Droidscape:Basilica, gameplay phase-1 : Draw your path
like i mentioned in my previous post, the game has two phases, the first of which is the "puzzly" one. You have to carefully draw a path that will get you the exit key and reach the exit door. Safely. That is you have to anticipate the enemies movements so that you'll be able to reach those assets without getting killed!
The main game screen consists of a supposed HUD monitor, though which you can control the Bishop-7 droid.
Though that you can see the droid, and the various elements of the level itself.
the exit key is on the down left, the yellow/golder key-card thingy, and the exit is the one marked with the exit arrow (duh)
every character that is not you, is an enemy. Their direction of movement is marked with an arrow, and most enemies follow a simple linear pattern. They go along the axis of the arrow, until they hit an obstacle when they turn 180 degrees. As levels progress, additional enemies with different behaviours are added, e.g. enemies that patrol around objects or enemies that follow you.
Drawing the path is done by touching inside the circle and dragging. We opted for this circle thing, so that your finger will not have to obscure your character. This way, you can touch&drag and still see your character. You can see the trail of your path with the little blueish dots.
Development wise, some resolution of path sampling is selected and while you drag, the character's coordinates are stored in a list. If you succsesfuly complete the level, your path is stored in a list of lists, where all levels' stored paths are. So, if you choose to re-play any level, your drawn path will be there for you to replay.
Ofcourse, during this phase enemies do not kill you. They have a little bit of translucency to designate that, and act as placeholders for the player to understand how they will move.
Little dots -like a path trail- designate the actual coordinates of the path that were stored. Items collected during draw phase get an orangish aura, so that you will remember that they were collected.
Apart from enemies, and colored key to colored door combinations, there is the element of "energy" you have to take into account during draw (and play later on). As long as the character moves, he consumes energy.
Energy shows up both as a green bar above the character (it turns to red when low) and in the gauge on the lower right part of the HUD.
Energy can be replenished at some energy pods scattered around the level. It's that dark boxy-thing with the electricity arcs on the lower right of the level, just besides a red enemy. As soon as you step on that, energy starts to get replenished. It takes something less that 3secs to top-up from an almost depleted energy state.
You can progrssively delete your draw path with the "rewind" button on the HUD, and you can completely delete and restart with the red re-do button on the upper right.
If you think you got the path right, you just press play.
When you press play, a check is made that indeed you have a complete path, i.e. your path collects the exit key and reached the exit door. If not, a message showing up what you haven't done is displayed. Actually, when you get the path right, the game will auto-start.
Getting gems will get you coins, that you can later on exchange for power-ups, or unlock levels without having to play them out.
You get points for your gems collected, for a shorter path, for less time required to complete the level, and the percentage of gems of a level collected.
Each level has predefined conditions for those criteria, for a silver or gold medal in each category.
Well, hopefully that sums-up what the puzzler phase is all about!
