Coordinated duo attack

Three questions for the mechanic

• What makes the pair one action?

  Create a combo record with encounter, attempt, leader, follower, anchor, and target offset. Resolve one target from the leader's committed anchor; do not let each body silently retarget. Check both bodies' readiness before the combo starts, then schedule their legs from one timeline.

• How does the player read the overlap?

  Show the pair link, target, and both future lane widths before either hitbox becomes active. Let the leader start first and overlap the follower briefly, but keep a full-body clear route. Preview and damage geometry must agree; the partner cannot fire from a different aim point at the last moment.

• What happens when the leader is stopped?

  Prioritize interruption over the queued follow-up. Cancel the pending partner action by combo and attempt ID, remove its hitbox, and show a distinct broken-link cue. Do not replay or duplicate a cancelled leg. An explicit retry creates a new attempt with both bodies ready and no stale queue.

Design mistakes

• Independent targeting masquerades as coordination

  If each boss tracks Tavi separately, the common target promises a safe route that does not exist. Freeze a shared target and test the union of both active lane volumes against the player's full-body clearance.

• A cancelled follow-up still deals damage

  Stopping the leader's animation is insufficient if the partner's delayed callback still spawns a hitbox. Key the queue to combo and attempt IDs, invalidate it on interruption, and assert a zero follow-up count for that attempt.

Tune the attack

• Tune overlap, not just isolated attacks

  Measure preview duration, the gap between leg starts, overlap length, lane width, and travel to the safe pocket together. The interesting decision is how to leave the union of both lanes while preserving a later interrupt opportunity.

• Make roles visible

  Use pose, tether direction, or a stable symbol to identify the anchor-setting leader and following boss. A temporary stagger must not look like an unexplained target change. Keep role cues understandable without relying on color alone.

• Test simultaneous events

  Simulate interruption on the exact follow-up frame, a removed follower during wind-up, repeated callbacks, retries, and both bodies recovering together. Log encounter, combo, attempt, target, leg start, interruption, cancellation, and accepted follow-up count.

Arena

• One rune joins two stone strikes

  Kern's echo plants its feet and passes a bright rune to Kern. Two stone arms point toward one mark on the floor. Tavi slips outside the converging lines, then breaks the echo's rune before the next paired strike can form.

Player upgrades

• Expose sequence and cancellation without motion

  Name the leader and follower in text, label the shared target, distinguish preview from active lanes by shape and text, and announce a cancelled follow-up. Keyboard scrubbing and reduced-motion frames must reveal the same ordered states.

Do not confuse this with

• A linked combo is not simply two bosses attacking

  Two independent enemies may happen to overlap. A coordinated duo attack has a shared target, ordered leg schedule, and explicit dependency: when the leader is interrupted, the follower's queued leg is cancelled. Shared group health is a separate progress rule and is not required.