3 Hour Challenge: Deadbolt Demons and Bones

Time for the big finally, made it through all three of the enemy archetypes and now to see what I've learned and what I plan to do for the future. I had a lot of fun with this one to be completely honest, the added hour was very much needed from the last level I had made; allowed for a lot more testing and a lot less rush. Additionally sticking to the more standard room dimensions helped with the layout of everything dramatically, not having rooms overlapping made it so the enemies acted a dash more predictably and gave the player more power over the situations they found themselves in. Moving on from me rambling a bit, here's a pic of the full map AND the piping system.

Its VERY big and somewhat complex, so lets go one piece at a time, or more accurately lets do one floor at a time.

Firstly, I placed the character on the right, for some reason that was a goal for me and that stuck in my head, regardless the first obstacles are some surprisingly hard enemies followed by some grunts that will take cover and probably light you up when you start approaching. I wanted to give some approaches for this because the last level had very few, so the sewers connect to the room with the smaller grunt fellas, just behind that room, and just barely on the second floor. going up top can skip the lower level guys but you are going to have to encounter them at some point in the level, and considering the first floor will probably hear if you start something on the second floor; you're probably interacting with them sooner.

I noticed that the skeletons have a unit focused on trap placement as well as a decently complex trap setting system for the level design. so I decided to introduce a pretty obvious trap to the player that is more of an alarm system that the player can't fully deactivate. As well as if you knock on the door with the trapper (non-grunt looking fella pointing his gun in the air) they will set at least one mine then check the door, so either you bust in the door or maneuver around a mine with way too large an explosive radius. (seriously explosives hit WAY further than you would think). This area is more built to be something of a trap floor, start big conflicts here and sure you're covered but you may have to flip back and forth to handle the advancing enemies.

Or theoretically you draw people's attention and then use the pipes to dip upwards again, the fighting should draw out the bat demon and if it doesn't you might have enough time to take him out before getting smacked with a fire bat. A lot of the focus with this level is to have flowing action from region to region, or for you to be dashing through the area constantly and reactively blasting whatever gets into your way, personally I think it worked out well especially since the amount of weapons on the floor is rather limited.

After getting through the first half of floor three you are presented with the first target of the mission, a trapper encased in his hideout with a friend trying to get them to come out. However, are you supposed to get past this nefarious and dangerous obstacle?! Easily! because if you knock on the door the trapper blows himself to kingdom come! and the bat guy isn't even looking in your direction! It's kinda funny really, this looks like a really hard room but is mostly just a joke fake out thing, any noise you make leads to the target's death and the bat isn't hard to deal with. There is one surprise grunt fella that will probably catch you once but then they may end up being the alert to trigger the trap room so who knows maybe they are more helpful than harmful in this case.

From here you have a couple of choices on how to handle the next floor, going straight forward or grabbing a vent, either way it's intended for you to fight a mini-boss before the bigger boss, they are intended to be big and scary, something that's a proper challenge before you get to the final challenge.

The second floor provides access to the fella on the right, he's got a big 'ol gatling gun and can obliterate you in seconds, the skeleton fella is blocking stair access from the standard way up / the vent path for his room. both provide access to the last boss, the demon blocks access to a generator in case you want to black out the last arena. and as spooky as they look, the demon dies in a shot or two and the skeleton smasher guy tends to take himself via the traps when trying to go downstairs to take you out if you make too much noise. As much as they are intended to be big and scary, it's really funny to me that the target you have to assassinate isn't too strong solo and the backup tends to off himself before you know what happened and you just come across the end result.

So, the final arena. The story that's going on with this map is that somehow these fellas got a hold of the reaper's stuff and are planning to sell it, so you as the player obviously go to collect your stuff and eliminate anyone in your way. Regardless of the story, you have some cover to your right and if you kill the lights this is even easier to get into, however you will trigger a shotgun trap just behind it; HOWEVER to that however, if you are in cover the trap won't hit you. like for some reason if you're in cover of any ranged attack just cannot hit you unless your poping out to shoot. So honestly you just kind of get a free shotgun blast and then can nab the shotgun if you're out of bullets near the end. 

The trapper gives some challenge if it can lay some traps but its not the worst, and the general at the end of the overly dramatic staircase honestly won't see ya coming, could make it a fun challenge by using a grenade launcher to snipe him from a distance, but tbh he mostly just looks DRAMATIC.

Sadly, steam decided to just hold onto my level to check it for some reason so I don't have a review this week. I hope it pops up soon because Zag apparently wrote the guide for the level editor for this game. So I really want to see what he has to say on my stuff.

Well lacking a review, it's just my honest thoughts. I think it's a big improvement over the second level and I'm really happy and proud to claim that. The aesthetic of the level is less of a focus but I think the mechanics and flow of the whole thing is improved. I'm really happy with the handful of different paths and approaches for the level itself, from the pipes to how you handle the enemies and what rather limited weapons are on the map. Overall I think it's better than all of them and I was very concerned a few weeks back that I wouldn't be able to say that.

This whole game has been a wonderful start for me to get back into level editing and was really fun and educational, I was even still learning stuff in the editor with this last level! (did you know you can hold control to free place things in the level? cause I did not, but be careful with how you place things, clipping can occur) I think i'm done with this game for a spell, I do want to come back to this one day however and give these levels a second pass. Upgrade them and give them a more experienced eye of judgment, in order to make them even better than before. But for now I move onwards to my next project, a very narrative focused and lacking, top down, crazy fast combat game of madness and 80s aesthetic...