Monster Monday 1: A Simple Bat (Patreon)

Hello! I hope you had a good weekend. It's the first release of June, and that means...

It's the first Monday of the SUMMER OF MONSTERS! 😱😱😱

What is the Summer of Monsters?

I've been open about my plans for the next Elements asset pack: before we can get into another character expansion, we need some enemies for the characters to interact with! It was always my plan to work on this expansion throughout this summer, and with my historical tradition of special event releases in the summer time (orc week, quirky NPC month, lo-bit week), I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for something really fun.

I want to share a special patron pre-release for a new monster enemy every Monday for this summer (that's June and July... maybe August too, if patrons show interest to continue).

But here's the fun part: these aren't limited to simple walking sprites like I've made in the past. I'm going to make these designs with animations for on-map gameplay-- specifically so that developers can make the most out of those Elements characters' action animations.

That's right: these are monsters to use in action combat RPGs!

Each monster will have some bespoke animations, such as for attack patterns in addition to regular movement, and I'll provide some suggestions for how you might want to make the most of them in your game. I'm planning to make a bunch of videos and gifs as examples too.

I want to include your suggestions and ideas as we go. So make sure to drop your ideas for monsters and their behaviors and interactions in the request thread.

I think that this will be a lot of fun, and I hope that you find these to be useful!

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Now with the introduction out of the way, allow me to underwhelm you with the first monster...

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The first release for Monster Monday is... a bat.

Yes, I know. It's a really simple enemy.

And it's not even the first bat that I've made... But it's an important staple for games, and I thought that it'd be a good idea to get the basics finished first before we move onto more creative designs.

For all my excitement for making unique animations and behaviors for the monsters this summer... this guy doesn't have much going on. He's really meant to be the most basic enemy there is: he flies around and hurts you by bumping into you.

Though, of course-- when you first enter the area, he'd be sleeping upside-down, and he won't wake up until you get close. So this bat comes with two (and a half) animations: the regular flight animations (four frames), and a sleep/wake-up animation (two and two frames).

If you want to see this bat's flight in action-- I recorded a little video here (webm).

I can't embed webms into the post, sorry, so it's a direct link. Hopefully it plays right in your browser, it's only a few seconds long. (Let me know if this video works, because if not then I'll need to come up with something else for future releases.)

Here are the downloads:

Bat - Flying - Single Animation Sheet - 100%

Bat - Sleeping - Single Animation Sheet - 100%

Bat - Flying - Single Character Sheet (RM) - 200% (RMVX)

Bat - Sleeping - Single Character Sheet (RM) - 200% (RMVX)

Bat - Flying - Single Character Sheet (RM) - 300% (RMVX)

Bat - Sleeping - Single Character Sheet (RM) - 300% (RMVX)

Note: The 100%-size is arranged in a simple horizontal sprite-sheet for easy use in any non-RPGmaker engine. The upscaled ones are in an RPGmaker format, and you'll want to add a "$" to the beginning of the filename so the engine recognizes that this is a single-character sheet. Animate it my 'spinning' to make the most use of four frames.

I hope this batty baddy finds a place in your game!

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I'll be back later in the week with a regular release: I'd love to get the lo-bit stuff done in time to release it for this week (it seems like I've been saying that for a month LOL)-- but I ended up spending all weekend working on the game prototype so I could show off this bat for you (in a webm that I couldn't even embed... 😅) ...

So if I can't get the lo-bit pack done by Friday, I'll check the request thread and pick something simple from it.

So-- see you then!

Thanks!