the camera zoom to a point we liked, we had one last feature on our additions list – weapons. This was yet another feature we had wanted to add for much of the development, but it kept being put off in favor of more “core” elements to our fighting system. But being able to use melee weapons is a Beat ’em Up genre staple, though, so how could we NOT have them?

The shortest and easiest answer, from a pragmatic “we need to ship” standpoint, is that the most responsible thing would have been to stop adding features, especially since the camera zoom had already had such an impact on the game.

The longer answer is this dev log – which will go through a bit of my history with weapons and brawlers, and take you through the many steps it took to implement what has been a very successful feature from the many demos we have done over the last year.