Hello there, again,

Skippy\'s Grand Escape (SGE) is a rather straight forward game: Find the exit and get there as fast as possible.

To make this concept a little bit more interesting, there are various obstacles in your way: Enemies, traps, and some other mechanics revealed later in the game.

To better deal with these obstacles, there was a plan to have 3 active skills pretty much from the beginning: Freeze Nova to get past enemies. The Tactical Beacon to minimize backtracking (Thanks @Troik for this great idea!) and Active Sensor Pulse that gives you some more information about your surroundings, thereby decreasing the need for trial and error.

A whole skill system sounded WAY too ambitious and frightening in the beginning, and I told myself that it would make SGE too complicated anyways, as it is supposed to be a simple game.

Having learned A LOT in the last couple of months, a skill system sounded increasingly feasible and just too much fun to not go for it (or maybe Im just trying to justify the feature creep at this point).

Anyways, now we have around 16 skills split in 3 categories (Defensive, Offensive and Utility) with an informative selection screen that is shown whenever you start a level from the overworld. Youll start with a small selection of skills and unlock new skills after each sector (6 levels each).

Here are some impressions, though they look a lot better in motion:

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45526271/75ba6c3f161eaff2c5a552f69a86fa113981446d.png\"][/img]

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[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45526271/be21a4e2e8a0c423877c7b2d20ff7939ac01d35a.png\"][/img]

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45526271/f639426a74596abb0ec3c54d316ab5206e7825ea.png\"][/img]

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[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45526271/439534fdcbcc84facebcfc9b35e40e1e22fa9b8c.png\"][/img]

PROs:

• Gives the game some tactical depth

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• More options to survive in hardcore mode

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• More options to get faster times

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Encourages experimentation on which skill combination could lead to the fastest times for each level, thereby increasing replayability of all levels

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Each skill is a little fun project in itself, as it requires:

• Coding game logic

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• Visual effects / graphics design

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• Animations

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• Sound effects

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• Level changes to make the new skill fit or at least not break the level

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• A new icon

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• Maybe achievements utilizing this skill

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• Example screenshots/videos and data (active time, cooldown time, range, etc.)

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Not only more gameplay variety and mechanics to play with, but also quite a lot of visual variety

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CONs:

• Times are comparable only in the context of the skills used now. Leaderboards will display the skills used next to each players time to offer exactly this context.

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• Depending on how you look at it, it might be demotivating that players probably cannot achieve the best times on the leaderboards on their first playthrough. They must revisit levels with skills that theyve unlocked later in the game. OR, from a different viewpoint, players might enjoy the replayability and experimentation

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• Increased complexity. Given the fact that the game itself is quite simple, this should not be an issue for most players, though.

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• Opens a huge entry point for bugs and game/level breaking mechanics

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To stay consistent Ive underestimated the required effort quite a lot again :-D Like with the new overworld design, the skill system too felt like Id have to touch and adjust the whole game: Savegame handling, leaderboards, options menu, the tutorial, achievements, a new selection menu, a progression system, the HUD, even the Pause menu as it shows stats for each skill. Everything needs to accommodate the new system.

The work on the skill system was a bit overwhelming and tedious at times. But then again, each skill was so much fun to think about and implement - and it makes the game so much more interesting, that the effort felt well worth it.

Whats your thoughts on the new skill system?

\n\nInv1s1ble

[ 2025-10-20 08:07:12 CET ] [Original Post]

Greetings,
Partly as a diary for myself, partly as an announcement for whoever might be interested, I'd quickly wanted to glance over the various stages of the game's basic structure in terms of how the player goes through/access the game's levels.

The game started with the very simple idea of having several levels, in a specific order, increasing in complexity/size/difficulty. This means there was just one linear way through the game: You start at level A01, from where you'd get to A02, and so on.
Saving and loading was easy back then, because the game simply needed to save and load the current level.

The intention of the game is to make the players hunt record times / leaderboard ranks. This pretty much requires to make it possible to easily replay a level and to have a place where you can see your progress, rank and times.
I also played around with idea of having several levels belonging to one theme - basically worlds or sectors. Each sector should have it's own theme or mechanic.
It quickly became clear that some kind of overworld would be handy to make sectors and levels accessible and also to show/access times and ranks.

Overworld v1 was born:

Basically a proof of concept, the design pretty much was just another level of the game, from where you'd be able to start a sector.
The linear way of playing through the levels was still deeply integrated in the code, so the levels within each sector were still in a linear order. which means: If you'd wanted to play A03, you would have needed to play A01 and A02 first.
That's probably a bit better than before, but still not a great experience if you just wanted to hunt a new record in A06 for example.

Let me introduce Overworld v2:

From a design perspective pretty much still a regular level. I've implemented a scene-manager though, which made the linear code obsolete :-)
That enabled a new structure, where you'd be able to jump from the overworld to any unlocked sector. A sector then would be just another "mini-overworld" from which you could start any level of this sector.
The sectors as well as the overworld showed the best time of the player and the corresponding rank within the game.
From a usability perspective this was a huge improvement. But I found it quite boring to have the whole game look the same, which is why I thought about redesigning the overworld - again.

Meet Overworld v3:

One sector containing 6 levels - all in status "beaten"

This is the biggest change to the game's structure yet and as so many times before, I really underestimated the amount of effort required to make the new design work.
While Overworld v1 and v2 were pretty much just another level with some addons, Overworld v3 required A LOT of changes to the existing code.
Besides the obvious design changes that required some graphics to be created, I was met with a quite stunning amount of tasks, including:

• A completely new way of movement / controlling the player
• Entering and exiting levels need to interact with the overworld now - previously just handled by exit nodes and the main game node
• The progression system - previously just a barrier to the next sector that got removed once every level of the previous sectors was beaten - now was granular, i.e. each level unlocks specific other levels, which then are displayed differently to show they are unlocked and available; completing all levels of one sector unlocks the next sector
• There is also a visual representation for the progress on a sector and whole world level
• The savegame needed a complete rework with lots of new data to be stored such as the current level node, the status of each level and sector, also if something was JUST unlocked or if it was already unlocked, etc.
• 3 zoom levels and their controls: You can now either see the whole map, a whole sector or one specific level. Each zoom level shows a different detail of progress. For example the zoom to a level will show the level's stats (best time, rank, leaderboard rank)
• A lot of new animations and transitions needed to be created
• New sound effects
  

I really like the new design. It makes the game's look more varied. It also fits the space theme very well and it allows for some interesting progression visuals that I am not going to spoil at this point :-)

If you've read this far, let me know what you think about the new design.

Inv1s1ble

[ 2025-04-19 22:33:14 CET ] [Original Post]