Hi all
Another week, another devlog.
This time with a closer look at enemies, scenes and powerups. Last week there was a halfway promise on an Early Access release date somewhere in the past week, but as you may have noticed it wasn't there. This week, however, it'll be there. You can expect an update in the Wednesday/Thursday timeframe!
Now, let's head into the content...
Powerups
A game like Boll's Journey wouldn't be complete without some Powerups. It's one of the first things you'll come across, next to the Shapes.
There currently are five Powerups in the game:
Attack
The Attack Powerup lets you do more damage to a Shape when shooting at it. This translates to skipping one or more colors.
Attack Rate
The Attack Rate Powerup lets you shoot faster.
Defense
The Defense Powerup lets you keep your moves when shooting at Shapes. This is not to be confused with the next Powerup
Shot Defense
The Shot Defense Powerup lets you keep your moves when Shapes are shooting at you.
Speed
The Speed Powerup increases your Speed.
Each of these have their icon showing on the top right corner of the screen, after picking them up. In the pause menu, you can also already see a greyed out placeholder for them.
Powerups are scattered all across the world. In some cases you'll have to choose between 2 or more Powerups, while other times you can just get them all.
Enemies
There are currently a handful of enemies that directly or indirectly influence the choices you'll make in the game. The most common enemy is the Shape, which we've discussed in the first Devlog. The second common enemy is the Dud, which was discussed in the second Devlog. But there are others.
I'll be introducing a special scale for the enemies: the ASS, which stands for Annoying Shape Scale. Seems a fitting abbreviation, since annoying things are a pain in the ASS. ːsteamhappyː
Shape
For the sake of adding them on the ASS, we'll have an honorary mention of them again here. Since they're easy enough to deal with,, they're ranked 5th on the ASS.
Duds
As mentioned in the second Devlog, they're probably going to be the most annoying enemy, making them be at the top of the ASS.
Appearing Shapes
These Shapes will appear out of thin air when you move around in the world. They can literally show up anywhere and anytime. They might be ranked second on the ASS because of their ability to just show up when you least want them to.
Other than appearing, they pretty much function the same way as any other Shape does, with the added 'bonus' of not being able to be attacked.
Eating Bushes
These aren't really enemies in the literal sense of the word. And they aren't really annoying to deal with, as you'll find that they'll only get the Shapes that are in your way. The slightly annoying part might be that once they've got a Shape, an actual Bush will grow in their place.
Since they're not really a part of the Shapes, they don't get to be on the ASS officially, but if I'd had to put them somewhere, I'd probably put them on third place, together with the next enemy.
Reverse Shape
The Reverse Shape is exactly what the title says: a Shape in reverse. I'll keep it a surprise where you could find them, but they pretty much also do what the name suggests. Where a regular Shape would die on Green, a reverse Shape dies on Black.
Why aren't they higher on the ASS? Simple: once you know what they are, it's pretty easy to deal with them. At most you'd only lose a half dozen of energy to them.
More...?
These are the currently known enemies, but there are more coming. Boll's world is big, and the Journey is long, so there's a lot of opportunities to throw in more enemies, without making it seem more chaotic than it needs to be. Don't believe me? Play the game when it comes out. You'll see how calm it really is.
Scenes
Boll's Journey is going to be a big game, spread over several Scenes. The current ones in the game - Garden, Suburb, Highway and Forest - are only a taste of what's to come. But, what exactly is to come?
The intention is for Boll to Journey across the world, which means all sorts of different kind of scenes. The story up until now - which I'll talk about more in the next Devlog in full detail - has Boll running around in a forest.
From there, Boll will end up on a Mountain, which you'll have to get up on and do things a certain way to be able to continue.
In the near future, there'll be more scenes, such as Plains, a Channel, a Main Road, a city, Industrial area, Factory, Airport, and more. You'll be able to read all about how this will tie into the story in next week's Devlog. But for now I can say that it's all about the Guiding voice, the other dimension, and more.
The end
That's it for this week. Stay tuned for the Early Access release news post somewhere half next week. The post is prepared, it's just depending on the state of the game at this point, it'll be there Wednesday/Thursday.
Wishlist Boll's Journey now to get updates delivered in your News Hub, because next to the Early Access update, next week's Devlog will be about the story, and the current puzzle elements in the game.