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[sublinimal]

Playable demo

So.

A while ago, I posted a mockup. There was also a small interactive toy with the basic mechanic of rescuing bunnies by placing springs around. I was contacted by Udderdude, who'd written a design doc about it. That helped me kickstart this game, which I wanted to make as a fun/quick/experimental summer break from my larger projects, but with more depth and polish than in some jam game.

Now, a week later, it's coming along nicely. I've strayed a bit from the design doc to add some of my usual weird gimmicks.

It's kind of hard to explain, but I'm hoping to add a good in-game manual soon. The basic idea is that you have to lead bunnies to exits using placeable pickups (such as springs and bombs). This isn't a god game like Lemmings; there are various ways in which game elements can interact, and the player is equally vulnerable to them.

Move with Left/Right, drop items with Ctrl to the highlighted tile (alternate control scheme: A/D/Z). Press Up to enter exits after having rescued at least the minimum amount of bunnies (indicated by "saved x/y"). Retry with R, skip levels with 1 and 2 (debug feature, but necessary to get back to safe zones for now). Click on bunnies to interact with them in safe zones. Maybe even check out the level editor with E.

There's also another purpose to all this. If you rescue all the bunnies from a zone, it permanently turns into a safe place. You can then feed them carrots to make them like you more. As you complete more levels, bunnies that like you might find useful items. The more they like you, the more and better items they'll find.

Basically, clear zones to get carrots, and feed bunnies to get items that help you clear zones better.

The demo is still a bit lackluster in a few places, but since it's functional to the point where I can focus on content (and some polish), I thought I could use some public playtesting.

My priority list of flaws I'm already aware of:

• The items bunnies find don't yet have influence on the rescue part of the game, as they can't be brought out of safe zones. (This is supposed to introduce another level of strategy, related to the paint item.)
• The pace is pretty fast considering the puzzle elements, and there's some balance issues with the item drop system.
• The zones have no meaningful progression or difficulty curve, they just exist to demonstrate various design patterns.
• In general, there should be more content in the form of zones and items.
• Can't save the game.
• No animations or sound effects.

I'm eventually hoping to integrate this with the Kongregate API to avoid getting my hands dirty with server-side code. Actually, I'm aiming to have this published on Kong by the end of next week, but we'll see.

EOF

[Udderdude]

I obviously might be a bit biased, but I think it's a cool idea and an interesting twist on the "Save the halpless critters" genre by giving the player an avatar rather than a disembodied cursor.

[devi ever]

Love the carrots.

[sublinimal]

The original idea was that some found items would be necessary to complete some of the zones, as a "dialogue" between the two game modes.

But it might've been overkill when I tried mixing it with a more comprehensive rewiring mechanic, which would be almost like a third game mode. The game world is implemented as a linked list, so multiple exits in a level might lead to different branches of levels (supposedly based on a theme or a specific game element), and you have to backtrack to see everything.

Based on that, I had the idea of painting exit signs to permanently change which levels they lead to. Since the item you're holding is transferred through exits, you'd have to connect the levels correctly to maintain all the necessary pickups. Like if you come across a bomb level without a bomb pickup, you'd go to a level with one, grab it, and go to the impossible level from there.

It's a cool gimmick on paper, and I've been playing around with it, but I haven't found a proper way to tie it with the rest of the game. It introduces confusion because sometimes you need to plan beyond what you know. I think I'll just remove it for now.

Now I'm thinking that maybe item transfer doesn't have to be anything more than a "warp zone" kind of thing. Bonus items would be obviously bonus items (like keys to open locked exits), and rearranging levels/pickups wouldn't enter into it. All levels should be possible to complete without bonus items, and each puzzle would have the necessary pickups included. But to save all bunnies from some zones or unlock alternative branches, you'd need to feed bunnies and warp from safe zones to unfinished zones.

[sublinimal]

So far I've used the collapsing blocks as a way to make levels more dynamic, so that you have to actively change the path as more bunnies come in. But in a level like this, it'll be cumbersome and introduce ways to cheat:



(That thing in the corner is a placeable bridge)

Maybe each exit should only hold a specific amount of bunnies before closing. I wonder if this could have an effect on which level you're able to enter next, since multiple exits lead to different ones.

[Kurt]

DID SOMEBODY SAY TAMAGOTCHI

[sublinimal]

More like Dum-agotchi.

Flashpunk is great and all, but image manipulation is (understandably) pretty awkward compared to the SDL-based libraries I'm more familiar with. I had in mind palette swaps, transition animations, and

, but even rendering text is almost giving me a headache with all the overhead.

[sublinimal]

Each level will have a timer that'll give you a bonus to your carrots based on how much time is left on level completion. So hourglasses, which extend the time limit, will have an extra use in helping you get more carrots. Also, they'll be necessary to clear some longer levels, since all bunnies might not even have time to spawn within the default limit. I think these are some interesting ways to make hourglasses more useful, considering they're common drops.

Working on that manual now, the placeholder text is based on the true story of whenever I have to code GUI stuff:

[mushbuh]

DID SOMEBODY SAY TAMAGOTCHI

This is what caught my attention

[JobLeonard]

[sublinimal]

Still got quite a few things to check off from my todo list. They mostly seem like nice quick additions, but in game development, those kinds of features have the tendency to pile up unexpectedly.

Could use quite a lot more levels, probably branches of levels being themed around a game element, with corresponding changes in scenery (as in palette swaps with some reworking, a new song every now and then). It only takes like a minute or two to finish a level if I enter a factory worker mode, but I have a bit of a perfectionism problem with just spamming levels like that - I'd like most of the levels to have some central gimmick that uses the blocks creatively.

Of course I'll also have to take into account the item drop rate in safe zones, so that the player doesn't outrun it by breezing through short filler levels, and then get stuck on desperate grinding when they're missing an item.

Another Screenshot Saturday's coming up tomorrow, so I'll nonetheless try to piece the second public build together.

[sublinimal]

Damn, missed that one. Admittedly, I've become a bit lazy with AIME, since what's left mostly constitutes the more mundane parts of gamedev (like UX stuff and my lack of foresight coming back to haunt me). It's no wonder that the sunshine outside takes priority occasionally. But I'll wrap this project up this week, I guess, or it'll start getting in the way of other stuff.

There don't seem to be many threats to the bunnies apart from getting stuck or falling off, making their exigency less than mild. Inspired by the design doc and my need to avoid the boring coding, I thought of adding hungry wolves that roam through zones eating whatever comes across, but there was a - ahem - small problem.



But when in double, make it trouble:



Looks intimidating as long as you avert your eyes from its wonky legs. (The thought of having to animate this stuff is enough to make me feel like procrastinating, so It's likely I'll just rush it the last night like I always do.)

Here's the current state of the art, though it looks embarrassingly unchanged on the outside. If I have to point it out, you can see a timer and a level preview, which is clumsy because I don't seem to have easy access to bitmap data.

[sublinimal]

The bunnies obviously spawn from holes, but there's still the question of where do wolves come fro--



oh

[poe]

DID SOMEBODY SAY TAMAGOTCHI

This is what caught my attention

Same

[Udderdude]

The bunnies obviously spawn from holes, but there's still the question of where do wolves come fro--



oh

That wasn't in the design doc D:

[JobLeonard]

The bunnies obviously spawn from holes, but there's still the question of where do wolves come fro--



oh

That wasn't in the design doc D:

Life... finds a way.

[sublinimal]

I still haven't given up on that level connecting gimmick, however esoteric it might be. One way to make it meaningful is some sort of territory competition between wolves and the player. Sometimes wolves would find their way to connected safe zones and you'd have to lead the bunnies somewhere safe, then cut off the wolf-infested zones so that it doesn't happen again.

It could even be that the entire game is about standing up to the wolves, like they're the ones that trapped the bunnies to begin with. Playing around with different executions on paper.

[sublinimal]

The level entrance font looks ugly. I'm going with something like this instead:



The bottom bar also looks ugly. It should have a different layout altogether:



It's the most important to indicate

• saved and spawned bunnies,
• which items you're carrying (left mouse for pickups, right mouse for special),
• the timer (unless there's a separate time attack mode).

As hinted there, right now I'm adding a feature that unlocks new manual pages as you encounter things worth explaining. That way the manual won't be a huge infodump but will help you when you need it.

[sublinimal]

Alright, I've been crunching this week almost like during the first one, and my to-do list is getting short. Territory control and a level pack system for custom levels are some of the few entries that might give me a headache. The rest is content and tweaks pretty much.

I dare say I want to have this up by Monday, neatly aligned with the month change. That would leave me more than a game jam's worth of time to finish. If that results in quality issues I might borrow an extra day or two. Either way there's no giving up now that I can see the finish line.

[sublinimal]

There's still work to do, but this is definitely the last week. It's for the good of the game to tweak it until I'm satisfied with the way its different layers work together. And despite me having pushed the deadline a few times, that was a release lock right there. No going back now.

New areas, new levels, oh boy: