I’ve been working on few big changes these past weeks: implementing a new map, new rooms that can be explored, a new game mode with different mechanics and few more changes to improve the overall experience of the game.

The Map

The initial idea of how the player progresses in the game was always a dungeon with several floors, very much like a dungeon crawler but moving using the platforms instead of the usual way. So the game has a little map now with a preliminary version of the first floor, rooms are connected and the player can move from one room to another and decide which ones to explore.

As a general idea with this feature includes some elements from dungeon crawlers and combines them with the current keyboard/platforms mechanics and basic platformers’ stuff, enemies, items, jumping, etc.

The current implementation is super rough and a bit difficult to see on the images but the core functionality is there, just needs graphical feedback, new drawings and more playtesting.

Free Style Rooms

Since now we have different rooms the player can explore, there are also different new mechanics planned. The first one implemented is the “free style” mechanic, this basically changes the rules of the game a little bit, there is no “following the monster” in this room, so players can rest a little and focus on surviving during a set amount of time. There will also be more hazards and skills from the player.

The purpose of including elements like these ones is to add more interaction and variety, also reduce the effort of focus that the main rooms require by following the monster, I think it can be quite tiring, not only to do the same thing again and again but also the whole tension of not missing one sequence can be stressful.

Few More Changes

In addition, the win screen was removed from the end of the room because it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to show any win screen when completing rooms, the focus now is more to get a reward or just to go to a different room.

I also removed the game over screen, this speeds up the process when players need to restart a level and reduces frustration of having to wait, it also makes the experience smoother.

I’ve been working on improving the difficulty curve, which was a big issue during playtesting and fixing bugs here and there. For the next update I hope to have a more complete map and drawings that reflect the new changes so they are easy to understand.

In case you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out, if you haven’t played the game, you can download it here.

Thank you for reading.