SlimeGame Devlog 1: The Princess and the Powerup

It's a block-breakin' secret-findin' hat-wearin' slimeblob!

First: I’ve been bad about the 500 words thing, as said. Hopefully, this week is the start of better.

I’m kind of slowly getting into the habit of actually working on the game. I’m trying to be more intentional about how I consume media but also more intentional about creative projects, so I’m actually working with a daily goal (6/7 days a week) for how I work on this project. I don’t have a satisfactory name for it yet, so I’m just calling it “SlimeGame” until I’m ready to title it properly. Anyway, let’s talk a bit about early powerups and code/scene structural things I’ve got in place for the project.

Thing one is that I have a pretty decent system for saving and loading uniquely identified “unlockables”—these can be exploration things like revealed secrets, collectibles, and broken blocks. Each unique ID can also be triggered by other objects/events, similar to how enemies in The Watchful Deep often had in-level triggers. That’s a bit boring to write about, but it is very helpful.

In the below screen, you’ll see the first broken blocks you run across. Each of the tiles making up that block has a unique id to track whether it’s been broken. I can make blocks that respawn on re-entry as well.

When you first find them, as one may expect, you can’t break them, but your first powerup—also a dash—will change this.

(I thought through how I’d connect the smaller tiles to make one “breakable block” one night, then realized the next morning that I could just use the unique id and trigger system to break the whole block at once. Literally almost reinvented the wheel I built.)

The system also works well for revealing secrets.

There are a couple of aesthetic things I like, a couple I can take or leave, and one or two I want to re-examine about this game so far.

I think the UI needs examining, and I’ll probably try to make a more pixelly font to replace the one below.

I like some of the backgrounds and tiles (a couple of blips need fixing, but I like the background, and I am very happy with the mossy bits), but I think I might need to re-do some of the tiles, especially the pulsing slimy ones. And I think the breakables look better in their old style:

It’ll be slightly more set-up to do aesthetically but I like it a lot better. I might even dial back the ‘reach’ of the green pulsating ones a bit to be more like the brown. I like a lot of the base tiles in this game, but I’m aware that decor isn’t always my strong suit, so that in particular will be a growth area.

If you want to hear more about SlimeGame and my other game-dev ruminations, please do: