So, last week, I decided to take a break from designing and developing the game’s big boss. I was kind of reaching a creative road-block with it after moving onto the second phase of the fight, so I decided to move my attention elsewhere, particularly to the game’s pre-boss level, which I refer to as the gauntlet level.

Now, pretty much all of Lost Caves’ levels are non-linear and exploratory in design, with various branching paths, and no clear end-goal. I decided to take a different route with this gauntlet level, though. This level actually does have a clear end goal, which is to reach the end in order to fight the boss. It’s a lot more traditional in terms of platformer level design, and not super exploratory (although maybe I’ll add some slight exploratory elements to it). This level won’t have any chests in it, but it will have coins. It serves as a final test of everything you’ve learned so far in the previous 4 levels.

When designing this level, though, I didn’t want to throw everything at you at once, since that could overwhelm the player. I still wanted a sense of flow and progression, so things aren’t too crazy at the start. The beginning portion simply has a few wayward bear cubs hopping about, a swinging death axe (which are quite ubiquitous in the game’s previous levels), and a skeleton pacing on top of a pillar you have to whack to get over said pillar. Nothing too complicated, but things get more spicy later on, with other enemies you’ve previously encountered, and also more tight platforming and some small puzzles.

Given the difficulty, planned length, and linearity of this level, I decided to work on implementing a mechanic that I’ve been wanting to add for a while, ever since adding save functionality honestly. That thing is a checkpoint system. Right now, the only way you save your progress is by going through a door to another area. If you were in one of the larger levels, and obtained a lot of wealth from chests and coins, but died, you’d lose all of that progress and start from the last door you entered. That would really suck to lose all that progress, so I felt a sort of checkpoint was in order.

In terms of the design of this checkpoint, I didn’t want anything super generic like a flag or whatever. So far in Lost Caves, you don’t really see any type of fabric in the background ruins, so I feel like a flag would be rather incongruent with the game’s atmosphere. There aren’t a whole lot of other checkpoint designs to work off of, though. I looked around a lot and couldn’t find anything. I later decided to get a Pinterest account (which I’ve needed for a while if we’re being honest), and I found something that piqued my interest. I don’t know if it was a checkpoint, but I saw a gif of a character from a platformer going up to this altar, and activating it, which caused torches to light up. Given the stone monuments and ruins that surround you in Lost Caves, something like that fits perfectly with my game. So I whipped something up in Aseprite. 

What I made was a small altar with a blue notch on it. Blue things in Lost Caves are almost always intractable, and since it contrasts with the grey stone of the altar, it coerces the player into whacking it with their pickaxe. Doing so will move the notch to the right, causing two stone pillars on the altar to rise, with fire lighting on their tops, signifying that it’s been activated.

Right now, I’m also trying to think of a way for this altar to read more like a checkpoint so users know what it is when they see it. At the same time though, I don’t know if it’s necessary. If you’re reading this and have your own idea, feel free to say it in the comments below.

Back to the gauntlet level, it’s not finished yet, but right now, at the end of what I have so far, there’s a large tower you climb with a cannon on the top, a stalactite can be broken that’s over the cannon, which drops a blue boulder. The cannon can then be shot at a large cave column, just like the one in level 4 that you may have seen in a previous devlog. Cannons are going to be appearing multiple times in this level, since it plays a big role in the boss fight.

In addition to the images below, I also have a video that shows me going through what I currently have in the gauntlet level. Feel free to comment your thoughts on it!