It’s here!

Well, strictly speaking, the link’s over here, in the discussion thread on the VVVVVV forum.

Here’s why I designed it like I did.

First up, the lack of checkpoints was to force me to make an interesting, balanced level without them, which in turn would by necessity be substantially different from VVVVVV itself (and the great majority of other people’s levels). With any luck, this forces you to approach the challenges differently – more cautiously.

I believe poor checkpointing like this is bad design, as you’ll know if you’ve played Beacon. But it was more important to me that this was different from VVVVVV – I figure a version of the level with adequate checkpointing would be less interesting.

There’re a few spoilers for the level in the rest of this post.

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I promised a VVVVVV level, didn’t I? Well, something came up, so that’s not coming out for a few days. For what it’s worth, I’m using the time to balance it a bit better (ie. everyone’s dying way too much and I need to fix that).

My main project besides that, now Vigilance is done, is going to be getting my TIGJam UK 5 collaboration with Adam Vian, “Reels of Steel”, into shape. It’s currently lacking a lot of important stuff; we have an okay fishing mechanic and his awesome art, but the game needs a lot of work in terms of higher structure and level design.

Since we’re focusing on atmosphere, it’s going to be a very slow-paced game with a lot of sound work. Should be fun!

In lieu of actual content – I spent a bunch of this morning playtesting a friend’s game, and I’m off to London Indies in a sec – here’s the extremely nautical title music I knocked up for Reels of Steel at TIGJam:

Reels of Steel – So I Fish