Puzzles

Nothing new to show today, but I might as well update you and let you know what's going on.

We're a few days away from having a finished engine that we can walk around in

We've all but perfected our character design (minus some bothersome issues with the feet)

And we've got a ton of new puzzles designed.

I have to say, the whole process of designing puzzles is pretty trying. Essentially, in a side-scroller, the nature of every puzzle is exactly the same: figure out a way to pass an obstacle. In the early days, I had taken that a little bit too literally, and I ended up designing dozens of puzzles that all echoes "jump over this" and "move that."

The puzzles in this early level layout concept image, while mostly not visible, nearly all consisted of "jump"or "move" answers.

It wasn't until recently that I was looking over my old level layout and realized how quickly a player would get bored.

Since then, I've put in a lot of effort and what little brain power I have to making some new events that offer bigger variety than just the location and shape of the obstacle. Unfortunately, each new item means a bigger burden for our programmer, but I guess that's just the way things go in the tragic world of Indie Game Design.