New and reworked levels!

Hey! I have been working on a new update for this post-jam version of the game. Here are some notes about the changes and additions!

Note: this is a repost to migrate it from the temporal post-jam version project, since development will now continue on the original project page (this one).

New Levels

As promised, I have reworked most levels to have (hopefully) a better difficulty curve. There are also a couple new levels bringing the total to 8 (including tutorials). Much of the new level design is meant to better teach the player the core mechanics of the game.

I would appreciate feedback on the difficulty of the new levels, especially for the new final level. The final two levels lean a little more on the platforming aspects of the game, and I am not sure if they might feel too hard to complete.

New Collectable Game Cards

There's also the new collectable game cards. These are meant to be just collectables that serve as a completely optional additional goal. There are only two cards at the moment as an experimental feature, but the plan is obviously to have more cards, maybe even multiple in a single level.

I am still thinking about how to handle these cards. Right now, the idea is that they work as a "secondary door". This is because, to get them, you have to spend your lab shapes, so in the end the slime is always stuck where the card was. This means the only way to keep going is to reset. So, for now cards taken are saved on level reset (but not on game reset [pressing P]).

Instead of "saving the card from resets", there are many ways I am pondering on how to handle this. For example: taking a card could probably act as a "remove placed lab shapes" button and then refund the last shape used, or maybe refund all shapes.

There are different implications with the different ways of handling these cards from a design point of view. I think I will see how players react to the way they are right now before making a more concrete decision.

This update also brings a new interface button that toggles grid-assist for lab shape placement (I think I should make it be toggled ON by default, but would like feedback on this as well).

I think I will still make one last update with a couple more new mechanics and levels for the post-jam version. After that, maybe a full release version?

Thank you so much for reading! Hopefully you will enjoy this new set of levels and additions!