Devlog 2-20-20: Some level design progress

Hi all,

I don't have as much to show off this 2-weeks, but basically I :

• Added a few attacks to the second boss
• Wrote the first half of the music track for the second boss
• Worked on the level design for the new first area

I'm really excited about the level design for the first area. It's a little linear, but it's got some fun secrets hidden here and there. I think it's important to not overwhelm the player with the first level, so I wanted to keep it relatively simple. I drew up a whiteboard of the level to try and flesh out the major areas:

(You'll have to open the above image in a new tab to see it full-sized)

(This level will be AFTER the main tutorial, so at this point you'll already know how to attack and jump.) I know it's not really easy to tell what's going on, but basically there'll be a lot of falling until you eventually turn the "power" on for the area, at which point various machinery comes alive. This allows you to re-ascend the places you fell from. When you first fall, you won't have the "reflect" ability, but on your way back up you will have learned "reflect". This means I can hide some reflect-related secrets to discover on the player's way back up!

I feel like once I start working on the level it'll end up feeling a lot different, but for now this feels like a good starting point. The main theme I'm trying to explore is: Re-contextualizing revisited spaces. I want the player to tread part of the level, and then return to it with a new ability/new environmental effect that changes the way they perceive the space. The machinery turning on + gaining the reflect ability is supposed to facilitate that for this first area.

Anyway, I don't have much more to talk about this week. The bi-weekly dev logs will hopefully continue motivating me to keep pushing out content!

Thanks for listening!

Abhi Sundu