Hello there! Let’s go right to it shall we.

Unlocks Rethink and Rethink Again

I’ve gone back and forth between how I wanted unlocks to work in the game. Going from a system of skills to recently considering a skill tree.

Above is kind of the direction I was going. The abilities and order are just placeholder.

After much thought and after speaking with various people I changed my mind and I’m going with what I had planned earlier.

Skill slots and you just equip various skills in them.

The reasons for this change:

• Having to pick up keys and unlock stuff kind of felt like an extra step for nothing

• The excitement of finding a unique skill rather than a generic key is higher

• Although the skill tree was based on the idea of giving the player choice, it would still be limited by factors such as where they are in the game, amount of keys, balance.

After weighing the pros and cons it seemed like skills system was a better choice.

The basics are:

• You can equip 6 skills

• The skills are meant to compliment and improve on your base abilities (Shooting, Shielding, Dodging)

• They can sometimes come with trade offs. For example: Perfect shield reflections cause more damage, but regular reflects cause less. (This encourages and rewards players with good timing, but it’s optional)

New Enemies

Added a couple new enemies.

First up we have a Wokel Roller.

Wokel’s are a bit hardier when rolling for reasons unknown to science. Their lashing tongues are quite dangerous so watch out.

Next up we have “Spitters”. They tend to live on the ceilings of caves and spit a very corrosive acid at anyone who approaches them.

The cannot be damaged by normal means (ie: laser blasts or energy swords) But if you can reflect their acid back at them…

Reflection Puzzles

Early on there’s some basic puzzles that require you to reflect beams and do some platforming. Reflecting the beams changes the colour of the beam and allows it to enter certain nodes. There’s also switches you need to stand on in order to open doors.

They shouldn’t be too difficult to solve. (Harder ones come later in the game) but their goal is to get you used to the shield mechanic in a safe environment before you have to face tougher enemies.

Thanks for stopping by

Here’s a quick peak at transition from orbit to the planet surface 😀

Until next time!

-M.