Hello, each and all! I'm happy to report that progress on Mirama, the bullet-dodging game I've been working on part-time for over a year, has been pretty smooth since the last update.
Unfortunately, my day job has been much less smooth. I've been extremely drained and overwhelmed, even as I write this month's dev update. So for this one, I'll just be sticking to the essentials. Apologies!!
Level layout
Mirama’s actually reached the point where a playthrough of a chapter, from start to finish, can be accomplished! That was a big deal to me – finally making the game feel a lot more concrete.
Compared to two months ago, we’re talking about 12 new rooms out of 26 in total. Not bad!
While cooking these up, I’ve also added cutscenes that play out at critical points:
- When reaching the midway point, both when ignoring and following instructions
- When freeing Alexis, whether at the first opportunity or after exploring
- When reaching the room before the boss
- When reaching Barros for the first time
- When finishing Barros’ sidequest
These cutscenes look… very janky at the moment. I’ve never been much of an artist, and this feels like a very artistic task! I’m down to learn a new skill set, but for now, I’ll probably focus on Chapter 2 level design before I really get cracking on improving them visually.
Side content
Two new puzzle rooms have also been added! Both of these are slightly off the beaten path – but with this being an introduction stage, they’re not hard to reach.
I’m aiming for about three slices of side content in every chapter in Mirama. Some will take gameplay concepts from a stage and push them to the next level, while others will be a simple matter of exploration and memorization. Each will reward you by getting the character you're helping... to smile.
Now, there’s something a little off about having a “smile” menu for collectibles. At the same time, I truly want Mirama’s main collectible to be a kindness shared with others, something a little incorporeal. So there are two kinds of ways I’m seeing this develop.
- I could have the character in question give you a personal trinket at the end of their quest, to have a “trinket” menu instead. It’s less… creepy? And definitely more video-gamey. But at the same time, I’d love for these to give the vibe of kindness being worthwhile, even if you get “nothing” in return.
- I can replace “smile” with an equivalent in another language – Like egao, or risus? I’m actually pretty tempted by “sorris”. Except if the game ever gets a Portuguese translation, I’ll have to think of what to do in that language!
The game’s now got parallax backgrounds!
First time I've ever done this, can you believe it? Well, you can probably believe it, but I still think it's neat.
Progress on game saves
Game saves now include additional info, like your death count, current level time, and current checkpoint!
It’s not quite to the point where loading “just works”. Doors and cutscenes, for example, will reset if you load a save, which can prevent you from backtracking until I fix this. We’re getting closer to this “just working” though!
The difficulty setting
The survival room now has proper attack patterns affected by game difficulty!
There are plenty of game balance tweaks left to go, and the boss still works the same across all difficulties, but this is a step in the right direction nonetheless!
And that's all I got for today! Hope you all are hanging in there.