Gameplay Loop

This week we start finally putting all the disparate systems and mechanics together. We had the main controls, spawn points, and various elements to be used for gameplay all together, in previous weeks, and now we have some areas for the player to experience these.

Example structure of a (very basic) puzzle island, this would likely be a tutorial level to allow players to learn the basic mechanics of the game.

When each day phase begins the player is brought to the edge of the main island and before them an island of puzzles floats up from the clouds for them to conquer. These come in various forms, from platforming to typical block puzzles. There are several ways in which a puzzle island may show itself, but the player will only have until the sun goes down to complete each one before being brought back to the central island when the night phase starts, bringing with it creatures of the night.

(Ignore the particle effect for now, it was off-centre and this was the only gif we got before turning on the w.i.p shadergraphs)

The enemy spawners rise from the ground and surround the main character. They shoot out waves of evil enemies, sent straight from the depths of hell to battle our character Sisyphus. The spawners mostly make use of coroutines to instantiate new enemy prefabs, and the enemies themselves use a navigation mesh to path their way towards the player.  The navigation mesh is smart as to not include high places on the terrain such as trees/rocks/buildings, and to stop an enemy from walking off the island

Player Upgrades and Alternative Abilities

What's a time-restricted challenge without a reward in the end? A bad one that's what. To help the ever increasing difficulty in enemies during each night phase, the player needs to increase their strength in turn, and they can do this with the rewards of each puzzle island, the upgrade podiums.

Upgrades come in two different varieties, which we have made with the help of everyone's favourite Unity feature, scriptable objects (yay). These 2 varieties are passive and active upgrades. A passive upgrade increases one of the players strengths, such as their punching strength or movement speed. active upgrades give the player an alternative ability mapped to the top gamepad button or the f key, an example of this could be a mine-toss ability or a super-jump. Unlike passive abilities which may be stacked continuously to continue to gain the benefits, while active upgrades are an upgrade type that the player can only have one at a time, and must swap out the one they currently have equipped if they want a new one.