Finishing adventure mode's world
Hello! I spent the last two weeks finishing the world map of my game’s adventure mode and thinking about arcade stealth games.
Finishing adventure mode’s world
(This section contains spoilers for the adventure mode’s world map layout)
Two weeks ago I was running into map design issues with my game’s adventure mode. It was too difficult for players to discover the parts of the map that contained easy enemies and bosses, and some other parts of the map were so far away from the player’s spawn point that I was becoming tempted to add fast travel teleporters.
I fixed these issues by shuffling the map’s areas into a new layout, starting the player in the center of the map and letting them explore further outwards as the game progresses.
Here’s a screenshot of how the map currently looks in the level editor:
It's not quite 100% complete yet. The hub area in the middle of the map is pretty much empty, and there's a giant dollar sign in the top-left corner of the map to remind myself to put a shop there, and the final area in the top-right of the map needs a visual pass. But pretty much everything else is done, including all of the enemy encounters and boss fights.
You can see some gameplay footage of the ice area here:
The map even has a few puzzles that take advantage of the player’s jump ability and the different block types, like these:
Feel free to try and solve them yourself, if you want a headstart in the final game!
Making the rest of adventure mode
While building adventure mode’s world I noticed several bugs, missing features, and old features that weren’t quite up to the game’s quality level. I fixed a few of these last week, like removing the lives counter from the adventure mode HUD and making it support lots of tiny hearts instead of the three huge hearts you get in arcade mode:
Adventure mode still has plenty of issues that need fixing, so I’ll work on those next week. Afterwards I’ll finish the rest of the world map and start filling it with caves, NPCs and secrets.
Anything else?
It was a long time since I’d taken a vacation so I took this week off work! I spent most of my week playing and thinking about Bonanza Bros, SEGA’s 1990 action-stealth arcade game, culminating in me getting the speedrun world record earlier today:
If you want a better idea of how the game looks when played in a non-speedrun context, Chuboh’s commentated 1CC run is great. Anyway, I highly recommend the game if you’re a fan of arcade games, or indie action-stealth hybrid games like Hotline Miami, Katana ZERO, Rain World or Hakaiman. I’m a huge fan of that subgenre myself, and I was even a designer and programmer on a stealth game back in 2014 (The Marvellous Miss Take). I’d love to make an action-stealth game of my own someday, especially now that I have another decade of game design experience!
In other news, Fray in Magical Adventure (MSX2) has an incredibly charming intro logo animation. If my game ends up starting with a bunny girl slowly twirling across the screen to reveal my studio name, this is why.
The opening to the anime Witch Watch is super cute! Check it out if you haven't already seen it.
That’s all I’ve been up to recently. I’m going to relax for the rest of the week now that my short-lived stealth game detour is over, then I’ll get right back into working on my game’s adventure mode. I hope you have a fantastic couple of weeks and I’ll see you next time!