Stage Discussion #4: "Crush Forts"

It's been a very long time since my last entry in this series, but my restored interest in game development has also motivated me to look back at CATACLYSM. I've made a lot of things in my life, most of which are sculptures, but CATACLYSM is easily the one I'm most proud of. It's obviously rough around the edges, and lacks features you'd find in a less-amateur game, but I sincerely believe that it's a fun game that accomplishes what I set out to do with it.

Anyways, the stage(s) I want to dig a bit into today is "Crush Forts" (and the Remix variant). As I touch on in the video, Crush Forts is sort of a relic of what CATACLYSM was originally supposed to be. I was interested in the idea of putting players in an arena battle environment where they could only indirectly attack each other. My first drawing of the game had two "forts" which looked sort of like a baby's mobile with chandeliers hanging from each point. The players couldn't ever reach each other's fort, but they could throw/shoot explosives that would cause their fort to break apart. The idea was to try to either squish them with falling parts of their fort or break theirs enough that they'd fall down before they could do the same to you.

Well, I figured out pretty quickly that the game was more fun if you could run around the entire map together, because even the first prototype level (which-- I'm not even sure exists anywhere) allowed this. 

I don't remember which came first: The decision to create a stage in the spirit of the old "forts" idea, or the "crush blocks" that made the stage possible. Either way, the configuration of crush blocks has gone through many revisions. One version existed that made it possible for players to become trapped in the bottom corners if a stack of crush blocks came down while they were collecting a crate. While I still like the idea of a perfectly-timed trap that uses the stage, it was obviously no fun for the trapped player who was not dead, but also not able to do anything except blow themselves up. That idea had to be scrapped.

The green "ghost blocks" which allow bombs and crush blocks to pass through (but not players) also made this stage work much more nicely. In every stage (I think), there is some way for a player in the bottom area to get back up to the top. The problem is that the only bomb-immune blocks that I had originally were the purple ones (with the 'X' design), and so that limited how I could construct the forts in this level. Any crush blocks placed above the indestructible blocks wouldn't be able to fall through, so it was just less interesting. 

One thing that was challenging was filling out the space outside of the forts with enough destructible terrain that the matches would have a good, varied, progression. The bridges helped, but it was the introduction of glass blocks that allowed me to fill in those last few spaces. The fact that they break easily, and that you can damage them just by throwing yarn bombs at them means that I don't have to worry as much about odd blocks hanging around and making the stage awkward to navigate.  I got to take this even further once I started making Remix versions with the top bridge made almost entirely of glass. 

I suppose that's all the ranting  I have for this stage. If you try it out, let me know what you think. What works about it, what doesn't work? How do you like the little bats? :P