Have been working a bit more on the Amoeba game, and most of the game code is done… still missing the game flow components (splash->main menu->level select->play->game over, etc), but I need some art for it, that’s being taken care of…
Had the time to implement some experimental gameplay mechanics, to make levels be a bit more different from each other… In the screenshot above, you can see the “Contaminate” mechanic… instead of the cells flying off the screen when we do a mistake, they hang around on a contaminated state… From there, I have two different mechanics when the contaminated cell touches other cells: either it destroys them, or it infects them.
Contaminated cells can be destroyed, either my clicking on them a certain amount of times, or by laying a trail on top of them (which is slower, but affects multiple cells).
Just this addition really improves the gameplay of the level, specially if we consider the “greed” factor: the reward for getting loads of cells together before dumping them into the collector is very large, so the “greed” instinct comes online and ultimately dooms the player.
There are other mechanics, like cells that mutate, or normal cells that infect others, but I still need to do some experiments to see how they work in a real game level.
Also worked on some powerups/powerdowns from a code standpoint, which also add something to the gameplay (like attractors, which make all cells that aren’t of the same color as the one we have be attracted to the finger, which makes it harder to navigate in the game field).
All of these are making the game become more complex and complete, which I guess is a good thing, but it kind of spoils the initial purpose of building a simple game to experiment with publishing/deploying of a game in this kind of mobile platforms…
Anyway, now I’m in a phase where I need some art to carry on, and I’m almost going for vacations, which will make updates to the blog a bit on the minimal side… 