MegaBlueBall

Polishing up the early game

Added 2025-02-11 16:40:14 +0000 UTC

Hi everyone!

I've been able to recover some momentum in this first half of February, and thus managed to get some decent work done on refining the layout of stages. I'm making an actual sequence/progression to the start of Maya's adventure to make it feel more seamless and natural.

Specifically, once Maya defeats the 1st boss (forest mother) and acquires the dash skill, the way into the hills is now blocked by a gate. Farina then messages Maya (via new cutscene) to return to the castle, guiding her towards the other part of the beach stages with the shipwreck. I've also added a preceding cutscene where Farina gives the pendant to Maya in the castle.

This solves the problem of players having to backtrack from much farther (from the city or swamp) to acquire the Crimsom Scepter (the fast travel system of the game). Backtracking from the forest obvisouly makes more sense, and I've also changed the layout to encourage heavy usage of the dash on the way back, allowing players to get used to the newly acquired skill.

Another auxiliary addition is a checkpoint pole. It's a temporary save that allows players to restart from that point, instead of the edges of the stages or from the actual save points. I will be placing these in the middle part of stages, as well as before/after some difficult sections, allowing for a quick retry without losing too much progression until Maya reaches a proper save point.

So all in all, it's been a good start to February and I'd like to release another update at the end of this month, containing the "revamped" early game and a new scene or two. If all goes well, I'll be teasing a preview of these new animations in the next post!

Best Wishes,
Mega Blue Ball