(Posted originally on our blog)

Hi guys!

Sorry about not releasing the devlog last Friday but, last week was one of those weeks where everything that could go wrong went wrong.

Let's start it off with this:

It may not look like it, but we finally finished all the level design for the medical area!! In the past two weeks, we pretty much designed 1/5 of the area and filled in the lower right corner with some platforming, enemy, and puzzle challenges for you to go through when you reach there.

This entire section's main goal is to introduce to the player the area mechanics in case that she comes from the mechanical area (the arrow inside the white rectangle). So we started there and introduced all the area mechanics one by one, not in a slow pace as we did before when the player comes from the "right path" (the green arrow on the top right). Each of the rectangles on the image represents an area mechanic:

• The white rectangle introduces the main enemy for the area the split/merge robo and all its variants.
• The red introduces the "trap platforms" and the lasers as an environmental hazard.
• The yellow has some easy puzzles with moving lasers.
• The blue rectangle works as an introduction to the anesthesiologist robo.
• Finally, the black rectangle is a simple introduction to the astral oirbo mechanic.

This section is super dense regarding mechanics, something that usually is a no-no on level design. The only difference is that we know that if the player came from the mechanic area, it means that it has already, at least, visited the Nature area and crossed the Mechanical area in order to reach into this Area. So the player has some experiences and playtime under his belt, so this avalanche of mechanics shouldn't confuse or be too much for the player to handle. Even so, we toned down a lot the introductory challenges so that even if the player isn't an "Oirbo pro player" by this point, it can still pass through these sections quite "easily".

Going back to rectangles, there are 2 that we didn't explain yet, the orange and the pink ones. Starting off with the pink rectangle, which is a wall jump platform challenge that will lead to a secret location on the spacecraft on the mechanical area (that is only accessible at first using this route), so the player will require to defeat the Medical area boss in order to access this location. The final rectangle is the orange one, this is a quick challenge mixing all the medical area mechanics that we introduced before, its size can look like it's something overwhelming, but it's quite easy to understand and go through if the player waits and tries to access it first (the whole goal with this challenge).

We designed this for a player that doesn't know the mechanics of the area yet, what about a player that stumbles to this section after he already cleared the area? Well for that we made most of the platforming harder to do from Left to Right since this route is the only possible choice for players that come from inside the Medical area. Besides making it harder we also added some "hidden" shortcuts that allow any player that knows the section to bypass almost all of the mechanic introductions if she wishes to do so.

So if the player comes from the mechanical area, this entire section is 100% linear (white->red->yellow->blue->orange->black), but if the player comes from inside the Nature area this section is a maze with tough challenges, shortcuts, and paths to other areas.

This big section really represents everything that we've learned so far regarding level design, floor planning, player paths, and game design overall. Alone it has 3 paths that connect to the rest of the nature area, 1 entrance to the warehouse area, and 2 entrances for the mechanical area.

We also advanced a lot on the art department these past couple of weeks, like the giant human pods (link for tweet) but we will leave that for the next devlog, because although the level design is complete we still have to finish those huge shafts in the middle of the area.

Besides finishing those, we also want to start and hopefully finish the boss mechanic implementation, so even with a low task volume, there is much to do!

I would like to thank all the new patrons that joined us on this adventure of making games

Don't forget to join us on  Discord, Twitter, and wishlist the Oirbo on  Steam, below the usual gif reporting the current progress of the medical area!