Reflex – Dev Diary 2

Right, here we go then. The first official dev diary for Reflex 2020. Firstly, the game development is going extremely well, even with me using GMS2.3 Beta (see Asylum dev diary for issues there).

Reflex, is a casual puzzle game that involves using and adding different ’tiles’ to the level to guide a missile towards it’s objective. The objective could be to destroy a power reactor, get to the area exit, or something else. During the course of the game new elements are added to increase the complexity of the levels. In some instances the player will have to duplicate the missile to allow them to destroy something to let another missile through. They will also need to remove previously placed components and switch them with something else to follow more complicated paths.

The original game from 2000 had a number of restrictions that will all be removed in this new version. The main being the map size. The original game was restricted to the 800×600 resolution with no scrolling. The new game can have maps of any size and the screen can be scrolled or dragged around. The new game will also feature multiple breach points (start points) so the player can try to work out which starting location would be best.

So, let’s take a look at the game so far:

This is what currently serves as level 1.1. You can see that the map is very basic (to avoid overloading the player right from the start). In this level the player simply has to slot in 3 reflectors onto the tiles with the white light and yellow tracers on.

Clicking/Tapping on one of these tiles opens a radial menu that shows what components the player has access to and the quantity of each. Once a tile has been selected it is constructed. This takes a certain amount of time and can be decreased during the course of the game depending on upgrade routes.

Here is the radial menu showing the tile options. Tiles that are removed are added back into the inventory.

The lighting engine is the same one I’m using in Asylum but I will probably tweak the ambient lighting a bit as it’s looking a bit dark in these screenshots.

So, what aspects are already in and working? Quite a lot actually:

• All angled reflectors
• A twistable fixed reflector (click to rotate the reflector)
• An impact fixed reflector (when a missile strikes it the angle changes)
• An automated reflector (rotates by itself over time)
• Limited power reflectors (these can only be struck a set number of times before the reflector runs out of power and turns off!)
• Missile holders (stops the missile until the player clicks the tile or a timer runs out)
• Portals (teleports the missile to it’s matching portal – colour coded)
• Destroyable Laser Towers (create laser wires between each other)
• Hardened Laser Towers (cannot be destroyed but the lasers phase in and out over time)
• Speed Up/Slow Down tiles
• 2 way and 3 way missile duplicators
• 2 way and 3 way twistable duplicators

In fact the game is very playable excluding the fact that I only have the one level so far and I haven’t created the objectives sprites yet (reactors, etc).

All in all I’m very pleased with how it’s looking and I’ve got lots of nice visual effects going that keep things looking active.