Enemies › Ember Plains Enemies

Snakelet

Enemyenemyarea-3ember-plainsproject check
Checked against the project files: Implemented and placed in the Hub demo level. Ember Plains itself is not yet built.
FSM_Snakelet
FSM_Snakelet

Core Role: The pressure enemy. It walks the player down and answers at two ranges, and every shot it lands takes a piece of the arena away.

🎮 Combat Design

Behaviour loop:

Idle or Patrol → Attack Decision → Fire Breath     (close, off cooldown)
                                 → Fireball Burst  (at range, off cooldown)
                                 → closes in otherwise; it never gives ground

Snakelet has no retreat behaviour at all. It never backs off, and that is its defining trait: the player cannot buy space by threatening it, only by moving.

The two attacks

AttackRangeWindupShape
Fireball Burst (secondary)LongShort rear-backA pair of flat fireballs in quick succession, on a long cooldown.
Fire Breath (primary)Close, and always preferred once the player is crowding itA long rear-upA sustained flame cone.

The fireball burst is explicitly the weak attack: it exists to keep pressure on while the breath cools down, not to kill anyone. The breath is the real threat.

Fire patches

Both attacks leave the floor burning, and the breath paints fire continuously along the sweep as the head turns.

The effect on the fight is structural: every shot that lands removes a piece of the arena for a few seconds, so the fight has to move. Snakelet denies a wedge of space rather than threatening a point.

Patches stack harmlessly; standing in three of them still costs one hit.

The burn radius must match the flame effect exactly. Fire you cannot see is a trap; fire that looks bigger than it is teaches the player to distrust every fire in the game.

Vulnerability

A soft target with no armour window. But because interrupting a breath is worth far more than interrupting a burst, the breath's long rear-up is the real punish window. That moment is where the fight is decided.

❓ Open Design Questions

Is there an adult Snake? "Snakelet" implies one, and it would make a natural area boss.

Does it share the game's fire vocabulary? Area 1 Level 2 - Sandy Shores - Cave Networks already establishes the Elemental Flame Hat as a fire source. One shared fire language is worth far more than two unrelated fire systems, and it raises the obvious follow-on: can Koopa's water put a fire patch out? The duo has a water character and a fire enemy, and they currently never meet.

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