Welcome to a progress update for my game, The Pale Piper. It’s a 2D precision platformer set in an interconnected, mystical, and strange world, featuring metroidvania elements, bosses, a story, and more. I’ve made quite a bit of progress recently, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.
New Region
At first, I planned for six different regions, each with its own mechanics and enemies, plus a town area. However, as I worked on the story, to make everything make sense, I had to add a new region as a sort of buffer between two regions. This meant a lot of extra work, as I had to come up with new mechanics, enemies, a boss, and the level layout. Fortunately, the theme for this region was quite obvious to me. But now that it's done, I’m very happy with how it turned out. It will make the story flow better, and some cool mechanics now have one more region where they can be encountered. Plus, some of the new enemies and hazards have become my favorites in the game. In short, it was a lot of extra work, but definitely worth it in my opinion.
Challenge Areas and coins
I’ve been thinking for quite some time about how collectible coins can be integrated into the game. I definitely wanted to include coins, as they’re fun to collect and add a bit of challenge when placed in hard-to-reach spots. Plus, the player needs something to find in secret rooms, right? However, I always intended for coins to be an optional collectible, not something mandatory.
One idea I came up with for using the coins is to have special areas called challenge areas. These are hidden throughout the different regions, and players can unlock them by spending a certain number of collected coins. Currently, these challenge areas are some of the most difficult areas in the game, made even harder by having only one checkpoint at the start of the area. Whether these areas are too difficult or frustrating will be determined by beta playtesting, though. But since they’re entirely optional, they won’t be necessary to complete the game. So I am curious about how difficult I actually should make them.
As for rewards for beating a challenge area, I haven’t settled on anything specific yet. I have a few ideas, ranging from unlocking even more challenging content at the end game to revealing optional lore or character information, or even just more coins to help unlock other challenge areas. Whatever I decide, everything related to the coins will remain optional and challenging.
Godot V 4.3
I recently made the switch from Godot V 4.2 to Godot V 4.3. At first, I was hesitant because a major node I use - the TileMap - was deprecated and replaced by the TileMapLayer. Now, I find the approach with TileMapLayers actually a lot better and the right choice for the engine going forward. The old tilemap was often unintuitive and unclear about how to use it properly. With TileMapLayers, each node represents one layer, which is a lot more straightforward than having multiple tilemaps with multiple layers within them.
Despite the improvements, switching to TileMapLayers means I have to redraw every room in my game. Since every room has its own tilemaps (I chose this approach to easily reposition and modify rooms independently), this change requires manually redrawing - at this point - over 300 rooms and also setting up all the new layers in the first place. That’s a lot of extra work! But I decided to make the change for a cleaner node structure, for the other improvements in V 4.3 and because I would need to rework some rooms anyway. I’m currently in the midst of this process, and it will still take some time, but I’m confident I’ll be happy with the results once it’s all done.
Most of the other changes from 4.2 to 4.3 didn’t break anything major, and the engine has received some nice improvements overall.
Decorations
I’ve started creating decorations for some of the regions in the game some time ago. These are small details that will be placed in each room to help differentiate the regions from one another. They also contribute a lot to the game’s art style, making each area more interesting to explore. Most regions will have their own unique decorations, although there will be some overlap (for example, multiple regions might have grass on the floor). The goal, however, is to make the decorations as unique as possible for each region.
I also want some of the decorations to have some sort of interaction with the player. For example, grass will sway slightly when the player steps on it, and vines hanging from the ceiling will react when the player walks past them. I feel that these kinds of interactive decorations add a lot to the game’s overall feel, so I want to put a lot of care into creating them.
Sound Effects
I’m also in the process of creating sound effects for every object that needs them. It usually takes me a long time to get started with sound and music, which isn’t the best approach - I know. But once I do start, I love how much the right sounds can significantly enhance the game. For those curious about my process, I create sounds by mixing and matching different samples from my (now pretty big) sound collection that I’ve gathered over the years. I usually combine 3 to 6 sounds, sometimes more, to create something unique and fitting.
Sometimes a sound just fits perfectly, sometimes it’s surprisingly fitting, and other times it doesn’t work at all - but that’s just part of the process. There are a lot of sounds I’m really happy with, quite a few are still missing, and some I’m sure I’ll end up changing after hearing them in the game for a while.
Music and ambience
I’m currently also working on implementing the music in the game, including transitions, fade-ins, fade-outs, and more. If you’re interested in how I’ve conceptually implemented this, I’ve made a short tutorial on it. The tutorial is a simplified version since I have to account for additional factors in the game, such as the current music intensity, but it’s based on the same basic approach.
As for the music itself, I’m still trying to find tracks that best fit the game. I initially composed my own music, and while I really liked the melodies and tracks, they leaned more into a synthwave style, which doesn’t completely match the game’s theme in my opinion. So, I’m currently testing different paid music tracks, and I have to say, some of them fit really well. But I’ll keep experimenting - maybe I’ll end up with a mix of both my own compositions and paid tracks.
I’m using the same implementation approach for the ambient sounds. Since it’s a kind of stacked-area method, it works well for ambience too. My plan is to have unique music and ambience for every region, with specific tracks for certain parts, like boss rooms, to keep things from feeling repetitive.
Player overhaul
I’ve also overhauled the player controller and animations (yet again). I implemented a lot of small features, like a coyote timer and input buffering some time ago, to make the controls feel smoother. I also polished the animations, which overall improved the feel of the game. However, there are still some minor issues - like the player’s punch animation sometimes getting canceled unexpectedly. That definitely shouldn’t happen, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.
Overall, I’m happy with where the player animations and controls are right now, though there’s still room for improvement (and probably always will be).
Communicating to the player
To deliver a compelling world and story that guides players through the game, I’ve implemented several methods of communication:
- NPC Dialogues: There will be standard interactions with NPCs. You can approach them and engage in dialogue, but don’t expect choices or branching conversations. The interaction is straightforward: you can listen or not, most are optional, but some are necessary to unlock new areas, especially those tied to the story.
- Cutscenes: I’ve added cutscenes that can play when you enter specific areas, such as a boss room. These are designed to enhance the storytelling experience.
- Readable Objects: I plan to include signs and other readable objects in the game. These will function like brief dialogues and give the player useful information.
I understand that not all players enjoy reading text, listening to NPCs, or watching cutscenes. To accommodate this, I’m keeping all narrative elements short and skippable. If you encounter a cutscene once, such as at the start of a boss fight, it won’t replay if you die and respawn, to avoid frustration from repeated waits.
Overall, my goal is not to include dialogue and cutscenes for their own sake but to ensure they either help the player, advance the story, or contribute to world-building.
Thank You for Reading!
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading. I hope you found the update both informative and entertaining.
If you’d like to follow my journey, I’ll be posting more articles here, whenever there’s something exciting to share. You’re also welcome to join my Discord server to stay updated. I do plan a beta test at some point, so if you are interested in that, also join Discord, and I will let everyone know.
And, if the game piques your interest, it would mean a lot to me if you added it to your Steam wishlist.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2925120/
Thanks again, and I hope to see you around soon. Cheers!