Update:
Welcome to the showcase for the new reworked shop system! In this blog we'll just breakdown what happens in the video.Level System
At the moment, the player starts the game with the exp limit (the amount of exp you need to get in order to level up) set to 10. Once the player reaches the limit, the game will add 20 to the limit (for now) and will open up the shop system. Along with opening up the shop, we do all the other technical stuff behind the scenes, like disabling your movement, pausing time, and disabling your ability to spawn blocks.
Obviously, the player's exp can be seen at the bottom, which was simply created by making a long slider with a cyan fill. The post processing (bloom) upgrades the look of the slider, making it look a lot more professional.
Shop System
Three abilities/upgrades are chosen at random when the shop opens. When you click on an icon, the name and description of it pops up in the empty space.
Like mentioned before, the percent that an upgrade increases by is chosen at random, so upgrading a certain ability multiple times will increase your value by different amounts each time. Keeping this in mind, it is important to read the description of the item, and make sure that you are getting a good deal for this pick!
With this concept in the shop system, we hope to make players think about the future and think about what they should buy in order to progress into a further stage of the game; a player might sacrifice an upgrade that can be useful at the moment (i.e. health) for a rare deal that will save them late game.
Conclusion
These are the design thoughts that I had when I was creating these systems. Hopefully you were able to learn something new today from my blog. Let me know how you guys liked this type of blog explaining the design philosophy behind the systems. Everyday, we are getting closer to the demo release; we are almost there...