Kid Bubblegum Devlog #2

And we’re back again with more Kid Bubblegum!

First of all, the game now has a Steam page, so I’d be tickled bubblegum pink if you could hop on over there and wishlist the game. It helps a lot!

Now to the game itself. This week was spent building a few levels, making a new enemy type and polishing the game up to a basic state…just like I had planned to do. I guess sometimes planning really does work, even in gamedev, huh?

Anyway, here’s a playthrough showing off a couple new things:

As you can see, the game now has a title screen, along with little sequences when starting and ending a level. None of these are 100% done yet and they might change before the full game is released, but I consider them to be ready for the demo at least. The level select is still just a placeholder though, I hope I’ll get the time to change it.

In the level you can see a few more decorations, such as the mailboxes and the COOL! signs hanging from ceilings. I’ve also added some “indoor” areas for variety. Scattered throughout the levels are now gumballs which you can collect. These don’t serve a purpose as such, but I’m sure getting them all will unlock something in the final game. The same goes for the single special gumball hidden in each level.

Obstacle-wise we have moving pillars (inspired by Sonic Adventure 2, wouldn’t you know) and platforms that drop you. You can also cling to the side of the pillars by the way, which gave me a lot of edge cases for which I had to figure out the collision behavior.

Finally we have the new enemy type, which is a basic alien soldier wielding a spike. Unlike the regular enemies you can’t capture these guys in a bubble, as they’ll simple poke it out of the air. This raised the question: How are you supposed to defeat them? I didn’t just want them to be an invincible obstacle (that’s what spikes are for), so I decided that from now on, you can defeat enemies by jumping on their heads. Capturing them in bubbles still has its advantages, as it renders them defenseless and you can kick them into other enemies, but if you want to keep things simple you can now just bop ‘em on the head.

And that’s all about all I got done this week. Not as much as I’d have liked, but as much as I had planned. Next week I’ll start composing and adding music, along with more sfx. I’ll also be adding another enemy type. Hint: He doesn’t like bubbles either. Finally, I’ll be adding some more visual effects to the game to juice it up a bit. Gotta dress to impress, after all.

If you want to get notified about new developments in my Quest for Next Fest, sign up for my mailing list below and/or follow me on Twitter and Mastodon. I’ve also got a shiny new RSS feed you can subscribe to, if that’s more your thing. And of course, wishlist the game on Steam if you haven’t done so already!

See you next post, and be excellent to each other!