as i mentioned in my previous post, once you end your turn its now the enemy phase. 

outside of their type (flying, melee, spell and ranged) monsters have 2 basic stats, HP (hit points) and AC (action).here is a basic breakdown of some enemies in the games first chapter, the sewers of dross.

Dips and flies are the little weenies that just mindlessly come at you, usually in small groups, get close and attack. they can be killed by any basic damage tile ( bones or teeth) so they go down fast but since dips walk and flies fly they can stack up and cause some issues if you dont clean house.

Tado kids and squirts are the tanks of ch1, they take some work (usually more than one attack) to take down and also spawn enemies on death so you need to plan around not only their attacks but also how/when they die. on top of that, squirts aren’t mobile and only do ranged attacks so if left unchecked you can expect to take a half heart of damage from these guys every 2 turns.

Pooters and Leapers are both ranged attackers with 1 ac, meaning you can always expect them to attack regardless of how close they are so they should be very high priority when it comes to killing them first especially if the next guy is in the room.

Tall bois are the only spell casters in chapter 1, they have the highest hp of any enemy thus far and need some planning to take down. tall bois will always first cast fog ( making any damage taken reduced to 1 ) to protect themselves, then the next turn spawn a dip in front of them ( also to protect themselves ). in order to really deal out damage to this guy you need to save up a high damage spell and a minor damage puzzle combo to take out the dip that is guarding him and then smash him with a bumbo smash spell while his fog spell is down.

Boom flies are a personal favorite of mine because they are a pattern enemy. boom flies will always fly forward, prime, attack, then fly away then repeat over the course of the match. but the kicker is that if they get killed when they are close to you they also deal damage to you. this is another enemy you need to plan around early on, because if you dont take them out early on youll need to get defensive and guard against their attack with poop or they may end up blowing up in your face. 

as one would assume as the game progresses enemies become more complex and hard to deal with as you yourself become stronger and more skilled. but i think these guys can give you a basic idea of how enemy ai on top of the existing turn based puzzle formula can make for a very dynamic, fun and at times brain breaking puzzle in itself. 

next post ill go over LOAF! one of the first bosses you’ll fight in the sewers!

-Edmund  

So we have gone over spells, mana and puzzle combos, but we haven’t really talked about attacking and monster lanes.

Each room is broken down into 3 lanes, when attacking you must choose what lane you want to attack. all basic attacks will automatically hit the first monster in the lane.. and a lot of monsters know this. you’ll find some of the smarter more beefy monsters will purposefully position themselves in front of others to block incoming attacks.

Things get a bit more complex when you bring flying enemies into play. flying enemies can occupy the same space as walking enemies, making each lane more dense. if you attack a row where a flying enemy occupies the same space as a walking one, your attack will always hit the flying enemy first.

Outside of flying and walking, enemies are also broken down into 4 basic types.

Melee: must be in the closest row of a lane in order to attack. 

Ranged: may attack from any space.

Spell: may cast a spell that modifies the game in some way. 

Modifier: these enemies don’t usually attack but effect the game in a specific way till killed. 

Once the player finishes their turn, it’s the enemies turn. each monster will move closer to the player or try to find cover, then if they have more action points available they will “prime” and end their turn.

When an enemy is “primed” it means that it will attack or cast a spell at the start of its next turn, giving the player time to defend or aggressively attack a specific enemy before it gets a chance to do its thing. 

this is the basic foundation to both sides of the attack but when you take into account the random spells you find as well as the special abilities of the enemies you encounter, this gets really complex real fast.

more to come!

-Edmund 

It’s finally trailer time!

The Legend of Bum-bo is a randomly generated, turn based puzzle rpg where you take the role of Bum-bo (from the binding of Isaac) as he punches the faces off hordes of paper goons and takes their coins! …only to gamble them away at the casinos. 

Utilizing his bag of trash bum-bo forms pagan glyph’s (via a match 4 puzzle system) that create offensive and defensive attacks and gain specific types of mana to cast epic spells that range from jagging stuff with a fish hook to summoning mom’s leg to crush all who stand in your path. 

Every dungeon bum-bo enters will be randomly generated and much like isaac feature hoards of monsters, bosses, traps, puzzles and randomly chosen spells, so each run will be totally unique and each successful play through will unlock more items, trinkets, playable characters and more. 

Most may notice Bum-bo seems to have a lot of ties to the binding of isaac. i like to call it a prequel, but what i mean by that outside of the obvious themes isnt something i can really explain without spoiling too much, but i can assure you if you enjoyed isaac and also like turn based combat and puzzle games, the legend of bum-bo should be right up your alley. 

The Legend of Bum-bo is being developed by myself and James id and once again features the musical stylings of Ridiculon!

After a few years of work we are nearing the end of development and will be releasing sometime later this year on both steam and iOS via The Label, hoping for a Switch release sometime next year.  

Follow me on twitter for more info, we will also be updating the blog more as the release closes in. 

stay tuned!

so as i explained before, in bum-bo you use a puzzle board to do basic attacks, defend/heal, and gain mana… but what do you do with that mana!? you cast some goddamn spells!

The legend of bum-bo currently features around 100 spells that all fit into 5 basic categories: Attacking, Defensive, Puzzle, Items and Special.

each character starts with 1-2 specific spells with mana costs based on the theme of the character.. but! inside each chapter of the game there is a treasure room that will feature a random spell to add to your arsenal (with a semi randomly generated mana cost)

Attack Spells: Spells that directly damage enemies in many different ways.

Defensive Spells: Spells that reduce or negate attacks, heal or counter incoming attacks.

Puzzle Spells: Spells that modify the puzzle board.

Items: Spells that require charges to be used (much like usable items in isaac).

Special Spells: wild card effects!!!

Similar to isaac, it’s these spells that really make each play through totally unique. Many items synergize and combo off one another and once you bring trinkets into the mix things start to get really crazy (more on that in a later update).

one aspects of isaac i loved was the idea of taking items that combo’d with items you already had. i added reroll effects and later double treasure rooms to complement this more but with so many items and the ability to get busted easily it didn’t really come through as well as i had wanted.

in bum-bo im pushing this aspect more by always giving the player 2 choices on what item they want from a treasure room as well as adding a “casino zone” at the end of each chapter where the player can use their spoils to buy/replace/modify their current spells or even spin the wheel of fortune and raise their stats!

anyway, next time ill go into more detail on enemies and how attacking actually works! 

BYE BYE!

so as you may have guess from screen shots, the Legend of Bumbo revolves around a very familiar core mechanic when it comes to combat, a match x puzzle game formula. 

im Bumbo the formula is a match 4 setup that revolves around the “movement points” that you have based on your characters dexterity… but we will cover all this, along with combat in a later post.

what today’s post is about is the 6 main puzzle pieces, how they are used and how they play into the games theme.

thematically Bumbo arranging these pieces of garbage/remains is a play off of the black arts. rearranging entrails and bodily fluids into specific patterns to cast spells and curse your enemies is really whats going down here… but they look cute so most will forget about this theme quickly enough.

in Bumbo matching 4+ of any specific colored piece will instantly remove them and give you a specific amount of colored mana equal to the number of pieces removed. this mana can then be used to activate spells/items you start with and collect along your journey, but each specific piece will also combine to become a “puzzle spell”. 

Puzzle spells are specific for each piece type and will grow in power the higher number of pieces you combine to create them. (ie. matching 4 bones will combine them into a low damage femur bone that is thrown at a specific enemy. combining 6 will create a skull and going above and beyond will summon a giant skeletal demon to rain hell down on everything in the room!)

here is a basic break down of each piece and its purpose.

Bones- white mana - offensive

matching 4 bones will create a thrown femur bone that can target one enemy doing minor damage.

Teeth-  Black mana - offensive

matching 4 teeth will create a large dead tooth that can be thrown at specific enemies much like bones. 

Hearts - red mana - defensive 

matching 4 hearts will heal your character by ½ a heart.

Poop - brown mana - defensive 

matching 4 poops will create a small poop wall that can withstand one attack from an enemy before being destroyed.

Booger - green mana - defensive

matching 4 boogers will create a large snot ball that can be thrown at enemies to immobilize and negate their attacks.

Pee- yellow mana - wild card

matching 4 pee drops will give the player +1 movement point to use for this turn, but can also be utilized to charge items.

each character starts with mana specific items that push the player to explore different strategies puzzle wise, and each found items mana activation cost will rarely be the same, forcing the player to use many different tactics not only when it comes to how they approach enemies but also how they interact with each puzzle board. 

there are quite a few other puzzle pieces we will go over later, but these are the meat and potatoes of what you will be working with, especially in the games early chapters.

in my next post ill talk about items and combat ( the fun stuff! ) and maybe you’ll start to get a better idea of how bumbo and isaac connect… 

till next time! 

James Id here.  I’m the programmer, modeler and animator for The Legend of Bum-bo, and I want to talk about cardboard.

Why Cardboard?

Edmund and I grew up in households where cardboard and office materials were more plentiful than toys and games.  After playing a video game for the 500^th time sparked our imaginations, we would take to making our own fun using paper, glue, tape and cardboard.

Instead of creating the vehicles and weapons from the video games I’d play, I tended to work on making my own games and toys.  For example, instead of making a race car modeled off of the ones I’d play as in Pole Position, I would create a race car arcade game.  The track, complete with racers, was drawn on a coffee can.   A dollar store toy car would glide over the track, suspended by a Popsicle stick.

Besides mimicking video games, I would often make my own board games.  They were usually modeled off of something from my brother’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books, or the incredibly expensive and involved board games I’d see on television such a Volcano Island and the Grape Escape.

How Cardboard…?

I’m unsure of exactly how we decided on using these kinds of memories to inform the design of Bum-bo.  I do know that, once we had decided on using Bum-bo as our central character, Edmund and I would talk at great lengths about our childhoods; the lack of hesitation we had in regards to building our imaginary worlds, and ever present drama of our home lives serving as this ever-present backdrop to our childish art.  This seemed to fit without the world of Bum-bo and Isaac, and we agreed unanimously to create the game entirely of Popsicle sticks, tape, paper and cardboard.

When the aesthetic was chosen, it just seemed natural that it would take place in various cardboard boxes.  While the scope and quality of all the elements in the game are more exaggerated than what one child would be able to do, we still wanted to limit it within the realm of possibility.  Would an eight year old James be able to craft an intricately detailed sewer?  Not exactly, but I’d compromise by painting a box to have the details of a sewer, and add additional cardboard shapes where it felt lacking.

We had decided that all the pieces would then resemble the board game pieces I used to make.  Enemies would be flat, but stand up on their own, like doorways in Hero’s Quest. Items and puzzle pieces would resemble tokens from something like Dungeon!. Essential environment pieces like platforms and NPCs would be arranged and animated like the house in 1313 Dead End Drive.

A design like this establishes clear rules for creating the 3D models.  First, all models would have to appear to have been created from sheets of cardboard.  All 3D details would have to be created by either layering cardboard, bending it, wrapping it, or crushing it. Second, animation would have some real world explanation.  Cardboard elements with large frames of animation would make the characters seem to have a life of their own, making the real-world aesthetic redundant.  Fewer frames of animation, each a new cardboard object, more closely resembles how I would “animate” characters I created as a child.  My dopey barbarian got injured?  I’ll just switch his bad-ass paper figurine with one of his guts dripping out.

Edmund designs all the characters, items and the HUD using Adobe Animate, and I then use those illustrations to model a cardboard cut out.  Depending on the character’s size, I will create extra layers of cardboard or build it out more like a paper craft model.  I then create textures to put the illustrations on to appear like the character was drawn on cardboard, instead of the cardboard being made for the drawing.

To truly sell the aesthetic, I’ve relied heavily on scanning real elements, and creating textures for physically-based rendering. Using real scans and software like Allegorithmic’s Substance Designer, I can create cardboard that has the subtle wear and ribbing, along with illustrations that don’t quite cover the surface, as permanent markers tended to not do.

It is my hope that the focus we’ve had on the aesthetics of the game does more than break the fourth wall: We hope to capture the feeling of playing as a child who is playing with characters he has created.