Skylanders: Shrink Squad

Ch. 5 Reflection

Introduction

Work on the Garish Gorge first took place between 5 November and 22 December 2022. When I returned to it between 22 July and 3 August 2023, I made some slight gameplay readjustments, most notably adding the Academy prologue. This level features the spider hunter Dream Weaver and the cricket medic Leaf Fall.

The Mutants

Unless otherwise stated, each mutant's appearance was inspired by those in World of Warcraft (WoW).

The first mutant I animated was the Putrid Polluter, a satyr whose concept was similar to Loatheb. She attacks similarly to a two-handed sword Moblin in Age of Calamity: she swings her club right and left, brings it behind her, and slams it overhead. Her first swing always creates a toxic cloud for four seconds that raises the active Skylander's toxicity by 2% each second they are inside.

The second was the Blight Thorn, a flower resembling a Blightthorn Growth. It attacks like its namesake, slashing the area in front of it with both of its vine arms. It has a permanent cloud about it that functions like the Putrid Polluter's.

The third was the Murk Lurker, a slime resembling Viscidus. It is best described as an upgraded Funny Bomber. I wanted to make it meander when the Skylanders were out of sight, but I would have had to make a copy of it for the two lakes and the second required battle, and bind each one to its respective spawn area. I would have also needed a fourth copy that was not bound to any of the combat areas if the player chose the scrapped zombies game mode. I wanted to preserve my computer's space, so I removed the Murk Lurker's meandering code and made it spawn a puddle of slime every five seconds that it sees the Skylanders. Each puddle despawns after ten seconds and functions as a cloud that deals both health and toxicity damage.

The fourth was the Noxious Troll, a mutated troll vaguely resembling Hungarfen. He attacks by swinging both of his fists up like an Iron Golem in Minecraft, and then slamming down. His animation can be slightly misleading: the Skylanders will only take damage from him after he begins swinging his arms upwards. A cloud spawns at his location each time he is hit.

The fifth was the Toxic Chompy. It normally moves at 5 speed. When it gets close to the Skylander body, it hesitates for a second before lunging at 6 speed for another second. If the mutant hits the body, the active character takes both physical and 2% toxicity damage.

The sixth was the Gunker, a larger Murk Lurker based on its namesake. The original idea was that it would only relocate when the player got too close to it. I later gave it a 30 second movement interval because it would not move when prompted. It throws a fake Murk Lurker, called "Yeet Lurker" in the code as an inside joke, at the Skylander body's location every ten seconds. The Yeet Lurker deals a flat amount of damage if it collides with the body. It instead spawns a real Murk Lurker if it collides with its telegraph. It and its telegraph safely despawn if it takes the former more than five seconds to reach the latter. Only two Gunkers spawn throughout the entire stage because I would have needed to create a unique telegraph target if more than one was up at a time.

The seventh was the Virulent Viper, a snake created by our leader. I initially thought it would be the hardest to program because its attack style coiled itself around the Skylander body. Both it and the Flight Fairy's complexities were cut down by watching Code Monkey's playlist on making a 2D Snake game. I did not include the projectile retaliation attack because it would have been unfair to take damage from an undodgeable, point blank attack.

The eighth and last was the Polluted Piranha, a venus flytrap resembling and attacking like a Deku Baba and its variants from Zelda. Only its stalk takes damage.

Charts 1.1 and 1.2 show each enemy's health and damage.