Perfect Parry - Design Story

Game Designer · Programmer
Unity · C# · Combat Design · Rapid Prototyping · Gameplay Systems

One-week rapid prototyping project at Manchester Metropolitan University

Perfect Parry is a top-down combat prototype built around a simple idea: the better the player performs, the more difficult the game becomes.

Working from a weekly theme of Scale, I designed a combat system where the player's size changes depending on their performance. Successfully parrying projectiles makes the player smaller, making them harder for enemies to hit but making precise parries more difficult. Taking damage makes the player larger, making parries easier but leaving the player more exposed.

I designed and programmed the core combat systems in Unity and C#, including the dodge, parry, enemy attacks and gameplay progression.

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THE CORE GAMEPLAY LOOP

The initial prototype centred around a simple loop:

Dodge → Parry → Survive → Repeat

Successful parries allowed the player to become smaller and increase their score, while damage made them larger.

The system created an inherent risk/reward relationship: performing well made the player harder to hit, but simultaneously increased the difficulty of successfully parrying incoming attacks.

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IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM

Playtesting revealed that the core loop became stagnant over longer play sessions.

The player repeatedly fought the same enemies using the same dodge-and-parry interactions. Although their score increased, the gameplay itself remained largely unchanged.

The result was a lack of meaningful difficulty progression. The player's performance was being measured, but it wasn't significantly changing the challenge they faced.

With limited time remaining, I focused on changes that could extend the existing gameplay loop rather than rebuilding the combat system.

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ITERATING THE GAMEPLAY LOOP

I introduced two features to give the player more reasons to engage with the existing systems.

Health Packs

Health packs were introduced around the arena to restore a lost heart.

This gave players another consideration during combat: rather than simply avoiding damage, they could actively look for opportunities to recover and extend their run.

Performance-Based Progression

More importantly, I redesigned the score system so that it became part of the game's progression.

Successful parry → Score increases
Taking damage → Score decreases

Reaching specific score thresholds demonstrated that the player was successfully managing the core mechanics and triggered the introduction of new enemy types.

This changed score from simply measuring performance into a system that drives the difficulty curve.

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INTRODUCING NEW THREATS

The statues positioned around the edge of the arena initially appeared to be environmental decoration.

At higher score thresholds, they came to life.

Unlike the basic goblin enemy, which fires projectiles directly towards the player, the statues move vertically along the sides of the arena and fire horizontally across the play space.

This introduced additional projectile trajectories and forced the player to consider threats coming from multiple directions.

The result was a stronger bullet-hell feel, while still building directly on the original dodge-and-parry mechanics.

Basic enemies → direct threats
Statues → lateral threats
Higher performance → increased complexity

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REFLECTION

The biggest lesson from Perfect Parry was the importance of making player performance meaningful to the gameplay experience.

The initial score system told the player how well they were performing, but didn't affect what happened next. By connecting score thresholds to enemy progression, I turned performance into a mechanism for controlling difficulty.

Working within a one-week development constraint also taught me to prioritise changes that could extend an existing system rather than replace it.

The project strengthened my approach to rapid prototyping: identify the weakest part of the gameplay loop, determine the smallest intervention that can address it, and iterate towards a more engaging player experience.