(#67 Dev Diary) Pondering the orb news - Elfscape: Ancestors

Hi!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with our orb enemies yet, here is the short summary:

Each orb has its “nest”, from whence it comes and where it returns. Sort of like a roomba charging station. After you come into the orb’s active area, the orb sets out from its nest and starts following you - and if it catches up to you, you get hurt. After you are out of the orb’s active area, it returns back to its nest.

First new update we did was just graphically distinguishing the nests that are builded in some of the platforms and the nests that are in the air.

On the next 2 pictures, you can see the orb nest in levels, without the orb. The third picture shows an orb “parked’ in its nest.

We also did a small optimization on our orb enemy unit - sometimes it wasn’t obvious for the players what are the orb’s active area’s boundaries. Therefore we have added an animated strip with orb icons, which indicates the safe spaces for the player. You can see a short strip from three icons in the image above, before the character and under the orb. You can also see longer strips in the image below.

And last but not least, here’s a short video from the gameplay, so you can experience the orb in action.