Devlog #24 | Content Update

In the last month

I did a lot of work in the last month and skipped the devlog for the last update. The small things I won't mention as they are numerous! So let's get to the juicy big things instead!

Boss fight

People didn't understand what to do in the boss fight. That is part of the fun, figuring out what to do. But ... there were not enough clues at all. Especially in a roguelike a boss should be understood fast. At least the basic rules to the fight.

The boss and generator now have a line that connects them visually indicating that the boss is invincible because of the generator. To help this, the boss is no longer invincible at the start of the fight. This way people can see the difference between damageable and not damageable. He gets his shield now when he spawns the generator.

The generator now stands still and only teleports when you damage it enough. It will explode instead of teleporting at one point. Meaning now people have it easy to get to it. At one point in the fight they will just try that out. In stage two the generator still walks around.

I hope in playtesting we can see how people have less problems with the boss fight. We will probably have to change more for the clarity of the fight. We also updated some attacks of the boss and changed the fight slightly. The boss fight is really cool though and I am really happy with what it is.

Skill Tree

I deleted the old unlocking system. Instead of me giving you an item or ability for leveling up or beating a challenge, I instead give you a skill tree point. You can then unlock whatever you like in the skill tree. This way I no longer need to guess which item or ability you probably want now, instead I let you make the decision. There are 3 skill trees and a tiny one. The starting one only has 1 element in it. It is there to show you that there are more skill trees to unlock in the future. You got around 50 things to unlock overall in the skill trees. They are paced in a way that you should enjoy them throughout the game.

Because of this, it is easier for us to make sure your save file doesn't corrupt. Meaning even if we change things in the future, your save file should stay the same! If you unlocked something in the past that no longer exists, you just get your skill tree point back. Simple.

The Paths Between Fights

The original reason for us to add platforming elements between the fights, was to give the game more variety AND most importantly to slow down the game between the fights. The old paths were badly designed though. Each path was highly randomized which was cool but they lacked an identity. They all been kind of the same but unrecognizable. Also they've been way to hard and fast paced, meaning they've been the opposite of what we wanted them to be.

The new paths are way better! First of all there is almost 60 of them now. Yes freaking 60. More is totally better. There is that many because there is easy, medium and hard paths but each level has it's own paths! So there is about 20 paths per level and about 7 per category. Each level uses specific traps, theming the paths of the level. That way you feel more progression between the levels. And the traps become harder and harder each level.

The paths for level one are simple and have more randomization in them. You will see those paths often so they should be hard to recognize. This is possible since they need to be easy. So we just randomly take optional elements away or we don't.

The paths of level two and three are more recognizable as they are less randomized. BUT they all have their own mechanic that they use. That way they are more interesting and you don't see them that often after all.

Whats Next?

It's been really hard to come up with this many different paths, but we made it! Next we will work over the fights. We did a lot of challenges in the past, that way I became a lot better at creating fun and different fight. I will try to do the same as we did with the paths. Every level has it's own thing to it. Well I won't make that many fights BUT I will make it that each level adds specific enemies. So level one uses the basic three enemies and one strong enemy. For level two we add another strong enemy to this enemy pool and in level 3 we add the final enemy. This way there is more sense of progression. Also I can make this change with code so no need to create different fights for each level. After that we will do some small things and be done! Yes we done after this, and we can finally work on the art!

See you guys in the next Devlog and have a great day!