Hi all!
It's now been a week since the release into Early Access, and with that a personal milestone has been reached. In the past few weeks I've been able to lay out a few parts of the game, some in more detail than others, but one thing I haven't yet talked about, which are also important to Boll's Journey, is the puzzle elements in the game. This Devlog will change that.
First, however, something about the...
Story...
something I already briefly talked about, but haven't said much of yet, until now.
My hope is that you, the players, will have played the game already before reading this Devlog. But in case you haven't yet: this Devlog will contain spoilers!
The story so far has Boll waking up at a rift, and being immediately greeted by the Guiding voice. After being guided through the first bit of the Serene Gardens, you end up having to cross the road until the voice will come with a final piece of information: the more moves you use, the closer you put yourself to death.
After that, the only time you hear the voice again is when you get a Baybayin symbol, and scattered across the part after the Dream Dimension, where you're pretty much pushed out quite fast. In the parts that follow, you'll come to know that those in the Dream Dimension really don't want you there. You're being shot at by Shapes that appear out of nowhere, or kept by those same Shapes.
In the Rift Dimension, however, things seem to be a bit different. The voice there is friendly, wants to know who you are, wants to keep you there, but seems unable to. So they give as much information as they can in the hopes that they help you get as far as possible.
In between all of it, in the Real Dimension, the Guiding voice seems to be the one who helps you the most.
The idea for all these story elements kind of came on the fly. The game world itself is largely planned, but when it comes to the story parts, I found myself just dropping them in as I made it all a reality. The same actually goes for the enemies and camera movements at times.
Puzzle Elements
Right now, the puzzle elements in Boll's Journey are quite simple, you have buttons that you need to press, and corresponding gates will then open. 
You could say that's pretty much all the puzzle elements that are in Boll's Journey right now, but there's a less obvious one: the choice between two powerups. At a few points, you'll find that there are powerups that make getting through Shapes easier. There's also a point where choosing one or the other will result in an easy way being kept open or the hard way.
Talking about choices: the current end of the game puts you at one of two endings: a hard one and an easy one. This primarily reflects to the next scene: the ...
Silent Forest
... which is currently still under development. As it stands, I've got most of the path laid out. Now it's a matter of adding in the collectibles, gates and buttons, story elements, well, everything, really. I expect it to be done somewhere in the first part of next week.
As you can see from the above screenshot, it'll be slightly different than the previous scenes, paths are more narrow, more 'complicated' rather than the previous ones, where they were all straightforward.
That's all for now. Keep an eye on coming news posts, wishlist if you haven't already, or buy the game if you want to get into everything already.
A special shoutout to those who already bought the game, hope you enjoyed it so far.
Stay tuned for more!
Happy playing!
Studio Jephinca