Hey everyone! I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce Project Proxy, and discuss the unique game design challenges it poses.  My hope is that, by solving them, I can provide an original and satisfying experience.

First things first, why am I even doing this?

I've been a massive Pokemon fan my entire life (its current state is another story...), and I wanted to give that monster collector aspect a real-time twist. Apparently, Astral Chain's director went through a similar thought process... great minds think alike I guess? Project Proxy was actually conceived 6 years ago, as my game dev graduation project. That version got scrapped however, as the original game felt slow and clunky.  You could only control one character at a time. As soon as you summoned a Proxy, the human character would get stuck in place. This is what that looked like: 

So what's the deal with simultaneous controls?

Contrary to popular belief, us humans suck at multitasking. For the most part, we literally can't do two tasks at once, and the best we can do is rapidly switch from one to another, which disrupts deeper focus. This makes controlling two characters inherently difficult, and so not many games try it.

My solutions (I hope they work!)

Project Proxy does feature full, independent control of both characters. With enough practice you can manage, and you feel the 3000 IQ energy, but it has its limits. That is, if you're even willing to climb that barrier of entry, which most people would be frustrated by. The logical way of dealing with this is offloading some amount of work to the proxy and just playing in a more traditional manner. However, giving it full autonomy defeats the purpose, and the thrill of fighting as these characters, so a balance has to be struck. Thus, I developed two mechanics:

Summon Attacks: by pressing a button, you instantly summon your active proxy and it comes out already performing an attack. This would ideally work like in Super Smash Bros. with 4 directional attacks per proxy. I think this is the snappiest, most exciting way of going about it, but I don't want to reduce proxies to glorified moves.

Auto Mode: you can give your proxy 3 basic commands: follow you, attack every enemy around, and stay in one spot while fending off enemies that approach. This is intended for more casual players, to help a little bit. However, it's intentionally limited such that you can't play the entire game like this. Proxies can't use their special / stronger moves in this state, for instance. I initially was skeptical of this one, but in testing I think it does help proxies feel alive and like your partners.

I think that by designing the levels around these features, it could bring a ton of fun. More fast-paced sections can lean on Summon Attacks, direct control works well for puzzles, bosses mix both, and Auto Mode could be encouraged for tasks that require deeper focus, while deepening your bond with proxies. I believe in this potential.

What's next for Project Proxy?

My job as a game dev professor makes it hard to stick to a detailed roadmap, but the next step is to make another demo with sick graphics, some story elements, and closer level design to what's going to be in the final game. Right now I'm experimenting with a custom Toon Shader and hand-painted normal maps. Here's a (very early) sneak peek:

This article is getting long enough already, so to wrap up, thanks for reading and please do try out the current demo! Your feedback is invaluable.