#elephanny

[samsaraandbeyond]

Memento Melee: 7-14-2026 Update (+Gameplay Video)

The numbers, Mason.

Unlike the last TRAIN WRECK of a play session, I looked into the frame data of Bearsus itself and studied the numbers so I could replicate how the game plays. Turn out all of the moves there have 1 to 3 frames of start-up with a move's recovery being 10 or 20 frames once they hit the ground. Characters get up very quickly as well.

1 frame start-up moves was insane really.

I took some creative liberties timing wise on the characters I'm working with as no one in Bearsus has attacks that only start once they hit the ground or rising DPs.

As of right now, only Cleeve and Elephanny are in states that I'm comfortable with. I'm slowly integrating Moboss and Blast onto the roster with Moboss being tested currently, but problems on how to approach his intended archetype in the game are arising I'll admit.

Now the best part!

Rod F, creator of Bearsus themselves, had seen gameplay of this project and liked what they saw! Even got some of the best advice I could've gotten on how to approach animations and mechanics.

so I'm really hoping I don't fumble lmao

Regardless, enjoy the gameplay recently recorded here!

[samsaraandbeyond]

Memento Melee: 7-8-2026 Update Part 2

Address me.

Like I said in the last post, I wanted to talk about the fourth character added to the roster, Elephanny!

The name will make more sense as I explain.

Ele is currently the roster's sole gimmick character! They only really have one jump and one move.

And I say that with a giant asterisk.

Elephanny has a massive first jump and their "double jump" has no upwards boost, but can still change your horizontal momentum like any other character.

This gives Elephanny unique movement options no other character has. This faux double jump cancels all upwards movement, letting you feint jump to catch opponents off-guard.

On top of that, you can still hold down the button during your double jump to keep more of its momentum in that direction, giving you another way to micromanage your movement.

Now this next feature was caused by an oversight.

When you recover after being knocked down, the characters use their double jump stats to determine how fast and how far they're supposed to go. Ele had no double jump, resulting in them standing in place with invincibility. To fix this, dionednd changed Ele's recovery to work even as they're touching the ground by using their momentum to slide them in the selected direction.

What we thought was a simple fix gave us another feature.

While recovering, and since Ele doesn't leave the ground performing it, this doesn't count as a jump at all. You're free to cancel the recovery movement into anything you please while still having your double jump ready.

flinch tester

Now onto the moveset.

the fanny in question

Elephanny has a butt drop and nothing more.

BUTT.

Pressing back while double jumping gives you the same butt drop with more of a delay before Ele comes crashing into the ground. Or you can press forward while double jumping to use the standard drop like normal. Just another layer to tripping your opponents up.

All in all, one of my favorite additions to the roster this far. I didn't think something so simple would be so skill expressive. Looking to be my main really.

Also I popped off on color coding the limbs like I did.

Ikemen's color limit goes beyond 12 by the way.

[samsaraandbeyond]

Memento Melee: 7-8-2026 Update

(+Gameplay Video)

Who's this fourth guy?

Soooo.

While finishing BlastRaptor, their attacks and projectiles weren't working. I didn't know why. Tried for hours to fix it, couldn't get them working, I had no one to ask at the time and I got super pissed off at being hard stopped.

Refusing to not make progress, I threw my hands up and started working on another character concept I had if I wasn't gonna progress Blast. After a 14 hour Aseprite session; when the other characters took one or two weeks, I finished the fourth character completely!

And right after that I realized Blast wasn't working because I forgot to switch a flag that defined the moves as an attack.

I love coding.

Once they were all done, I nabbed a friend to play online with me using Ikemen's network features.

Turns out when your characters are full of placeholder values, values based on vibes, things that sounded good on paper, and with no ability to test them against competent AI, you see a whole lotta issues.

(Also we unknowingly played on the delay-based netcode build of Ikemen which resulted in a lot of lag and dropped inputs.)

But but but but but but.

I had fun. I really did. Seeing all of this come together was a power trip.

It made me reflect on how I wanna approach this. I realized that starting with four characters from the start meant that there wasn't much of a baseline to balance around. Cleeve, despite being designed as the standard, wasn't developed enough that the other characters could be adjusted in relation. That play session was a MESS.

Mirror matches specifically were fun as hell though and nailed the gameplay I was looking for.

SO. My plan for right now? Get Cleeve up to snuff. Everything from frame data, velocities, base movement height and speeds, how long invincibility lasts, all that, get it sorted, then move on to the other characters and get them to Cleeve's standard. Then we see where we go from there.

All this yapping wouldn't be interesting without any gameplay footage though, right?

You can watch the matches we played here!

Fair warning, its kinda jank. Jank I found fun, but jank.

As for Elephanny, the fourth character, I'd rather elaborate on them in another post. You can see their gameplay in the link above, but their design is unique (and personally fun) enough that I want to talk about it at length on a post that isn't already long as hell.

Until then!