An ancient being...

I already mentioned I wanted to make levels out-of-bounds and should you try the demo, at least the first boss shows what I meant about it. In my first devlog, Level Overview: The Lost Arcade, I already showed how it could work. Today I show you how one level on Island 3 works. The level consists of the titular character, the Black Cat. It's built up from bricks as any other level, but this one is animated. You can see the cat run through the screen built up from bricks. Of course, what you see is basically 6 frames changing and moving. I drew the cat animation in Aseprite and after that I built 6 frames worth of black cats in the editor.

 The player still has to destroy the bricks, but to make it easier, I put rainbow brick powerups on this level. Picking up one has a number of ruleset to check: first and foremost it tries to convert one of the invulnerable bricks present on the level. If not found, the powerup tries to find any other destroyable brick, and converts that to a rainbow brick of the same size. This way, the player can multiply the chances that any hit will find a rainbow brick. And as before, destroying a rainbow brick will destroy all other bricks, winning the level. This is the gist for this level. After defeating the Black Cat, he talks to the protagonist, mentioning how he enjoyed playing. But now asks the player to round up something that the crows took from him. If the player finds that object, and returns to the Black Cat, the level changes: now there is a Golden Credit in the mouth of the cat, and the level has a short time to be completed.

Adventuring...

There are several levels in the game that can be re-visited (on top of trying to make a new high-score on that level) and something new happens, or something changes. The bosses of Island 3 and 4 are working that way: before they could be faced, the player has to finish a couple of other levels, completing tasks and/or getting some items. This puts a layer of adventuring on top of the brick-breaker genre to make it more interesting.

How do you like adventures and finding out hidden mechanics in games? :)

See You next time!

László (Coyote) Eszik