VelTress

*****This is an alternate universe reimagining of Velgress from UFO50*****

Game Design Doc: VelTress

Story: The hero Beta has been captured and thrown into the pit of VelTress where no one has escaped before. Beta must jump her way out of each layer of VelTress, navigating traps, grabby wildlife, and collecting souls to purchase upgrades.

Setup: Side-view, scrolling platformer, standard gravity, randomly generated areas. The player controls Beta at the bottom of Area 1 and can go left or right to go to any of the 3 other areas. Or they can make their way out of VelTress by going up. Each area presents a different set of traps and wildlife.

Ending: If the player successfully makes it to the top of any area, they’re confronted by Tress, the soul of VelTress, and asked if they would like to trade their collected souls for upgrades. Then the player can choose to leave or jump back into VelTress. If they leave, they get the normal ending.

Hard Ending: The player must make it to the top of each area and collect a key in each area by destroying a cage. If they do this, the soul of VelTress, Tress, is freed, and VelTress dissolves. Tress thanks the player and promises to never hurt a soul again.
The player may easily practice at each area from the start without any upgrades but may find the easiest way to achieve the hard ending is to do Area 1 then choose the next area based on what upgrades they were able to purchase. Previously completed areas have no souls available for collecting.
*After beating the hard ending, the player is given the code 5MORESEC. This code starts a special version of Attactics, which gives the player 5 more seconds to finish their turn if, and while, they are holding onto a unit when their normal timer is up. When they finish placing their unit, the turn is ended regardless of how much time is left.

Mechanics: Move, Jump, Shoot

Move: standard left right movement. No coyote time. No inertia.

Jump:

-jump – gain height for as long as you hold the button until the maximum time is reached – 1 second. The character will begin falling – they do not automatically consume the second jump if available. If the jump button is still held when the character lands on a platform, they do not automatically jump again. If the character hits a block above them while the player is holding jump, they will not fall until the player lets go of jump or the maximum jump timer is reached.

-double jump as in rocket propelled – 2 jumps allowed before landing – if the player falls off a platform, this does not count towards the jump count. When the player activates the second jump, the character changes color to indicate they are out of jumps.

-triple jump – the player can purchase the triple jump upgrade which simply increases their maximum jumps between landing by 1. The character color doesn’t change until they are out of jumps.

Shoot:

The character shoots in the direction they are facing or down if the down button is held or up if the up button is held.

This can be used to destroy blocks to make a path, shoo enemies, or open cages.

A bullet is slightly wider than the character so that if the character is directly below and in the middle of a group of 3 blocks, all three blocks are destroyed instead of just the block above the character.

Traps:

-Platforms – all platforms degrade with time and when a player jumps off them. Clouds shrink while others crumble. After the player jumps off a platform, if the platform hasn’t completely degraded, it will not continue to degrade.

-Cloud – A platform that will visually shrink while the character is on the cloud. This is the only platform that the character can jump through. This is the fastest degrading platform – it will just last a second. After it’s shrunk small enough it will disappear and the character will fall. When the player jumps off a cloud, it will shrink heavily.

-Brick – A platform that will visually crumble while the character is on it. This is a slower degrading platform – it will last 2 seconds. A jump off a brick will degrade it the same as standing on it for 1 second.

-Hardened brick – A platform that will visually crumble while the character is on it. This is the slowest degrading platform – it will last 3 seconds. A jump off a brick will degrade it the same as standing on it for 1 second. This will not degrade with bullet hits.

-Rotating platforms – a platform 7 blocks wide made out of 6 hardened bricks and a mechanism in the center. The player must shoot the mechanism to rotate the platform 90 degrees.

Wildlife:

-Bat – bats are randomly generated and when the player comes within 8 blocks of them, they slowly fly towards the player. If the player shoots the bat, they will fly away off screen. If the bat touches the player, they will latch on and the player will be unable to jump. The player must shoot in the direction of where the bat latched on to shoo it away and regain their ability to jump.

-Swimming Frogs – frogs occur in Area 3. They only swim left and right, turning around when reaching the end of the level. If the frog touches the player, the player will lose their ability to jump until they shoo them off, after which they’ll resume swimming. If the player shoots the swimming frog, they turn into a balloon which the player can bounce off of.