Resonant Blade

Indie Game Devlog Episode 24: SMASHING Synths Minigame!

INTRO

Hey everyone and welcome to episode 24 of the Resonant Blade Devlog series. In this episode, I’ll be showing a new timed event minigame quest, a new Reactor Room in Locria City, and a bunch of other tweaks and fixes with the Sonic Grenades and the boss from the last episode.

SMASHING THE SYNTHS (TIMED EVENT)

I added in a quest for obtaining the parts required to build the Sonic Grenades. Once you make your way to the factory in Lower Ionia, you can talk to this NPC to start a timed event. You’ll need to walk around the factory floor and clean up all the broken Synth parts by smashing them. I added a simple timer that keeps track of your time during this event. If you smash all of the parts in time, the factory worker will give you the Sonic Grenade parts.

Once you have these, you can head back over to Proto Labs and hand them to one of the scientists there who will construct some Sonic Grenades for you. This will permanently unlock the Sonic Grenades ability. The grenades will be limited to 5 at first and you will now be able to find more grenades from enemy and crate drops. To help these pickups stand out and make them more readable, I added a simple outline to them and made them occasionally flash. The Sonic Grenades will also show up in your inventory as well as the Heads Up Display below the HP and Energy bars.

LOCRIA REACTOR ROOM

I started working on the next area that you unlock with the Sonic Grenades. I already had most of the city built out, but I wanted to add a reactor room that powers the city. The idea here is that you’ll need to power the reactor before progressing to the next area. I added in an elevator that descends down into the reactor room. I had to add in an extra sprite that looks like the floor. This sprite gets its layer order pushed up higher than the player’s sprite order once the player activates the elevator. This ensures that the player will be behind the floor while going down the elevator.

For the reactor room, I made it very dark to where you can’t see most of the room. You’ll have to activate your scanner and listen for resonances. Once you pinpoint them, you can attack that area with the matching resonant frequency to activate an energy crystal that powers the reactor. Activating both crystals will start up the reactor and light the room up.

When going back topside after the reactor is active, the city’s energy conduits will be lit up. This will unlock a door to another building as well as a bridge control panel that will allow the player to access the beach area.

VARIOUS TWEAKS AND FIXES

I made some fixes to the previous video’s boss, the Colossus. The boss’s hand laser attack is now unparryable, so you will have to dodge or dash through this attack to avoid taking damage. Getting hit while charging a grenade throw will now cancel the grenade attack.

In one of the underground scenes in the demo, there was a platform that collapses after you travel past it. You shouldn’t be able to go back until you obtain a later upgrade. However, if you die in that room after passing the collapsible platform, you’ll start back at the beginning of the room. That’s been fixed now so that you’ll respawn in the middle of the room after the platform.

It was hard to tell where the perimeter of buildings are when walking behind them. I added in a separate sprite layer as the foundation of the building that appears now. This helps show the player where they can and can’t go.

Also in this area, I went ahead and updated the elevator cutscene so now you’ll actually see Atlas ascending upwards through the glass windows before the scene transition.

ENDING

Alright, that’s it for this episode. Thanks for watching/reading and I’ll see you next time!

Resonant Blade website: https://www.resonantblade.com/

Demo: https://gamejolt.com/games/resonant-blade/381677

Bug Reports / Feedback: https://forms.gle/pL6UcpVt2K4GSoo59

Twitter: https://twitter.com/richarddaskas