We have been doing a lot with FoD over the past few weeks. Jerry and I have been adding a ton of stuff to the game, as well as discussing future gameplay features that will add diversity to the game, and make it more enjoyable. The first of these additions are new unique abilities that each payable character will have, giving him his own advantages. For the Knight, the only playable character right now, the abilities added are a tornado attack, as well as a buff called "Vital Energy". Essentially what Vital Energy does is when the Knight reaches zero health he will be given 3 more health bars and his stats will be increased. The tornado attack turns the Knight into a tornado for five seconds causing damage to enemies and sending them flying in the air. Like I said, each playable character will have his own unique abilities which allows for options when attacking monsters.
While I am on the topic of characters, let's discuss how character unlocking works. The player will have to build each unlockable character through pieces of the character found throughout the levels randomly. This pretty much means that two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head will be randomly placed throughout the levels at random, only one part at a time. The player has to find all the pieces of a specific character in order to unlock, and play as him. There are already ideas for other playable characters and I am working on the algorithms to make it happen. It is a lot of fun! This is a unique approach to character unlocking because it encourages exploration and taking the time to look through each level. As a developer, it is very exciting.
Other additions to the game that have been implemented already include mainly ways of making each floor more diverse, and dangerous as the player progresses through them. Environmental dangers such as lava, mud, stuns, and spikes have been added to the floors. On floor two there is now a giant eye (well it's supposed to be an eye) that hovers over you and periodically shoots down a ball of electricity at the player. If he is hit by this he will be stunned for five seconds. Floor three introduces mud patches, these floor tiles will slow movement when stepped on. Floor four introduces spikes that will cause one bar of damage when stepped on and floor five introduces lava which has the same effect. These environmental hazards add a higher degree of difficulty and diversity as the levels progress. It is no longer about just avoiding the enemies, now the player must also watch where he stepped because the world around him can cause harm as well. Without these hazards, items such as the springs and the parachute may seem rather useless, so adding these hazards also encourage the purchase of those items from the show as well.
Other than those major additions to the game, the rest of development has consisted of bug fixes and touching up the game graphics wise. Certain character sprites have been redone. The crate sprites have been redone. The keeper was removed from the game as we felt he wasn't really appropriate. An options menu has been designed, but I have yet to do the programming to implement it. There is now a loading screen when the game starts, and there is a company logo as well during the start of the game! You know, all the aesthetic stuff. That's pretty much it for additions.
Looking forward there is still a bit to do, but we are starting to narrow them down. There is talk between the two of us about possible mini-bosses that would appear on each level, they would be completely optional but they could potentially drop something more valuable than just coins. Such as maybe an item or something. All of the alternate playable characters have to be implemented, as well as the building of those characters. A character selection screen will have to go along with that as well. After those two things are added there really isn't that much more to do, it will just come down to doing some graphical and gameplay fixes.
Development is starting to move away from technical improvements, and move more toward gameplay. We are starting to really focus on how we can make the game look and play at its absolute best. Development is really moving along and we are starting to get excited! There is no real set date of release, but it is starting to get closer. I am hoping to have a Youtube video late this week or early next week showing all of these changes that I have mentioned in this post. Today is a good day.
- Frankie
