• Gust – Cone of windy knockback to jump up to five times.
• Fire Leap – A horizontal leap that burns foes and can be used to scale walls.
• Sand Sculpt – Launch yourself upward with a burst of sand.
• Geyser – Call boiling water to ferry you upward. Channel it to scald those in your way.
• Rush – Sprint around the stage evading attacks. Sprint up walls to claim the high ground.

Jump selection begins answering the two central questions of Attunement’s gameplay – What kit do you build and How do you move?

Each of the jumps exist to serve different roles. When a player selects their jump, they are determining the broad strokes of how they will move within an environment.

• Gust provides the most versatility and near the most airtime, but it provides little in terms of speed.
• Fire Leap provides powerful aggression and damage, but limited height and control.
• Sand Sculpt provides the largest amount of control midair, but gives very little time in the air.
• Geyser provides raw height as well as speed to you and anyone chasing you.
• Rush provides the largest horizontal mobility while giving up the ability to jump without a structure nearby.

How a player moves within an environment lays the beginning of all player combat.
The jump each player picks adjust how they chase one another. Do they charge in to fight one another? Do they seek the high ground? Is the fight constantly moving?

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• Offensive Gust – Fires gust in a targeted direction to blast foes away.

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• Fire Nova – Unleash a burning nova around you.
• Sand Pillar – Rapidly construct a lasting sand pillar under a foe, knocking them upwards.
• Geyser – Create a geyser at a targeted location that pushes any Shaper in its path.
• Bolt – Pour electrical energy across the map with shocking accuracy.
• Starfall – Sling shooting stars to pepper your foes while restoring your health.

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• Water Shield – A barrier to protect and heal you, at least until you detonate it knocking nearby foes about.
• Arctic Winds – Fly across the stage on icy frost, leaving behind chilling clouds.
• Pyroclasm – Place volcanic turrets that spew pools of lava at your foes.
• Bramble – Quickly create a wall of sharp entangling vines.
• Meditate – Find your inner strength, healing and preventing future damage.
• Rock Throw – Hurl an earthen hardball to send those struck (or nearby) flying.
• Tumble – Dodge-roll out of the way mitigating damage and knockback. That or into another Shaper to tackle them.

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• Void Zone – Call a hunting abyssal area to the battlefield, chasing, silencing, and damaging the nearest Shaper.

Every single ability is built to further the two central questions of Attunement.

What kit do you build?

Many abilities within Attunement exist to deliver on elemental fantasies. Anyone from Avatar: the Last Airbender, Xiaolin Showdown, Gaara from Naruto, Poison Ivy, etc.

This is a central hook of the game – allowing players to capture the elemental fantasies they have always thought were powerful and engaging.

Letting any combination of abilities have an equal chance of being viable and fun allows Attunement to attract from a wide variety of different source materials.

The result is that any combination of abilities places different power into the four emergent archetypes.

• Ravager – area of effect, damaging & accuracy
• Stalwart – durability & knockback
• Elusive – fragility, mobility & damage over time
• Tactician – summons, terrain & battlefield control

This allows for any combination of abilities to have certain defined strengths. When mixed with which jump a player chose, it creates a unique matchup.

How do you move about the environment?

Each ability that exists have impacts on where each player wants to be. The active player wants optimal effects, the targeted player wants to minimize effects. The presence of any ability in a match will affect a portion of each player’s movement while it is being used.

Examples:

• Void Zone hunts the targeted player forcing movement, allowing the active player to capitalize on the expected response.
• Water Shield encourages the active player to run towards their target. It encourages the foe to flee to try and escape the splash explosion.
• Bramble forces foes to avoid certain zones. It encourages the active player to strafe around a target planting an entangling prison.

Due to each ability having distinct weaknesses or strengths, an ability will not be active all the time. Players will adjust which of their tools they are actively using. This regular cycling of tactics creates a set of dynamic movement rules required for optimal or efficient play.

The resultant gameplay is an adaptive dance as the players move about the stage, dodging the other’s most recent change in strategy.

Finally, due to the massive number of different kits as well as the strategies individual players favor, every elemental dance is unique granting Attunement excellent replayability.

An open plateau with plenty of space to move about and get the drop on your opponent.

Three floors of close conflict for vertical combat. Jump between the floors (or take the stairs)

The murky waters slow your movement and sap your health. Catch your opponent in them and you can unleash your elemental fury.

This project wouldn’t have been possible alone!

• Jonathan Palmer – Project Lead, Programmer, Designer
• Jarell Pryor – Environment Artist
• Dillon Guscott – Art Lead, Animator
• Ashley Ervin – Character Artist
• Kushagra Gupta – Networking & AI
• Rick Scott – Audio

• Chris Cheng – Programmer (GGJ contribution)
• Angela Muscariello – Audio (GGJ contribution)
• Game-Icons.net – Lorc & Delapouite
• OpenGameArt.org – Pennomi

And an enormous thanks to MAGIC Spell Studios for their Co-Up Program.

Thanks to that MAGIC Spell Studios we were able to pay ourselves and work full time on the game.