02 - Preparing for the Demo Release

Welcome back! So turns out the "blog post every 2-4 weeks" didn't quite work out (who could have guessed), but I'll probably be taking a similar approach to how the Rhythm Quest dev approaches devlogs, with them being more irregular, but also a bit more substantial. In any case, here's what I've been working on this past while:

Demo Level

I've decided to have the demo contain 2 levels; those being Treadtorial, aswell as a new demo-original level. Treadtorial KAIZO will also most likely be included as a bonus unlockable level. As of writing, the demo level has been fully finished and only needs some slight tweaking. Not to spoil too much, but in terms of length, I've aimed for around ~twice the length of Treadtorial and didn't quite get to that length but I'm satisfied with how it turned out. It's also probably my favourite level that I've designed so far next to Boxed In so I'll hope you enjoy it when it comes out :3

The level itself focuses on getting the player comfortable with background tiles and jumps, something that I feel I rushed into wayy too much in Levej 1 and Up & Down and just in general didn't introduce well. Beyond that, it will also introduce the dash, which means the High Jump and Jump Clear paints, as well as double sided paints won't be included anywhere in the demo since I want to really focus on those few core ideas. In terms of difficulty, I'd rate the demo level around a ~5-6, though it should still be approachable from my testing.

Other Stuff

Outside of leveldesign, there's been a bunch of work on polishing everything that felt a bit lacking. There's a fully rebindable controls menu now, music and sfx with volume sliders. The options menu in general has been slightly tweaked and some settings changed to be more intuitive to first time players. There's still a lot missing before I'm able to actually publish a steam store page (steam apparently wants a million billion screenshots, I need to redesign the game's logo, there's still a trailer missing too, aswell as other polish in the level end screen and so on), but I'm on a good track right now. Maybe I'll even manage to get a store page out by the end of the month, but no promises.

I also wanted to ramble about the game's structure here a bit and I wasn't able to find another section that fit well so here goes:
Some of the other previous levels will be redesigned, tweaked or in the case of Levej 1, completely scrapped for the full game release. Specifically, Up & Down will get a lot of adjustments and tweaks, but I'm not sure how exactly that will look yet. Original versions of Levej 1 and Up & Down will probably still be accessible as legacy / bonus levels tho, so no worries. I plan on having the demo level be the third level that the player plays in the main game, after treadtorial and a replacement for Levej 1 that introduces Jump Clear paint and nothing else. After that, the player will probably move on to the redesigned Up & Down, then Windway (which will still be tweaked, but to a lesser extent) and after that a couple new levels. I have ideas for 3 more paints that I want to implement and each dedicate a level to, aswell as (hopefully) one big finale level, bringing the total amount of main levels to ~9 with maybe one or two bonus levels, but all of this may change so beware. These are just ideas in my head for now.

Important Announcement Thing

After thinking about it for a while, I'll probably be making the source code temporarily private until the game releases. It'll still be up for a day or two after this blog post goes live, but just for my own sanity and fear of people dissecting this game before it even releases, I decided this. Feel free to decompile the game and demo and fiddle around with it though! This also doesn't mean that I'll stop being active or sharing progress, or getting people to playtest in-dev levels sometimes. If you want to grab the current source code, feel free to grab it here while it's still up, and after I've privated it, I'll post the latest public commit on the discord for download.

In any case, thanks for reading! See you when the demo releases!