This a collection of earlier posts, which will probably expand as I get more new content to show. For updated details and GIFs see the opening post.
Sequence Breaker is a Metroidvania in which the levels are actively designed to be broken using bugs in the game engine- bugs that actually DO occur while I'm making the game, but polished such that they become almost user-friendly.
I had been making the game in one giant room using a very strange formula for gravity, but I rewrote the code and started from scratch about 2 weeks ago.
I've mostly been working on making sure basic features aren't too broken.
Some gifs of my progress so far
Moving platforms
Rockets
High Jump
Dash
Chaser drone
Screen wrapping
Bullet saving (I'll probably limit the player to 3 bullets onscreen at once so this won't be quite as useful as it seems)
Firing bullets onto screens you aren't on yet
Going crazy
Basically I'm making a game that's giving me as much enjoyment to play myself as I want it to for the players.
Since I'm only half-designing the bug-related puzzles in the game and finding out about the possibilities for myself as I go, I get to see for myself what's interesting and what's not, what's surprising and what's not, etc. Hopefully it's half as enjoyable to the player as it already has been for me.
Here's a quick example of what a simple puzzle could look like in the game...
All this is intended to do is show the general idea of the primary moving platform bug, NOT the way the puzzle level design will be handled. It took less than 3 minutes to do that because it doesn't have any level elements that give the moving platforms a non-bug related purpose.
You can always go up through the platform by touching the side that's going forwards while it's coming out of the cannon or hitting a wall. That will only be useful for more than a slight jump boost when there's a ceiling directly above these places.
There will be more than one bug per game object, though, because the bugs stem from how they interact (or don't interact). For example, if I have some type of reverse gravity item eventually (it is a metroidvania, after all) then you could jump into one of the moving platforms that's on the floor and it will act like it's on the ceiling.
As of right now I'm leaning more towards teaching the player the basic concept for each MAJOR bug but leaving the MINOR bugs up to the player to find. The moving platform bug is one that would fall under the major category and likely be taught to the player. As far as tutorials I'm going to try to make it non-textual, because nobody ever reads the text. The bugs will NOT be required to complete the game except in the case of major bugs that I do decide to teach the player. They will be sequence breaking to complete the game in less time and, more imporartantly, with fewer items.
I'm planning on having different areas in the game with different enemies, gimmicks, tilesets, themes, etc. so don't worry about the lack of progression.
For example, lava or water would be a little out of place in that lab-like setting.
Edit: Here's a first pass of an area with a Matrix-esque theme.
Note that the entrance and exit doors are at basically the same place in all the levels right now only because that makes it easier to shift them around for testing purposes- different exit doors will mean more verticality and lend more interest to level layout.
Experimenting with enemies that are more of a threat on their own.
Implemented dashing. (Replacement for the dashing before, now it's actually fun to use.) You can only dash once off the ground then you have to touch the ground again. In addition to allowing you to clear larger gaps, it lets you move while ducking (similar to sliding in Megaman in that regard)
There is one bug-esque feature that I very much doubt anyone will guess.
(Note that the room layout won't be so... um... incorrect once I start actually making the level layout. It's just connected test rooms right now so some rooms are connected in odd ways. Except maybe in one area designed around it.)
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