Puzzle elements

Currently, Nelson can run the course very easily making it to the sweet and sour sauce. So, this week’s goal was to implement the level design elements that add difficulty and competition. These elements are the timer, dying when touching tomato sauce and double jumping off burgers.

The timer is a basic function that starts as soon as the game is initiated and only stops when the game is either quit or the level is completed, this means that the timer will continue if the player dies, having to restart the level, adding stress on player perfection. Currently the timer is a simple GUI in the top left corner of the screen showing hours, minutes, and seconds. Eventually these times will be listed in a high score chart in the game’s menu.

Tomato sauce has sort of poison effect on Nelson killing him instantly making the player return to the starting position. This adds stakes to the gameplay creating level difficulty and play tension. Making this work was done through scripting the tile map to register with the player triggering the death animation and sending the player back to the start.

Double jumping off burgers adds flexibility to level design, giving the game the ability to have more exciting levels. The effect is initiated as soon as the player touches the burger to make the levels faster pace as well as making the player feel like they have less control. Scripting the tile map to detect a player’s collision with the burger was done to make this component possible.

There were some issues when initiating this phase, the game as it was difficult trying to make the player react to only one tile from the tile map. This was overcome by making all the tiles with a certain action the on a single tile map so then a script could be added to the player telling it to react only to the tiles from that specific tile map.

In future new obstacles could be added to the game. For example, falling objects (tomato sauce drops or chips) to kill the player or an enemy (a child for employee) that chases. New platforms can be added like one that breaks away under the player’s weight, one that floats up and down like an elevator or side to side. These functions would most likely be added in higher levels, boosting difficulty thus keeping player interest. Another idea would be to how a high paced boss level where the player must run through a seemingly easy level extremely quickly as a crawling toddler smashes the course chasing Nelson, this would work to break up the monotonous gameplay.

All these gameplay elements will aid in the game’s themes of speed and precision, as well as creates flexibility in the future production of the game.