I’ve been chipping away at Tetromp in my spare time, mostly polishing the gameplay for now. To be honest, I’m almost ready to say the game is ready to play! I’ve had several group play-test sessions and each one has been a roaring success. No one can seem to put the game down (much like the original).

Upgrades

Gameplay

There are some major upgrades from the original game- firstly, the platforming is so much more advanced (owing to the fact that I have significantly improved as a developer since I developed the original). There is now the option to stand on falling blocks and ride them to the ground. There is an element of parkour now, which solves the issue that the original game had of players getting trapped in pits.

Visuals

Visually, I have been playing with some ideas based on player feedback. In the original game, the blocks snapped between colours which people didn’t like too much. Now, there is a lovely fading cycle. I have also added (just yesterday) a colour cycle and gradient to the background because I wasn’t fond of the grey background anymore.

Gamepad support

I added gamepad support to allow players to plug in their xbox (or, with a bit of a work around, Playstation) controller and play that way if they prefer. I designed the controls to ensure that using a controller gives you no unfair advantage over someone using a keyboard (so, no variable speed when using analogue sticks). My favourite way to play is with a controller, using the analogue sticks. A friend of mine prefers the controller’s D-pad. I’m sure people might want to use keyboard. The game now gives you that option .

Multiplayer?

Since Tetromp was going so well in group play-testing sessions, I decided to knock up a quick and messy local multiplayer mode. It involved code to check the number of connected gamepads, spawn a second player in the event of two gamepads being present, and choose a winner based on who survived the longest. Incredibly rough, but it went down a treat! Okay, player two couldn’t collect power-ups, but that was honestly the only real flaw.
Since less than fifteen minutes of programming produced such a popular multiplayer mode, I decided to add multiplayer to my roadmap for development. I have since removed all traces of multiplayer code so that I can develop something better later.

Early access?

I’m toying with the idea of early access.
The game is fun and plays well in it’s current state. With a decent menu and leaderboards, it could be worthy of early access.
Depending on interest, once I have a version ready for public eyes, I may well release a build.