#2 Early Dev

I decided to use Construct 3. I’m comfortable with it, and I already have a subscription for it. Plus its web-based, easy to save to Google Drive. Construct has everything that I would need for this game.

Gameplay to start:

Top Down dungeon crawler, with lots of items to collect, fun monsters to fight, who knows maybe even some puzzles. Heavily inspired by Zelda & Binding of Issac. With a style and vibe that leans toward Super Metroid, you know, space, ufos, aliens.

Here are the earliest rooms:

The first tilemap I tried out.

And for the player, I decided to break it out into 4 total objects.

The yellow one is an invisible object in the game, but it holds all the anchor points and instance variables. It’s just easier to have one object to pin everything to. Then for the parts of the player that you can see- I broke it out between legs, body, head. I used Construct 3’s “pin” behavior. It took some trial & error, but eventually got it to look right- then I applied the animated versions and.. voila. The player can walk, like magic.

I also decided that unlike Binding of Isaac, the player should not have unlimited powerups to collect- but instead they can hold only 3 at a time. One for each segment of the player's body. Thinking ahead, I figured it would be best to have different sets of sprites, I also took the chance to make .ase file templates for each. So that when I add new animations for let says the legs when you pick up a certain item- I have the file all ready to go.

My hope is that by limiting the number of powerups, it makes them feel more important. Also, will kind of force the player to make choices sometimes- should I pick this up or keep what I have? .. you get the idea.

Oh yeah, and I made a title screen too. Not thinking to hard about it, just going with my first instinct.