Gameplay

Constancy: Roa is a 2d side-scrolling combo oriented platformer/shooter. You control Roa as she fights against her other sisters and acquires specialized facsimiles of them called “databanks”. Using these allows Roa to mimic her sisters in her own style, changing all of her stats, abilities, and gaining a new set of moves for each form. These new forms can be changed at will once acquired. In addition to this Roa will acquire several abilities as she begins to “awaken”. Since she is a non-combat unit she is substantially weaker then her sisters, so strategy is required in many cases. This is not a button-masher friendly game. You will have many choices to confront a given situation but whether or not you’ll be successful at it will depend on your skill and reaction. The AI for this game is inspired by recent Ninja Gaiden games, and especially the bosses will be highly elaborate and intelligent.

NOTE: The game is still currently under development; specifications may be different from the finalized version.

Basic Moves

These are Roa’s default controls. They can be reconfigured in the Options menu. Joystick and gamepad support is among our many goals for this project.

Left/Right arrow keys – Movement
Down arrow – Crouch
Up arrow – Look up
C – Jump
D – Dash
S – Left hand attack
X – Right hand attack
W – Previous databank
E – Next databank
ENTER – Game Menu
ESC – Quit Game

Advanced Moves

Grabbing walls – When in midair, lean left/right into a wall and press the jump button to grab onto the wall for a brief time if there is room. When you grab onto a wall you can press down to simply drop down or press jump again to kick off the wall. Be quick about making your choice, as Roa tires out fairly quickly, in which case she’ll simply let go of the wall and not be able to grab any more walls until she lands on the ground.

Grabbing edges – When in midair, hold left/right into the edge of a ledge and Roa will automatically grab onto it if her arms can reach it. Unlike walls, Roa can hang indefinitely from an edge. When in this state, hold left/right into the edge and press jump, and Roa will climb up onto the ledge of there is room above to support her. Pressing jump by itself will cause Roa to kick away from the wall if there is a surface for her leg to kick away from. Finally, you can simply press down to drop down.

Dash jumping – Jump while in a dashing state and your forward momentum will carry with you during your jump. This allows you to jump longer distances than normal.

Slide – Press the jump button while in a crouching state to slide. This can be used to do small damage to certain enemies and evade attacks. It also allows her access to certain narrow tunnels.

Attacks – S and X (default) are used to perform various attacks with Roa’s left and right hands respectably. Roa has many different kinds of attacks at her disposal, even with her original databank. Press the attack buttons in various ways and with various degrees of timing to discover the arsenal of moves you can use. Once you perform a new special attack for the first time, it will be listed under your movelist on the game’s main menu, so you can refer to it later.

Energy – Below Roa’s life bar is the energy gauge represented by 3 segments. Roa must have enough energy to perform attacks, and spends the energy necessary to do so each time she attacks. Roa’s energy recovers when she is not attacking, but the rate in which it recovers is dependent on the attacks she was last using. As a general rule, the stronger and more powerful the attack is, the longer it will take Roa to regenerate her energy.

Abilities

As Roa defeats her fellow cyber-genesis subjects she unlocks additional abilities you can use. These abilities are always unlocked in the same order, regardless of the order you defeat your opponents.

Databanks

Each time Roa beats one of her sisters she will acquire one of these specialized databanks. Various databanks change all aspects of how Roa functions, including her attacks, statistics, abilities, and movement. You can set the databank your currently using and the order of databanks to cycle through on the main menu. During gameplay, W and E keys (default) allow you to cycle through your databanks. Skillful players can use abilities from different databanks as part of a single combo, and can even switch databanks mid combo.

Damage System

There are two types of damage in CR, recoverable and non-recoverable. Recoverable damage is red, while non-recoverable damage is black. Most attacks deal recoverable damage. When hit by these kind of attacks, a portion of your life gauge will turn red. If you can avoid additional damage, the recoverable damage will slowly heal itself. However, if additional damage is received, any recoverable damage will become non-recoverable damage, and any additional damage will become recoverable damage. A number of attacks in the game are strong enough to send Roa flying, knocking her down, making her vulnerable to additional attacks.

Elemental Damage

Any attacks involving fire, ice , electricity and so on are called Elemental attacks. Should Roa take damage from any of these, there’s a corresponding status effect imposed on her. These kinds of attacks usually inflict non-recoverable damage, but its strength are affected by many factors, including environment, game difficulty, and others.

Currently, elemental attacks in the game comprise of:

  • burn: (fire) Roa takes small amounts of damage for a short time whenever she moves.
  • freeze: (ice) Roa’s frozen; she can’t move breakable by hitting back and forth on the controler pad. stun: (electricity) Roa gets zapped and pushed back a short ways (similar to MM style getting hit)

EES

Roa utilizes an Emergency Escape System, or EES, when either her life gauge is fully depleted and there is no recoverable damage remaining, or when she falls from a non recoverable height. (i.e. falling into a pit) This gives Roa a sudden boost of adrenaline, allowing her to escape the situation and return to a safe location. If the final EES is used, Roa evacuates the current area and the current mission is aborted. You can see how many EES charges you have remaining on the status screen.

Adrenaline

When Roa takes damage, narrowly dodges an attack (including a near-miss) or barely avoids lethal damage (such as spikes, pitfalls or lethal traps/hazards) her adrenaline bar will raise. When it’s full she’ll stop, cross her arms then fling them out energy will explode out from her and the screen will flash. For a short time after this Roa will be in Adrenaline where she takes less damage, uses less energy and slowly regenerates black damage. This state is not unique to Roa all of her sisters can do this to.