Deep Dive
In Nemophore, you manage a group of Insects defending their home against enemy Spiders. Your main resource is Nectar, using it to place more Insects and prevent the Spiders from reaching the left side of the Screen.
In your army, there are Nectar-producers like the Fourmiel, standard attackers like PANorpe or Menthe Religieuse; but also some special troops like the Pupillon or the Coccibelle, which increase dealt damage or heal your own troops respectively.
But the enemies too have special abilities! The Black Widow kills any Insect in one bite, and the Banana Spider makes every Spider move faster while it is on screen!
Nemophore is one of my first “full” games, done during my first year at ArtFX.
Based on Plants vs. Zombies with an “insect vs spiders” theme, this served as a test for me to see how far I could go from a programming viewpoint. Let’s see what that meant!
Puns, Puns Everywhere…
Almost every single spider or insect in the game is a French pun, because we could, and because it’s fun.
A basic example of this is the PANorpe. “Panorpe” is another name for the Scorpionfly, a scorpion blended with a mosquito. We gave it a gun at the end of its tail to make a pun with “PAN”, the French onomatopoeia for gunfire.
This image is dedicated to showing the real Panorpe, or Panorpa communis, a real-life monster that more people should know about.
My favorite pun is probably the Moussetic (Mossquito in English), but the most interesting concept in my opinion is the Pupillon (Pupil + Butterfly, translatable into Butterfleye maybe?). Its ability is to look at and focus on one Spider at a time, it zooms it, making the Spider grow and take more damage.
Obligatory note: This game is named Nemophore after the song of the same name by Creo, but also because ‘Nemophora‘ is a genus of moths… Insect puns! Even in the title!
Developing the Project
The most important aspect of balancing the game is the Wave system. I coded two different kinds: the “All-At-Once” where all Spiders come at once, and the “Fluid” wave where they come one-by-one.
A single level is the combination of both types, starting with a calm stretched Fluid wave, and putting All-At-Once waves to challenge the player’s strategy.
I started the game by prototyping the grid placement system. Then I moved on to a basic spider (which was a glorified moving hitbox), then all of the insects before doing the special spider abilities.
That’s how the game looked during its prototyping phase.