Hey guys! Krayfishkarl here, and welcome to another Droplet: States of Matter update! Early Access 1.19 is now available! This update replaces the Temple of Sobek level with a brand new one: Sandswept City. The release of this level marks a major milestone in the development of the game. All main levels have now been converted from BSP brushes to static meshes. Only several boss levels and bonus areas remain.
You’ll be exploring the level in three parts: the outskirts, the city plaza and finally the grand palace. When creating Sandswept City, I chose to make it more open this time around to encourage an exploratory feel, and to make this level feel more grounded as if it were a real location that you could visit. All the rocks, trees and other landmarks are carefully placed to help guide the player towards points of interest that are essential to making progress in the level.
One of the reasons why I opted to completely redesign the Temple of Sobek level was that it was created before I added the sprint ability to the game. This meant that many of the puzzles could unintentionally be skipped with well-timed jumps. As such, I thought it would be a great opportunity to address some issues with game balancing by helping the player prepare for mechanics featured later in the game. For example, Sandswept City is now the first location where the player will encounter whirlwinds that cloud form can bounce off of. This would help familiarize them when facing more challenging levels later in the game such as Cirrus Harbor. The level also helps to teach the player more on combining the abilities of the states of matter. For example, you have to use both ice and cloud form to ascend a small mesa surrounded by quicksand.
With the majority of areas now converted into static meshes, my next goals will be as follows: First, I’m planning to go through all the other levels and continue tweaking the way the game’s challenges are introduced to the player. This is to better ensure a fair, interesting difficulty curve. And secondly, I’m planning to bring the rest of the game to a consistent level of graphical fidelity. Sandswept City and several other levels from recent updates are representative of what I intend the final game to look like. As such, in future updates, I’ll be revisiting older-designed levels to give them a new coat of paint.
That’s all for now! And with that, thank you for following the development of Droplet: States of Matter!
Patch Notes
Bug Fixes
- Fixed some issues where some objects were getting loaded and unloaded incorrectly when traveling between levels.
Gameplay
- Replaced the Temple of Sobek level with a new level: City of Wootz.
- Adjusted the way the pink crystal in the Sobek boss fight is obtained.
- Kicks will now trigger hardlight switches.
- You can now do a kick in mid-air by crouch hopping then pressing the melee button.
- Scorpion enemies redesigned. They have new models and they now chase you rather than following a set path.
- Genies are slightly less difficult to defeat now as they now appear earlier in the game.
- Jellyfish now shoot electricity faster. The shock spheres have been recolored gold.
Audio
- Waterfall sounds now play from further away.
- Thrown object whoosh sounds now based on distance.
Graphics
- The Neo system now has two visible suns. You can observe them most clearly in the loading screens and the new Sandswept City level.
- Slight adjustments to Pitaya colors.
- Graphical update to whirlwinds.
Menus
- Swapped Gale Vale and Mangrove Marsh positions in the status menu.