Another sprint has passed already! Let’s see what we did during that time.

Bolt monster and new level!

As I said in the previous post there is a new monster in the game. Before there was a simple implementation but I finished implementing the behaviour (casting the bolt) and all the sprite animations for it.

The game designer has also designed a new level where we can introduce that monster and its new mechanics.

Bolt monster mechanics

As you can see in the image above, the new monster stays idle sleeping while you’re not on its horizontal line of sight. The moment you arrive there he will cast a bolt to you. If it touches you you’re dead.

You can avoid it by hiding behind a block for example. So you can move a block between him and you for your protection before defeating him.

Here you can see gameplay of that new stage:

New stage gameplay!

And here is a video of the gameplay with 2 players of the three stages that we have right now. Sorry for the link to an external site, but I prefer to link the video so you can also hear the nice music.

Gameplay 3 stages 2 players

Bomb shake effect

So far the bomb looks cool but it’s missing a bit its “explosive” effect. Looking at what I could do to fix that I’ve tried different things. Finally I decided to implement a nice shake camera effect for when there’s an explosion. I think this way it looks more explosive, or dynamic.

Bomb explosion

That is the effect. Along with the explosion sound it feels powerful to use the bomb.

The black block

Appart from the normal stages we are going to introduce a big boss fight every 10 stages or so. That will add some new mechanics to the game.

In preparation for that, I’ve starting to implement a new block type: the black block. This block is like a wall, once is on the stage you can’t move it. So it’s a bit of a pain, because you can’t use it for anything and you have to be careful to not be surounded by those and be trapped.

There is one extra thing about them: they can fall from above. And if they fall on top of the player they’ll crush her, losing a live.

Here is a testing stage that I did to show this new blocks:

To make it a bit more challenging the block falls where the player is. And you have a few moments to move to avoid it. If you stop moving, the block will crush you.

Those assets (the grey block and the shadow below) are still temporary and will change to proper ones once the designer have them ready. And there are still some bugs going on. But at least you can see a preview of it.

That’s all for today

This time there is no more to show. It took quite a bit of time to implement all those new things and debug them. We’ll continue next sprint with the black blocks and a boss implementation.

See you in the next update!