Plusle and Minun are a Pokémon duo character, created in under 30 days for the ‘Another Modding Jam’ Rivals Workshop contest (May 2021). The character won 1st place out of 31 entries, and achieved 10,000 unique downloads in the first two weeks of release. This mod was a collaboration with THCGourami, who came up with the concept and drew the majority of the animations.
They are fast and lightweight characters who must work together to overwhelm their opponents. Plusle and Minun have unique Special Attacks, and the player can freely swap which Pokemon leads the pair. By using Helping Hand (Down Special), the duo character becomes a solo character, with the ‘leader’ having more powerful attacks and the ‘partner’ cheering them on for support.
Developing a two-in-one character in Rivals of Aether proved challenging, as there were no “true” duo characters on the Workshop prior to the jam event. The partner’s AI, unique moves and seamless control swapping between the two characters all had to be rigged into the Rivals engine from scratch, and optimized as much as possible to maintain the game’s framerate. We are both still surprised we had time to spare by the end of it.
Plusle and Minun are (c) Nintendo.
Plusle & Minun on Steam Workshop
Leave a Reply