Time for another recap! This week we’ve been finishing off the boss, which is now playable in single player! Still no pics though, no spoilers here. What we can show, however, is this:
Some cute idle animations made for the enemy from last week, the Frostlings! As you can see they have already selected their weapons of choice, which tells a bit of how they work in the game. As you may have guessed, the fellow with the snowball is a ranged version, while the one with the stick will fight you up close.
We’ve also decided to make a change in the game as you know it right now: We’re removing the health potions!
Why? Because they simply didn’t contribute that much to begin with! In our game you respawn pretty much directly where you died, so dying isn’t a terrible thing. Having a bunch of health potions in the game means you’ll die less, but does that really matter when your death isn’t that much of a punishment? The only place where the health pots would make a difference is in boss fights and challenges where you’ll have to replay the entirety of the fight when you die.
Edit: To clarify, you don’t respawn on the spot when you die, you respawn at the start of the current map with everything reset. The thing that killed you, and everything before it, will be alive and at full health!
Lastly, the skill needed to use health potions isn’t proportional to the significance they have in battle. If using all of your health pots give you the equivalent of your Max HP, then using potions effectively doubles your survivability.
This also means that a player who forgets to use them (many do) will have a fight that’s twice as difficult! The balance issues this creates seems a bit unnecessary for something that isn’t exactly a part of the core gameplay.
Seeing it in this light also makes you realize how dull it truly is to go back and forth to town just to stack up on some more pots. What do you guys think?
Now, as you may notice, the blog looks a bit empty today! That’s because Vilya has been busy travelling to Sweden from her secret lair in the Netherlands and therefore hasn’t been able to polish anything enough to show in the blog. She’s still working on the cave system, which we’ll see more of in the near future, as well as some details in the winter area that are yet to be made.
The reason she’s coming to Sweden at this time is because the entire Pixel Ferrets crew has been invited to judge this year’s GGC competition where the students present their game projects. The conference is held in Visby, Gotland on June 4th-5th. We expect it to be a blast, and is also a nice opportunity for the three of us to hang out face to face for a couple of days.
Will we see any of you there?
Looks great, can’t wait to play this game (No beta for me because I want to play the finish product, and I’m happy to wait).
I check every Tuesday (I live in Australia) for the dev blog updates.
I like the logic behind the removal of the health pots, and it will definitely mean you have to perfect boss battles… Awesome!