Design breakdown

Under lock and key

One of the major things that I wanted to do when designing this game was to have a very strong sense of progression. I wanted to have a visual que to the player that they’re were objectives that had to be completed in order to get pass certain gates. The best way of doing this was to take a page out of some of the games that I enjoyed playing and do colored doors. Once you collected the right color you could go back and unlock the door.

Colorful foes

The enemies in the game also use the color system as well because I wanted the player to be able to gain the ability to defeat more enemies as the game progressed. When you first start off the game you only the ability to dispatch red enemies, so you have to be carefully navigate around enemies until you gain access to their color. However one method that I found to be useful when playing is to not the kill the enemies and use them as landmarks.

All absorbing

Speaking of not killing enemies that bring us to the next type of enemy that is in the game. The enemies that are covered in white are ones that can not be killed and must be avoided, The reason why they exists is because we wanted the player to still have to be on the look out for enemies even when they had the colors.

The void

There is one last enemy to breakdown in this game and that is the black holes. The black holes are instant kill zones that are hard to see and will kill the player on contact. Sometimes the player will be warned when they by a on screen message but these messages are not always connected to a black hole. Other times these messages are meant to throw off the player and keep them guessing. Black holes are always at end a dead to ensure the player doesn’t encounter them too much though.

A playable build can be found here