~Crescencia of the Dual Staves~

Main character created, title still pending… but whatever.

Art
Crescencia Character Design
Crescencia Facial Expressions

Crescencia of the Dual Staves! Main character for a side scrolling shooter I suddenly came up with under the influence of many various factors!

Like a lot of my stuff, my main character comes before I build a world around them. Basically while I was uh… experimenting with drawing a Visual Kei Deviant Vampire Lord that plays the electric guitar and… things I’m not gonna elaborate upon any further, I ended up looking through Ludwig Kakumei(Revolution) which I read a while back. And then I remembered that I kinda wanted to draw/design a witch character, inspired by Dorothea, a character in that manga.

So under the influence of Kaori Yuuki, I had my fly with fluffy eyelashes and mascara and Crescencia was born. Quite fitting too, seeing as it is the month of Halloween.

Story and Character Outline
And so let me introduce you dear Crescencia. Age unknown, measurements disclosed. As you can see, she is a witch. She lives alone in her forest, in her witch house, with the various denizens of the forests for company. Like enchanted talking animals, fairies, ghosts and the such. And generally spends her day doing as she pleases- mainly mixing new potions, trying to make new spells, making stuff explode and stuff a witch would do.

When she needs something the forest cannot provide, she journeys to town and sells her various potions, and provides simple magical services for those who need it and makes some cash, and then goes and buys whatever she needs. That said, she’s always buying belts. And various leather products. And things with buckles. Her outfit isn’t just a crazy leather getup because it was at the whim of the creator(maybe it was, so sue me :<), she actually… loves wearing stuff like that. And collecting her dear buckled objects. Plus she loves doing her eyelashes and overdoing it on the eyeliner and mascara which leads poor Crescencia to be misunderstood all the time, as a freaky witch thats into BDSM. And she’s rather popular in town for all the wrong reasons.

Crescencia is actually a nice girl, rather cheerful and generally likes to help out. Even if she does have the occasional time where she can’t help but to mix something explosive in her pot because she wants to see some fireworks…. can’t blame her! As people, its a natural impulse to want to blow shit up.

And so how does the story start? One day she finds out that… her forest isn’t actually hers anymore. Or hers to begin with. It actually belongs to an old fart of a noble Archmage, and now he wants her evicted unless she pays a ridiculous rent! And said Archmage is very well capable of kicking her out and not caring, as he’s basically also the Lord of the Land. Or at least the immediate surrounding area of land.

Thus begins her adventure of not getting evicted. Be it through doing chores for the Archmage, searching for treasure and earning her keep through various means…. and perhaps ultimately owning her forest through legitimate means! And so she picks up the two staves her mother has left her and sets off!

Game Concept
As I mentioned, this is designed to be a side scrolling shooter game. Which means Crescencia’s bid to not getting evicted means going through many dangerous jobs which requires…. ANNIHILATING SHIT THROUGH MAGICAL FORCE!!

Her tools of trade are two staves. Her general purpose Staff, which by feeding her magical energy into, will convert it into projectiles of various kinds. While she is capable of calling forth spells by herself, its quicker to use use her Staff like some kinda magical machinegun, which will generally increase her combat potential. The 2nd staff double acts as a broom. Its her mode of transport, plus on the tip is a crystal that slowly generates magical energy, and also absorbs leftover background magical energy to increase its charge speed. When fully charged, it can unleash a massive magical attack.

Staff 1 – Attacks
Now for more detail, her general purpose staff basically constitutes her ‘attack’. Every scrolling shooter has a basic attack which can be improved/changed whatever, be it a machinegun or laser or bla bla. This staff however, can utilize the power of 3 elements, Fire, Ice and Lightning, allowing Crescencia on the fly versatility.
As can be kinda seen in the Character Artwork, the staff in her right hand(the one thats not a broom) has these triangular prism bits under the gemmed tip. On each side of those are 3 elemental runes. By rotating it, you can set a singular rune and thus set the element of the staff. Of course by rotating both, you can set two runes instead of one! Which means…. mix and match, giving Crescencia a total of 6 different attack types. Although I was thinking earlier in the game, she’ll be limited to only using one set of elemental runes, before she finds something or gets someone through some story plot I haven’t thought up of yet to activate the 2nd set of runes. The single runes will be limited to just Fire, Ice and Lightning with no combinations and are weaker. Or maybe she only starts with fire and has to collect all 6 runes manually. In addition, Crescencia can charge her attacks instead of just firing it off continuously.

And so here are her attack types:
Basic Three Elements
Fire/Fire + Fire : Simple forward firing fireballs. Decent rate of fire and damage. Can be charged to unleash a short ranged high damage explosive burst.
Lightning/Lightning + Lightning : Forward lightning bolts. High damage, instant hit but relatively low rate of fire. Can be charged to unleash a high powered bolt of lightning that attacks multiple targets in a chain(basically CHAIN LIGHTNING).
Ice/Ice + Ice : Low damage and decent rate of fire of ice shards. Ice shards take a while to speed up. Can be charged to unleash a giant icicle that strikes straight through anything it comes across, including enemy projectiles.
Combination Elements:
Fire + Lightning/Lightning + Fire/Plasma : The combination of the elements of fire and lightning allows the unleashing of intense energy attacks. Base attack is a low damage, but constant firing instant hit beam. Charged attack is a barrage of homing energy bolts that automatically seek out their targets.
Fire + Ice/Ice + Fire/Water: Fire and Ice = Melted Ice. Water. Base attack is a low damage, but high rate of fire and high spread barrage of water jets(spread shot). Charged attack is a forward firing high pressure water ball, which does massive damage to a single target.
Lightning + Ice/Ice + Lightning/Cloud : I was pretty stumped here. But well, clouds are like masses of tiny crystals of ice or really cold water way up in the sky. And they spit lightning. So that’s my bloody reasoning. And I’ll make this the trippy harder to use element.
Base Attack is is a low damage, low speed, very low rate of fire ice cold, static filled cloud. But it slows down the enemies it comes across and instead of disappearing on impact, it passes through and does damage as it passes through, and it slows down its targets meaning it gets to hurt its victims more. Switching to ice and firing ice projectiles increases the size of the cloud(effects stack up to some extent), while lightning attacks charge the cloud with electricity and causes it to do additional damage over time(effects do not stack).
Charge Attack throws out a thundercloud that inches forward slowly, striking nearby enemies with lightning. Has the same cold and damage over time effect as the regular cloud at increased potency, but cannot be upgraded with lightning and ice attacks like the regular cloud.

Staff Number 2, Bombs and Customizability
Now for her 2nd Staff, which is also her modes of transport, as its a broom as well. This lets her fly, and thus allows the game to be a side scrolling flight shooter. I’m going to break this bit into three parts.

The Head. Houses the crystal that charges up energy. This is basically the BOMB of the game, the powerful limited use annihilation attack. It is however, linked to the general purpose main staff in how it unleashes its energy. And thus, 6 different elemental bombs!

Fire: Causes a massive explosion to erupt from the center of the screen, basically annihilating everything on screen and clearing the screen of all enemy projectiles.

Lightning: Not a conventional bomb, it charges Crescencia with electricity for a decent period of time. This allows her to destroy most enemies on contact, improves her movement speed and lightning attack damage. Crescencia will also automatically ‘discharge’ bolts of lightning(automatic aimed attack) at nearby enemies. Note that enemy projectiles still hurt.
Basically turns Crescencia into a tesla coil that hurts on contact.

Ice: Mega Freeze. Freezes the entire current field, hence essentially ‘stopping time’, allowing Crescencia to obliterate everything at her leisure. Of course its best used against bosses that are giving you too much of a hard time rather than using it to freeze small fry. Maybe the bomb can be more amusing by when it freezes flying small fry, they drop to their doom. And maybe projectiles freeze up and harmlessly drop to the ground too. This is probably bloody hell to code and do though if this ever gets made, so maybe it’ll just clear projectiles and freeze everything up.
I thought of having it not clear projectiles, but just freeze projectiles and have them move again when they thaw out, but that might make the bomb too useless. I mean after all, it doesn’t do damage. This would probably be good used in conjunction with the Cloud attacks, with everything frozen, you can set up a wall of clouds and power them up at your leisure to obliterate bosses.

Plasma: Mega Death Ray. Decent coverage forward firing beam of ultimate damage that persists for a small while. The main anti-boss attack. Of course its not very good if the boss consists of multiple parts, meaning you blow off a part of him and the damage is wasted. Its better to use the fire bomb for more damage dealt in such situations, or to use ice bomb to make your life easier. Also obliterates any enemy projectiles that come in contact of the beam.

Water: Water Barrier. Coats Crescencia in a ball of water. Absorbs a number of enemy projectiles before depleting. Lasts until its depleted. Also enhances water attack damage. While the barrier works on projectiles, it does not work on enemies themselves. (Wouldn’t this make her more susceptible to lightning damage? Well pure water actually doesn’t conduct, so lets just leave it at that)

Cloud: Storm. Causes a massive storm cloud to appear overhead and unleash a torrent of ice, slowing down all enemies in the area. Lightning also strikes at random targets. Storm lasts… long enough to be worth using I suppose.

And thats basically it for her 6 types of bomb attacks. You start the stage with no bomb energy, but it charges over time and charges extra by picking up certain enemy drops I suppose.

Now for the shaft. The shaft is a customizable part, something you buy and equip before stages. This allows you to tweak your speed at the cost of integrity… which is basically your health. Maybe this can also come with a variety of effects, like an enchanted shaft which erects a recharging barrier around Crescencia.

Now the tail, yet another customizable part. You can buy different tails and equip them, all of have different varying effects. The basic tail will allow Crescencia to dash and hence evade projectiles(basically temporal invulnerability and a sudden burst of speed).
Other different tails may enhance dash, or remove the dash for different properties. Stuff I’ve thought of would be:
Shooting Star: Crescencia can only dash forward but she destroys any enemies she comes in contact with for the dash.
Star Shower: Crescencia can no longer dash, but has a boost to speed and a constant mid-short range magical burst from her rear, allowing her to destroy enemies behind her.
Rocket Engines: By holding the dash button to activate it, this increases her movement speed, and releases damaging fumes at the opposite direction she’s moving in.

Familiar System!
The what now? Crescencia is not alone in her fight. As someone who was in a forest for much of her life, she has… forest friends! Well not only those, but she as a witch, you can get familiars and the like to aid her in battle! Basically Crescencia can ‘equip’ up to ## companions before a stage. Maybe some of make random snide comments in conversations too! The reasoning behind limiting the amount of familiars that can follow her at a time would be the strain on her magical power, since she has to supply her familiars with magical energy for them to fight. Maybe I’ll make it so different familiars use up different amounts of like, ‘familiarlial support energy’ or something. So like you can either go bring 5 shitty bats with you, or bring a pair of more powerful dragon welps or something.

They basically function almost like a Gradius Option. They follow you around and attack stuff, except these guys are way more unique and have their own behaviour, instead of just being a remote gun that fires when you fire. As for familiar concepts, I’ve kinda thought a while and came up with some examples.
Bat – Its a bat. Attacks with supersonic waves, a high speed projectile that damages all in its path. Attacks at random.
Cat Magician – Gradius Option Lawl. Fires what you fire, excluding bombs and charged attacks.
Ghost – A ghost. Spits a slow moving glob of ectoplasm which completely stops its target, but does no damage. Does not work on large enemies or bosses. Attacks when it sees a target.
Pumpkin Head – A floating pumpkin lantern. Spits fireballs straight forward when it sees a target.
Possessed Shuriken – Circles you and damages anything it hits.
Possessed Combat Knife – Automatically strikes at nearby enemies.

There’ll probably be other stuff, that maybe cast barriers, provide healing and other interesting things. Useful little buggers to augment your abilities, but you’re ultimately going to have to rely on yourself. Some will probably become available by just completing a stage, and others would probably need to have you destroy a certain hidden thing in some stages amongst other things.

And thats basically it for how the game, or how Crescencia would play as. As for settings and enemies, just imagine them as you would.

Stage Concepts?
I did come up with a concept for the first stage however, which is ‘Clean the Archmage’s Library’. After a amusing conversation with the Archmage, negotiating not getting evicted, refusing any sexual favours after being misunderstood as some BDSM maniac…. the agreement is that Crescencia has gotta clean out the Archmage’s Library to stay another month or few months. Seems like a pretty mundane task, but the library is huge with bookcases several storeys high, with many cobwebs and giant spiders in the way coupled with a variety of strange dungeon imps, evil bats and insane fireball spitting magic books.
There will probably be a variety of stages, like one where you gotta search a cave for some treasure to pay the rent with, more favours for the Archmage, mercenary work and the like.

I guess thats it for talking about this. For now, I’ll draw her a fair few more times and flesh out concepts I guess. Although its priority will be set lower when Type-A needs more of my expertise and when exams and assignments creep ever closer.

~ by depleted on October 11, 2008.