Happy new year to all of our friends and fans on IndieDB! We had a pretty intense crunch heading into the holidays where we brought the game to an Alpha phase and then I took a couple of weeks off to decompress and clear my head. Half of the levels have been built and most of the UI and Journal interface are functional although they will still be tweaked and tuned as development progresses towards Beta.
Teleporter/Cauldron design:
The next batch of levels will introduce some new puzzle mechanics, the first of which is the telporters which we're calling Cauldrons. Basically cauldrons are doors - one cauldron leads to another cauldron of the same color. You create a path between 2 cauldrons by using a colored spell on a cauldron that is not already active.
Simple example: There are 2 Cauldrons in a a level, 1 is inactive and the other one is emitting pink smoke. The player uses a pink potion on the inactive Cauldron which creates a link between them. Now the player can interact with either Cauldron and be teleported between them.
More complex example: There are 3 Cauldrons, 1 is inactive, 1 is emitting blue smoke and 1 is emitting pink smoke. The player can use either a blue potion or a pink potion on the inactive Cauldron to create a link to one of the others.
Lets say that the player made a link from the inactive Cauldron to the pink Cauldron. Now there are 2 pink Cauldrons and 1 blue Cauldron. The player teleports to the 2nd pink Cauldron, finds a blue potion and uses it on the pink Cauldron that she just teleported to. Now there are 2 blue Cauldrons and 1 pink Cauldron. If the player wanted to return to that original Cauldron (the one that started inactive), she would need to use a Pink potion on either of the blue Cauldrons. This system can be used to create some seriously complex puzzles, especially when combined with our other mechanics.
Here's the current state of the Cauldron gameplay prototype:
Next step will be to add in animations for when Cecil pours in a potion and then he enters and exists the Cauldron. The vfx and "thought bubble" art is also first pass so those will get some tweaks.
