I’ve been able to sneak in an hour here and another there during the holidays and looking back at the last entry, Recombobulation has come a long way.
The most noticeable change is that the level has walls. Less noticeable are the refactors that will make it easier to add a bunch of different organs and animate them outside the boundaries of a single tile.
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Here’s a new level design that’s not so linear. I’m trying to play to a fantasy where the player forms a bunch of limbs in different places that all attack the enemies on their own. So this level branches like a tree with choke points spread throughout.
I had to slow down the spawns by a great deal but the level plays out pretty well.
I had to use my “pass” action a bunch of times while waiting for spawns to appear and walk toward the blob.
I also ran out of biomass and had to remove a few times but I’m trying to keep that to a minimum. That said, in its current state there is zero reason not to remove cells that aren’t on the frontier.
Now. How does a more open version of the map play out?
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A little harder. I’d often have to set up a stack of three tentacles to ensure that enemies approaching from any angle would get hit by two of them. More angles of approach so more defenses required.
Again, I had to remove some early biomass to get myself out of a couple of situations where I didn’t have anything left in the bank. And then later I found myself cheesing the spawners to get extra biomass. Is that such a bad thing?
I could rectify it by placing spawners in open areas and preventing the player from placing blobs too close.
Let’s try that right now.
Hmm. If I can’t surround the spawner then what’s the goal? And it doesn’t really prevent me from cheesing the spawner anyway. It just takes more investment to cheese it because I need to surround it from farther away.
Let’s take the dial up to eleven. What if I go full open level?
I end up with a vertical line of cells because that’s the best way of ensuring mobs always encounter two tentacles at once.
Lots of biomass farming again. Not so fun.
I think maybe it’d be better to be awash with biomass but have enemies that are stronger. More back and forth with expanding and conceding territory.
Maybe a little more chance, too. Right now I’m avoiding taking any battles that I’m not guaranteed to win (1 tentacle vs. 1 mob) and I always heal tentacles and rarely remove them.
^ there’s no chance here but with the larger numbers and the larger amount of biomass it makes sense to just spam a bunch of tentacles in a big ball. The mobs do break through but I expand a little each wave.
A wall of tentacles works pretty well, too.
Better than the ball.
^ now tryna divide and conquer.
Well, that was surprisingly interesting for no terrain, one enemy type, and one weapon.
I get a cycle where I save up some biomass, then quickly build toward the spawner followed by a defensive row of tentacles. I need to get it all in place before the next wave so that limits how far I can push. Then after a couple of waves I’ve built enough biomass to go for another push and setup a defense.
This is with twelve spawns per wave, three per spawner.
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Here’s the result of another playthrough:
The first wave is super hectic but it gets easier if you’re able to survive that. In the future I can vary the waves a bit to make a gentler curve.