Final Build - UI, Updated Aesthetics, Updated Game Modes and more....

The Final Build

The final build of this game introduces a lot of new things that enhance the experience of the game. Some of these introductions include a user interface, all the art assets of the game being updated, the endless mode, the tutorial mode being finished, a main menu, and importantly the ability for enemies to attack the player. There are also a lot of miscellaneous changes in this update which make the game feel better to play.

User Interface

One of the most dire things that this game was in need of was a user interface, as up until this point, the amount of juice the player had left to cast their abilities with was unknown to them. This update introduces this feature, which is located at the bottom of the player's screen while playing, and includes information about the player's health, their remaining juice, as well as the amount of enemies that they have killed.

Image of the UI bar at the bottom of the screen. The icons from left to right represent the player's health, their remaining juice, and finally the amount of enemies that they have killed.

Updated Aesthetics

This update fully implements the changes to the aesthetics of the game that I mentioned in Build 5's devlog. The whole game has now been updated to the geometric shapes aesthetic, with a new colour scheme of pinks and purples. The player and all of their attacks are now pure magenta, which contrasts against both the background and the game world. The background is now "blackcurrant" with a violet hue, according to this website (its hex code is #08040C). The game world itself is more of a purple-y violet colour. The player's attack's particles will now fade to white as their life goes on.

Image of the colours of the player, the game world, and the background.

Enemies have kept their pure red colour, as I feel like this makes them different enough from the player's colour, while also being a typical "bad guy" colour in video games. The enemies (newly implemented) attacks are also red, but will fade to a yellow-y orange.

Updated Game Modes

This update brings the finalisation of the previous tutorial game mode, as well as the introduction of the endless mode. The tutorial mode now gives the player instructions on which buttons to press to do specific things, such using the spacebar to jump and double jump, as well as which inputs activate the player's abilities. This change to the tutorial should hopefully address some of the feedback received in the testing session regarding their being no way of knowing in-game how to play.

Some of the tutorial text. While it isn't ideal having big blocks of text like this, it does the job sufficiently for what the game is.

The new endless mode that has been added is the main source of gameplay for this game. Like endless modes in a lot of other games, it involves the player fighting off enemies in an increasingly difficult fashion. In this mode, there are three portals placed in the world, which will each spawn an enemy at certain time intervals. As the player defeats more enemies and their score goes up, this interval will become shorter and shorter, thus making the game more difficult as there will be more and more enemies trying to attack the player.

Gif of an enemy spawning from a portal.

Enemy Attacks

Speaking of difficulty, the enemies in the game will now attack the player with similar attacks to the player's standard projectile attack. This makes the game feel like an actual game as there is now two-way interaction between the player and the enemies. Previously, when enemies got close enough to the player they would just not do anything, but now they will shoot at the player every couple of seconds. Their projectile is a lot slower than the player's projectile and the delay between shots is consistent, allowing the player to react to the enemies' actions.

Enemy shooting at the player.

Do to the enemies now being able to attack, the player's shield ability now is able to function. It will now reflect enemy projectiles back at the enemy that cast them, damaging them on contact. This makes the shield ability a good ability to use now as it actually has a purpose.

Demonstration of the player's shield reflecting a shot back at an enemy.

Main Menu and Scene Navigation

A fairly simple main menu has been added in this update, which allows the player to choose between the newly added endless mode and the pre-existing tutorial mode. The menu features the title of the game (which is still the work-in-progress name of Ability Game, and this is not going to change), the buttons to navigate to each game mode, as well as a rotating purple portal, similar to what the enemies spawn out of in the endless mode.

Gif of the main menu.

Regarding the portal on the main menu, at the end of the tutorial mode there is a portal which the player can enter to take them back to the menu. Dying in either mode will also return the player to the main menu.

Miscellaneous Updates

Many miscellaneous changes are also in this build, with some of the larger ones detailed below.

• A fade to black effect has been added to cover up changes of scenes or sudden changes of the player's position in the tutorial level.

• Respawn points have been added to the pits in the tutorial mode, resetting the player back onto land before the pit.

• Some degree of lenience has been added to both the player's and the enemies' projectiles when colliding with the terrain. This allows the projectiles to collide with terrain for a short period of time without being destroyed, making shooting near corners feel better as your projectiles will not be destroyed by the smallest of collisions.

• The particles that is featured by all the attacks as well as the portals will now inherit their initial colour from whichever object spawns them, allowing easier changing of the colour of objects without having to manually change the particles' colour as well.