Medusa | Hercules, Curse of the Hydra

Tag Archives: Medusa

God of War as Inspiration

by bpwane • on January 28, 2011 • in Art, Game Design, History, Uncategorized

Kratos - God of War

It should come as no surprise that we’re huge God of War fans. I mean that sort of goes with the territory if you’re making a third person 3-D adventure game set in the mythic past. It is sort of THE standard, right?

So we should acknowledge a few similarities.

Yes, our hero has a body tatoo that wraps around him in a way that is reminiscent of Kratos. However, we like to say that the direct inspiration for this was actually the barbarian character in Diablo 2. In his soul, Hercules has more in common with him than Kratos.

Yes, all of Hercule’s family is dead and he ended up killing some of them while he was drunk I think. Yes Kratos killed his wife and family, but honestly, Kratos stole this one from the Hercules myth. Point Hercules.

God of War - Giant Scorpion

Hercules ends up fighting some classic mythological monsters in his time rampaging through Curse of the Hydra. He’s not the first to take on a number of year beasts in video games and I dare say he won’t be the last. We do think that the way we’ve presented a number of these boss battles adds subtly and depth in a way others do not.

Yes, in GOW Kratos fights a large scorpion. Hercules does the same. However, in our game you must aggravate the monster from afar using your bow and the rush in with the spear as he rears up. It’s an action puzzle that requires a lot of nerve

God of War - Medusa

Who doesn’t want to rip the head off of Medusa now and then? God of War 1 and 2 have a couple of great Medusa battles. The first with that giant slug and then other gorgon conflicts throughout the journey. These are brutal attacks though that require force and timing. In Curse of the Hydra, Hercules’ meeting with her has a completely different texture. It is a stealth mission. If you attack Medusa directly you will lose. You must sneak up gem the shapes an attack from behind and then run before she can attack. While both types of play are exciting we’ll let you decide which gets you more tense up in your guts.

God of War - Hydra

Well, it is called Hercules: Curse of the Hydra for a reason. The Hydra is a bad ass of epic proportions. You cut off a head and more grow back? How do you kill this thing? In GOW is a bloody battle ranging up and down lattices as yo try to get a handle on the beast. That battle escalates in a nasty way. In Hercules I think we took an even more grandiose and unorthodox approach. You scale the cliff side as you chop off heads and then face off against the terrifyingly huge and vicious final head. Yikes!

While Hercules as an indie mobile game cannot match the scale and graphic intensity of the PS2 GOW we tried to take inspiration from the game play style. GOW is not a precision game. It is an incredibly good looking brawler with a compelling storyline and an interesting semi ranged base weapon. Hercules tend to feel the same. We pushed the graphics as far as they would go on the phone and tried to add the excitement of adventure and facing down fantastic beats that required cunning and skill to defeat. In the end it feels like something that started as a bit of a homage and became it’s own glorious experience.

What do you think. Is GOW the greatest single player 3-D adventure game of all time? Hercules?

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Game Balancing:Why won’t she die?

by Ike • on January 12, 2011 • in Game Design, Gameplay

In building Hercules, one frequent problem that came up was with balancing the game to a degree where absolutely everyone could play it without snapping their devices in frustration. There would commonly be situations where one set of individuals (generally the true testers) were able to fly through the entire game with nary a complaint in regards to difficulty. In contrast, there was always this other group of people who always had problems, ranging from supposedly impossible jumps to apparently unkillable enemies. So what do we do in this situation?

Since this is about difficulty and not bugs, the first thing to look for would be confirmation that other testers were indeed having similar issues. However in a number of situations, those having extreme difficulty were limited to the more casual testers,while the hardened testers had no problems whatsoever.

The simplest solutions for this was to ensure that the different difficulty levels catered to these different classes of players. As a result, there is a rather huge difference in difficulty between “Soldier”, “Captain” and “Demigod” difficulties. The first caters to the truly casual who want to play through without sweat, while latter caters to those who want to die quickly (or who are simply better than I am). “Captain” – in my case – is the happy medium, as well as the game default.

Another thing previously misunderstood was the fact that certain weapons were designed to be ineffective against certain opponents. Case in point, the snake was previously very strong against any weapon other than piercing types (such as the the bow). This was designed to be easy to spot visually in five stages:

- Zero Damage: Enemy neither bleeds nor staggers.
- Minimal Damage: Enemy staggers but does not bleed.
- Medium Damage: Enemy staggers and bleeds a little.
- Heavy Damage: Enemy staggers and bleeds.
- Max Damage: Enemy staggers and bleeds. Impact shockwave is seen.

Again, confusion reigned on the part of some testers who attempted to slay enemies using the very weapons that were not designed to kill them.

Eventually, this was minimized by increasing the effectiveness of previously ineffective weapons against enemies. In other words, weapons that previously did zero (or close to zero) damage against certain opponents now do at least a minimal amount damage. The quickest way to learn what weapon is the most effective against enemies is to simply try them out! Note that this does not apply to bosses. They may still be totally immune to certain weapons.

At the end of the day, I think Hercules fares pretty well in catering to those at different ends of the difficulty spectrum. Taking into account the generally more casual nature of the gamers on this platform, I have no doubt that some will have to put a bit more effort into getting into the swing of things than others. However, it will hopefully be a fun experience rather than a frustrating or boring one.

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Some Myths Are Better Than Others

by pdm • on January 5, 2011 • in Game Design, History, Myth

We honestly thought about doing the original Labors of Hercules as the basis of the game. The thing about that is, yeah, slaying the Nemean Lion is cool, and gives our poster boy a neat hat. But some of those other labors don’t seem very heroic, or at all fun, for that matter. Take the biggest, baddest un-fun labor of all, The Cleaning of the Augean Stables.

In case you’ve forgotten, Augeus was the owner of the most cattle and oxen in all of Greece, numbering in the thousands. The stables were appropriately sized. Not only was Hercules tasked with cleaning these out by himself, he was to do so in a single day. He cleverly diverted a river to get the job done. Smart. Now I’m not saying that it is impossible to create a fun Over-The-Shoulder game with this as a goal, but the “enemies and bosses” of such a game leave a little to be desired.

So we took a little poetic license, and crossed a few myths up in the mix. What, you say? Medusa was killed by Perseus even before Hercules set out on his journeys? Well they knew each other better than I knew either of them, that’s certain. None of them is a friend of mine on Facebook, and I’m pretty sure that at a minimum, Medusa and Hercules met at a party at some point.

Most importantly, Hercules did in fact, have to kill the Hydra, and we kept that one in, because it seemed like it was too good to pass up. We challenge you to do the same.

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Hercules vs Medusa

by karri • on December 21, 2010 • in Art, Gameplay, Video

It seems like there is a long history of Hercules kicking Medusa’s butt in his various media incarnations. Hercules: Curse of the Hydra follows in that grand tradition. That is- if you are good enough to even get to her, much less defeat her. Medusa is no push over and she will shoot you down with a rain of arrows just as soon as she’ll stare you into stone. You will need to be wiley and fast to capture her head.

In our long quest for all things Hercules we recalled the animated series from our youth: the Mighty Hercules. It’s done in that Speed Racer Style and with a certain self important swagger we can’t help but admire. Take a gander and play the clip below as we se Hercules come to grips with Medusa- or at least her head on a stick.