Hello!

It's been a while since the last update on the development of Jump Adventures. I've been mostly working on spoilerish and technical stuff that I won't cover deeply in this post. However, I want to shed some light on a brand new upcoming mechanic and change of plans regarding the level editor.

Game Modes

As previously, let's start with something more fun: Game Modes! Playtester feedback is proving to be mixed in regards to the game's difficulty and replayability. While I plan to revisit the design of the levels multiple times during the testing phase to improve on this, it's becoming clear that having both casual and hardcore players trying the game is an inevitability, so I was thinking about ways to cater to both without sacrificing the core design. The result of this is game modes. You'll be able to choose between Adventure, Challenge and Sandbox.

Adventure

The most straightforward of the three. It's the default, unchanged experience.

Challenge

For those who want to add, well, challenge to their walkthrough. In Challenge Mode, all official levels and nearly all obstacles receive their harder counterparts, emphasizing precision and narrowing the margin of error. By completing Challenge Mode levels, you gain "Experience" that can be exchanged for more customization options, as well as for additional "cheats" in Sandbox mode.

Sandbox

In Sandbox Mode, you're free to modify game parameters through cheats like movement or health to your liking. However, there is a catch. Not all cheats are unlocked and available by default. To get access to more, you need to obtain the previously mentioned Experience by completing levels in Challenge Mode. Using cheats from the Sandbox Mode you can also gain access to previously inaccessible parts of the game, and who knows, maybe there could be surprises waiting for you!

Progress Report

Putting shiny things away, a few words on the behind-the-scenes progress of development. After almost a month of work, I finally managed to fully implement localization into the game. I severely underestimated the time required to integrate the translations and making sure they work on dynamic text. This feature alone required me to go through most classes in the game, which I also used as a great opportunity to do some small cleanups. After localization, I took some time to refactor save and progression systems. It's much, much less cluttered, paving way for new features. But, the thing I'm most excited about is finally being able to fully commit myself to work on World 2 and it's mechanics. With most things out of the way and a more stabler base for content, it's now a perfect time to solely focus on delivering it. Unfortunately, there are also some temporary sacrifices in order to make the game closer to release.

Update on the Level Editor

With Jump Adventures being my first commercial title, I must admit that I completely overestimated my abilities and the amount of time required to deliver a polished, user-friendly Level Editor for the game. It is one of the features I was looking towards implementing, but after some planning I realized that it's best to keep it in a post-launch update as to not potentially delay the game to 2024, and use the additional time to polish what's already there. Fortunately, my goal is to also publish the game's source code under a permissive BSD-3 license, as well as to keep the DLLs as easy to hook/modify as possible. This brings an excellent opportunity for a community-made level editor and other cool projects, should the interest appear.

Release Window

After a 3 month long Alpha phase, the game is closer than ever to a Beta stage that will focus on fixes, performance improvements, as well as polish. With this in mind, and given the fact that level editor won't make it for the launch, I finally have a better picture of Jump Adventures' release window: Q3 2023! Unfortunately, I cannot share the exact date yet, but my best and worst case scenario predictions all land within the third quarter. There's a very likely chance I'll have more to say on this front after a gameplay trailer.

Closing words

This is everything I have to share with you at the moment. As each day passes by, the game becomes more and more packed with new goodies as well as becomes more and more stable and bug-free, and I cannot wait to share everything I've been working on in a more spectacular fashion! See you later, Daniel.