Had a lot of fun implementing the different difficulty settings!

Hard Mode!

Hard mode incorporates a timer into the game to offer a more challenging experience. The player has one second to decide their next move, otherwise, V-Hunter dies! This forces the player to make quick moves or waste turns resting in place to think.

I’m even considering adding a Very Hard mode (maybe V-Hunter difficulty?) that will have a time limit in addition to rest in place being blocked. I think this is the mode streamers will enjoy the most, as it will become hectic as they try to decide their next move under a tight deadline!

Easy Mode!

Easy mode adds a turn indicator above each enemy’s head. This offers the player a casual experience where they don’t have to memorize what turn each enemy is on but only focus on the puzzle itself. I designed this with my parents in mind so they can easily play it once I send it over to them haha!

Difficulty Selection Screen

A less exciting aspect was implementing the difficulty selection screen. This involved tieing the difficulty to the save file and to the global configuration I have holding some pertinent settings (and in the future for things like volume etc…).

The difficulty is chosen when a Saga starts and cannot be changed partway through. This is designed on purpose as leaderboards will be organized via difficulty and saga.

Damage Flash Shader

The last feature implemented for this dev log was a quick flash when an entity takes damage. This is really just a cosmetic change, but I think it adds some juice and will be more relevant when enemies have more than one health.

In Closing

I’m happy with the progress I’ve made in the past day since the last dev log. I’m focusing on finishing all the baseline systems within the game before diving too deep into designing the rest of the sagas. Once the enemies are implemented and the tile map is set up, creating levels is the easy and fun part! So, I’m trying to save the best for last.

I also am trying to be more organized as I draft these dev logs, as you’ll see with some of the headers throughout this post. If you made it to the end here, I’d greatly appreciate a like if you enjoy this content, although I’m mainly doing this myself for posterity and to see my progress. Thanks!

If you like V-Hunter Puzzler Dx so far please follow me here on itch or elsewhere on my linktree!