Hi. I’m Hirono Sato, a game designer on MADWORLD. I was in charge of player interactions, as well as all of the enemies and bosses. I wanted to jump in on the blog and talk about enemy AI for a bit.

Before we get started, one thing you should know about MADWORLD is what it is not. It is not a simple game where you just plow through stages on a single path killing enemies.

We’ve created hundreds of ways to kill an enemy, and you figure out how to use those tools in any way you’d like.
It’s an incredibly free and flexible system.

This freedom is one of the things that sets MADWORLD apart, and that same freedom runs through the enemy AI.

To give you an example of what I mean, there’s the Money Grubber, a briefcase full of money. If you throw this special item at an enemy, they will be drawn in by the money floating in the air, and eventually fight each other in an attempt to get their hands on the cash.

So what happens if Jack walks up to these enemies and gives them a swing of the chainsaw? Or what if he throws a drum filled with gasoline their way? Or what happens when you toss this case onto some busy train tracks? You’ll have to play the game to find out, but I guarantee that you will be laughing in no time!

But that’s MADWORLD… How can we kill this enemy and get a laugh from it? We used that as the jumping off point and made sure the enemy AI served this purpose.

Which means that taking out the cannon fodder, weakest of the weak enemy grunts is not difficult at all. When you have a game where running around killing all the enemies is supposed to be fun, making them so hard that you can’t kill them wouldn’t be fun at all.

So instead, we thought making a game where the difficulty would come from trying to score the highest number of points for a kill. Depending on the kill you use against an enemy, their AI reacts differently, or you might see something that makes you laugh, so you should focus on trying to score as many points as possible.

Of course, there are obviously people who enjoy fighting really challenging enemies. We’ve got you covered inside the stages with the “grunt leaders,” as well as the bosses that appear at the end of each stage. They’ve all got special AI during battle, so you should really be able to sink your teeth into the fight and enjoy the challenge.

So now you know about three types of different AI that we have: grunt, leader, and boss. But even within those groups, each time you play a stage, you can expect to see numerous customized variations on the normal grunt enemies. I’m confident that you all will have plenty to keep you busy.
MADWORLD will be out soon, so there isn’t much longer to wait. Make sure to get your pre-order in, and look forward to the madness that awaits.