Well you are most welcome, seacreek.
You are exactly the type of person I made this guide for, because knowing the limits of a small engine like this is vital to getting the most out of it.
The limits that I think I dislike the most are that there's no key system, there's no secret system, and you can't have more than one type of door in a given level. Treasure chests and other activatable sprites aren't a thing either.
So, I suspect if you want to make an adventure story, you'd have to do more heavy lifting with story text in between levels to explain what the protagonist did once they found something or did something in the previous level.
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Definitely. The lack of any real complexity to the level is rough. You find the key, you open a door, level done. It seems like you could make it so that you start out without a weapon or with a weapon with 0 attack, and then a weapon could become a key of sorts to open a door which would be a destructible sprite, but I haven't experimented with that yet.
Right now I have it where each level is a location in which the player must find a new insight (The key, rendered as an❗) to an overarching mystery, which allows them to leave the location. Then the end screen is a journal entry where they discuss the insight, and how it leads them to the next location.
Enemies are NPCs that demoralize the player in some way, which they can heal by seeing scenes of positivity (which are designed to funnel the player onto an invisible health pickup). They can also find scenes of negativity in the level, which gives them conviction, which is used as ammo to neutralize said NPCs.
It's a bit silly laid out without the context the audio and visuals would give to those actions, but that's the fun of limitations right?
That reminds me a bit of my concept that would've been another example in my guide, where I think I wanted to have the protagonist say insults to the enemies and they would be stopped in their tracks. Just like a, non-violent form of combat. Kinda like T-Shirt Man.
Very impressed with your approach so far. Will be excited to play it once it's complete.
If you need any advice that the guide somehow misses or isn't as clear about, feel free to drop a question below.