Devlog 03 (Puzzle Mechanics)

Devlog 03 Puzzles and other features.

This week has been spent introducing core gameplay and playability features into Marble Machines, along with many of the smaller yet crucial things updated are some more significant and major improvements to the game. 

The game now has a very basic yet functional main menu system allowing them to progress through levels, this has been built with the notion that I will be implementing various levels, so without boring you with back-end detail, the system is incredibly easy and straight forward to create new levels and have their selection buttons and components auto generated on build, look forward to a wide variety of puzzles to choose from in future!

Along with the menu and navigation, I have thrown together some introductory/basic levels for you to choose from note: these levels are roughly put together for the sake of implementing the navigation/next level functionality and are susceptible to change in future updates.

One main feedback received has been the limitation on the amount of Tools the player can build each level, this is definitely a feature to be implemented and is crucial for adding an element of challenge, I mean... What would be fun about being able to build an infinite number of tools to solve the level, that would make it way too easy! This is very true, the real question is, what's the best way to implement such a feature? Well I have Implemented it and I'll explain how and why it works the way it does...

Each level will have a rating number to determine the minimum number of Tools it will take to complete, if the player exceeds this number their rating for the level will be reduced, to keep it nice and simple the levels are rated with a 3 star system, 3 stars of course are granted for players who solve the puzzle using less than or the amount of tools required for such level.

Why this method, and not limit the amount of Tools the player can build?

Well my justification is this, Marble Machines will hopefully have plenty of levels to choose from and for a lonely developer such as myself, it is a lot of work to go through each level and determine exactly how the player must solve it, and how many times they can build a specific Tool. Also this method may be prone to errors from me while determining the right tools for the job. I would much prefer to not restrict the players right to experiment and choose an alternative setup for solving the problem. This way I can set the least amount of Tools required to solve it, and let the computer do the rest.

Apart from these rather major updates, generally a lot of backend code and functionality has been neatened up, along with some fun features such as new obstacles, UI and visual updates, marble reset on build or movement of objects and a basic soundtrack for the levels.

Thanks for reading and look forward to providing more updates in future!

This Weeks Updates:

Basic Levels 1-4 / User interface Implementation / Main Menu(Basic Functionality).

Marble Reset on Build or Move Tools.

Star Level Progression.

Destructible Obstacles.

Sticky Block Obstacles(Placeholder Art).

Level Locked/Unlocking.

Sound Track(WIP)

Sound Track Loop

This Weeks Feedback:

"Difficulty is reasonable, but maybe some kind of limit on how many of each tool can be used could add another layer of strategy. Might also be an interesting idea to have evil marbles which can also move around and destroy the player's marbles."-Jonathon

"Would be good if the marbles exploded if they went off the screen at any side rather than just the bottom. Also, would be nice to have a limit to the number of each piece you can use in each level. New game isn't on by default either so you can select any level when you first load the game."-Joshua

Feedback Implemented:

Tool Limit/Rating.