A Large Snap Episode 2 Preview

Episode 2

An empty room in the root beer factory. Tall windows cast light into the room. The sky is a flurry of root beer bubbles constantly rising.

Episode 2 will start off with Snap heading into his job as a security guard for the Big Bark Root Beer factory. Normally it's a pretty boring job... but today, there's robots invading! Clearly this is more of Ocean's work... ...right? But Snap doesn't have his blaster on him! He'll have to kick his way out of this one...

A Riot Robo hops through a window in the root beer factory. Snap kicks and destroys them.

This is the opening stage of Episode 2. One of my biggest focuses for Episode 2, especially for the opening, is to leave a lasting impression. One thing you might notice is that there isn't a single Episode 1 enemy in these screenshots! Episode 2 is going to have an entirely unique enemy roster. There's currently 5 new enemies programmed fully (although they all have some visual placeholders at the moment), with lots more planned.

A multi-layered platform, featuring lots of Riot Robos standing guard. Lamps hang from the ceiling, and giant gears are attached to the walls.

It's also why this is a kick-only level, although I also wanted to force the player to learn how kicking enemies works. Going through Episode 1 without it is fine by me, but as the game gets harder, it's going to be an important tool to learn!

A darker room in the factory. Scaffolding rises infinitely into the dark void, and the area is mostly illuminated by spot lights. A Root Beer Bomb Dispenser is to our right, and a crappy placeholder graphics Plush Sentry stands guard in the center.

The Episode 2 stages are taking a lot longer to produce this time around due to more outside obligations getting in the way of development (been working on getting an actual job in game development, so that's been eating a lot of my time), on top of me being a lot more perfectionist and wanting to make all of the stages prettier & more interesting than most of Episode 1. All I can say is sorry for the longer wait for this release! I hope that the end result will be worth the wait, anyway.

A tunnel leads into a room with scaffolding and gears on the wall. A mysterious and vaguely enemy shaped thing is cut off at the bottom.

I'm probably going to scale back my ambition a tiny bit for the future episodes for the sake of more timely development. (For instance, I'm probably not gonna make a whole new enemy roster again!) But I really want to make Episode 2 really good since it's going to be the first one that will require paying for the game. Even if it's cheap, I really want that price of admission to be worth it.

Lighting

You might've noticed it in the E2M1 screenshots, but Episode 2 will receive new lighting, to make the game have even more of its own stylish cartoon identity from Doom. Lots of dynamic lights have been added all over the game, with a cel-shaded look to them. Additionally, colors stay saturated when darkened in the distance, and glowing floors have a much more vibrant color to them.

A overhead view of the central room of E1M4. The lava at the bottom glows, and the torches give off light.

Here in E1M4, the torches give off light that reflect on the world, the colors stay vibrant in the distance (purple stays purple/blue instead of becoming a yucky brown!), and the lava has a much more distinct orange glow to it.

A view of the first traffic road in E1M8. The street lamps give off light, shading the Guard Robo firing into the camera.

In E1M8, the street lamps are able to give off a spot light effect now, illuminating the angry Guard Robo in this screenshot. The distant buildings also become deep blue instead of a dull grey.

Menus

I've also been making even more menu enhancements than what I showed off on Twitter a while back. Here's a back up of those, if you missed them: Imgur gallery

Scrolling through difficulties. Normal shows Snap and a Computurret in the desert, with stairs leading up to a door. Easy is the same, but with ammo and Snap has a rotating shield. Hard replaces the Computurret with two Guard Robos, and the stairs collapsed revealing a new path. Very Rude is the same, but the Guard Robos use their jetpacks and have red eyes.

Say hello to the new difficulty menu! I had fun coming up with fun animations to demonstrate the changes between difficulties, instead of only relying on text to describe them.

A grid of 40 blank tiles. Several of them explode one at a time, turning green and lighting up surrounding tiles.

A new feature coming to Episode 2, the "Challenge" menu! (If you've played any Sakurai games within the last 20 years, you should already know what's up.) The challenge board will be completely darkened on first start-up. When you inevitably finish a challenge though, then you'll reveal hints for the tiles surrounding it, giving you more to do.

A "free space" is used, removing a gun from the corner of the screen and lighting up a tile immediately, turning it purple.

I'm excited about this feature to give people a lot more replay value, and it compliments well with the new Record menu. A handful of challenges are going to be focused on teaching the player advanced techniques to improve their play. For example, there's a challenge for juggling enemies, so players hopefully will be more inclined to learn how to keep enemies in their stun state for longer.

A screenshot of the Ecto Wire, an Episode 2 weapon, being used in the Cybrass room of E1M3. The ammo count is an infinity symbol.

Doing certain challenges can also unlock bonus content! The first bonus feature I will reveal that you can unlock via the Challenge board is "Infinite Weapon". This is a mode where you can pick any weapon in the game, and play a stage with infinite ammo. Play only with your favorite weapon, do a challenge run forced to just the basic gun, or even bring Episode 2 weapons into Episode 1 levels!

Lariria

@Ligana5