Dracula: Invasion in Wallachia Update 1.2, combat skills and a camera system

Hello people, this is the second devlog for Dracula: Invasion in Wallachia (I changed the name, it fits better).

In case you don't know what Dracula: Invasion in Wallachia is, it is a game that I'm working on in which you play as Dracula, vampire-king of Wallachia and your country has been attacked by a demonic invasion, you must liberate every area in the game of demons, and once you do so you can interact with NPCs in that area.

In this update, I took a look at the combat system that I had in the game, it was fun, but not nearly complex enough for it to carry a whole game or to not get boring after a while. I considered hp and damage upgrades (I might still add those), but that didn't feel like enough, so I took some more "inspiration" from Hollow Knight ,not unlike the main mechanic, the charm system. In Hollow Knight Charms are power ups that you can equip and give you unique abilities or power ups, they cost notches, and you can combine them any way you want. In my game, I considered that instead of them costing notches, you will have 3 category of skills and you can equip only one from each category at a time.

The categories are: 

• white skills,  this skills are just power ups in different areas and are passive
• dark skills, this skills are passive, but they drastically change the gameplay.
• red skills, this skills are active and you can use them

There are 6 skills in each category, I will start with the white  ones:

1. Increased range, your range gets increased by 50%.
2. Increased blood gain, when you strike an enemy you gain 50% more blood.
3. Increased damage, your damage is increased by , you guessed it, 50%.
4. Increased hp, you have 50%  more hp.
5. Doubles the blood you can hold.
6. You thought that I run out of things to increase by 50%? Wrong, I increased the movement speed.

Now, let's  get to some more interesting stuff, the black ones:

1. Your spells power and size get doubled.
2. When  you strike enemies, besides blood you will also gain hp.
3. You gain some friends, 2 bats which will help you by occasionally damaging enemies.
4. Now you have a shield what rotates around you and will block enemy bullets.
5. When you heal, you will also summon a powerful spell  around you.
6. When you are at 1 hp, your damage will get tripled and your blood gain doubled. Because of the doubled blood gain you will be able to heal quickly, but you may want to stay at 1hp to deal massive damage.

Now, here is the really juicy stuff, the red abilities:

1. Doing you best to impersonate a JoJo's  stand, when you heal, time slows down, allowing you to asses the situation and easily doge enemy bullets for about 5 seconds.
2. Feeling scared? Now you can turn into a bat by pressing Q , the bat can't attack and is immune to damage, it also moves twice as  fast but will only last a few seconds. This skill allows you to escape danger and traverse difficult terrain.
3. Adding more companions, you can summon a blood gargantuan using 99 blood (3x the cost of a spell) This creature will fight for you and is terribly strong
4. On the topic of summoning, you can also, at he same cost, place a healing turret that will, uhh, heal you. More exactly heal you at most 6 points of damage .
5. Is it to hard to approach some enemies, do you need to beat the @%#@ out of them but want to remain at a safe distance? Now you can switch your melee attack to a ranged one, however with only 1/2 of damage and 1/4 of blood gain. (Last JoJo reference, I promise)
6. With this skill, you can transform the bodies of dead enemies into kamikazeing ghosts, which will go to the nearest enemy and blow them up, at the cost of 11 blood.

These are all the abilities I have coded at the moment, however I can't release a bulid  for them to be tested out because currently there is no way for the player to switch between them in game, next devlog I will release one for them to be tested and played around with, I am currently working on some kind of inventory for this skills, and working on name's for each one, if you have any ideas leave a comment, I still want to add more of each type.

These skills will be unlocked by doing optional areas, mission, so  if you don't want some there is no need for them to be unlocked.

However, this is not the only thing I have been working on, I also added a camera that follows the player, I think I made it  good enough, I also re-did all of the code for the enemies, so instead of them all being separate objects, now they are only one object, and the enemies are structs, so it will be a lot easier to add lots of different types (I'm working in Game Maker Studio 2).

Next update, I'm planning to add the ability to collect and switch between skills, a demo of the game where you can explore a bit of the first area (The Castle) and test the game a bit, and if I get around to it, make the enemies a bit smarter, right now they have the intellect of a potato.

If you have any feedback, suggestions or ideas leave a comment, I would greatly appreciate it!!

Expect the next devlog in 1-3 weeks.