We had a bit of a brainwave last night, and we think we’ve got the scope nailed down now, right from the menus to the number of levels through to the way everything is presented. We’re limiting the colours of balls to just three colours for the time being, but introducing a padlock icon to a few puzzles to change things around a little bit.
The game will now consist of three difficulty levels, each with 36 levels in each. There’s no longer a time limit, but there is a move limit and the option to ‘ace’ a level if you do it within an even stricter move limit, which will be reflected on the main level select grid. We’re going to do a full ‘Puzzle Mode’ where you can pick the levels you want (with later difficulties unlocked as you go) and then a ‘Quick Play’ mode which will either push a non-completed level to you at random or give you the option to work through all the non-completed levels in sequence, which might be handy.
We’ve also made a start on the music, which will be subtle loops of background musak, at least initially, and we’ve got the main sound effects sorted, although XNA is struggling with MP3s as spot effects, so we’ll need to convert them back into WAVs.
So, yeah, full steam ahead still. Just got to keep that motivation up and hopefully we’ll have something playable by the end of the weekend.
