PogoGirl Devlog #27: Ice to Pogo You!

Wow, it’s been six months since I’ve unveiled the fall season for Go! Go! PogoGirl. I’ve been working on this game for way too long.

Anyway, here’s winter!

As you can see, it’s cold and dark, because…well, it’s winter. The ground is covered in snow, the clouds are gray, the sky is dark, meaning it must be like, 4 pm. Daylight savings sucks.

As winter will be the final season of Go! Go! PogoGirl, the slightly unpleasant atmosphere is a good fit. However, I obviously didn’t want to make it too unpleasant, as that just wouldn’t fit the game. So, I’ve added some little flowers that are dancing despite being covered in snow, and a couple of snowmen that wave at you. Who built them, you ask? That’s a mystery. Feel free to discuss the lore in the official /r/GoGoPogoGirl subreddit that doesn’t exist.

As you might remember, each season in the game has its own unique gimmick. I’ll give you three attempts to guess the unique winter gimmick. Hint: It’s ice.

Jump onto ice with a bit of speed, duck down to charge a bounce and you’ll go sliding all over the place. As you can see, this will help you slide under narrow ceilings. But, obviously, if you slide too far, you’ll bump into enemies.

This sliding mechanic was actually one of the very first ideas I had for the game, and it’s even been implemented long enough that it broke multiple times as I fiddled with the game’s physics and movement systems. I’m not sure why it occurred to me; probably because winter levels need ice physics, and this was the only way to really make players feel the ice. There’s not much sliding going on if you’re only briefly bouncing on the ice, after all.

This is not the only way you’ll encounter ice in the game, though. You’ll also find some shiny ice blocks:

And as you can probably guess, you’ll have to break them with a stomp in order to get what’s frozen within. But make sure you don’t need them as a stepping stone to reach a higher area first…

There is also a third way in which ice will feature in the winter season, but I’ll keep that a secret. Wouldn’t be fun spoiling everything now, would it?

And there we go, now we have all four seasons in the game! I can smell the finish line already, along with all the bugs and errors that always pop up when you’re this close to finishing a project. But that’s part of the game, baby! Let’s rock and pogo.