In order to illustrate the level of thought required to excel within Demonicon’s combat system, the developer loaded up a save point late in the game. It became obvious that simple hacking and slashing just wouldn’t do in most cases. During one encounter, Cairon is assaulted by a group of demons. Between basic mace attacks and dodging, every now and then, he’d cast a spell to either neutralize a target for a few seconds (freezing them into place) or to cause damage over time (poisoning them). As the battle continued the developer explained that Cairon uses blood magic, meaning he takes the blood or essence from enemies and converts it into magical energy he can then use to cast spells. So it was necessary for him to damage his opponents with melee attacks to build up more magic to continue to cast spells. The same thing goes for his life bar. In Demonicon, health can be regained a couple of different ways, one of which involves converting stolen essence from enemies into life. The catch here is that in order to do this successfully, you have to chain enough hits without taking damage (or waiting too long in between attacks). Of course, the enemies where no push overs; they weren’t going to just give Cairon their blood. The slashing of claws, debuffing spells, and acid attacks were coming in from all sides. This forced the dev to carefully time his dodges and attacks in order to stay alive. At one point he actually had to stop talking to better focus on the battle.
