Levels and enemies

Even though game balancing will come a lot later in the developement, I had to think about a kind of progression in my game levels, not only increasing difficulty but designing a sort of new elements that come into play as you progress in the levels, forcing you to change the way you play to prevent it from becoming boring.

Here are the elements that will change:

• maps: the maps will get bigger, so it's more difficult and time consuming to explore all cells.
• enemies: there will be different kind of enemies, each with peculiar behaviour.
• resources: the resources will become more scarse, so you'll have to decide when to use them.

First of all, interaction with the enemies. At the moment all enemies have 1 health point, so if you occupy a cell where there is an enemy (or if it occupies your cell, in his turn), it will die while you lose a health point. For now there's no way to "shoot" them, you can both destroy them at cost of your health, or try to avoid them. The other way is to deploy a mine.

Sorrounded by all kind of enemies!

Enemies will be of different kind: while the basic one (the red one in the picture) will simply cross the grid following its own (random linear) path, the yellow one will bounce at borders, haunting the level until you decide to destroy them. The purple one near the player ship is a lot more annoying: it "undiscovers" cells along its path, forcing you to explore them again. The pale pink ones are "hunters". If they're near you, they'll change their path and follow you.

I think there's enough variety to keep you challenged, but I'm sure some other ideas will come to my mind as I proceed in the developement.

Resources

Resources: what are they used for? At the moment I found 2 main uses for normal resources (the cyan ones in the pic). The first is deploying mines: deploying a mine has a cost of 1 resource, so you can use it as soon as you get one.

The second use is repairing your ship: to repair 1 health point you need 2 resources, so you'd better not fill the grid with mines, but save some in case you need to restore your health.

Finally, the latest born in this small family: red resources! These will give you invulnerability for a small amount of time, so you can smash into those annoying enemies without pity!

Next: time to get some graphic assets!

Thanks for reading, game you next time.