It’s that time again folks! I’m sure you all woke up this morning, excited about this nice spring Monday, looking forward to the robust and detailed game design articles from Escape Industries’s resident game designer/programmer/crazy person. I’ll be here every week to make your Monday mornings that much brighter. Wednesdays are for your weekly dosage of art design from artist and musician Charles McGregor, and your Friday game binge will be provided by Lane Davis, game designer and programmer.

Last week, I left you with a serious puzzle on your hands. What in the world is this thing?

This, dear sir and/or madam, is a shield. A Shock Shield to be precise. It destroys any enemy bullets it contacts. Such a gadget would be useful for players looking to protect allies from those pesky dolphin-developed foes. Many of the parts in this game are designed to have these kinds of abilities that help your teammates out. Some weapons deal out some serious damage in a short time to quickly clear high priority targets, some displace powerful opponents, some impede movement and rate of fire of the more mobile enemies. There’s a wide variety of choices available, creating vastly different gameplay experiences for each player on the team.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a team game unless you needed to rely on your team. The weapons come with some shortcomings. The Shock Shield, for instance, doesn’t deal very much damage on contact. It slows enemies a bit, but players with these equipped will have to rely on  their cannons to do most of the heavy damage. Of course, if one had a team (*wink wink*), one could synergize with a damage-focused teammate by creating openings in enemy attack patterns for him or her to take advantage of.

Next week, we’ll take a look at these lovely things:

I wonder what these could be…