Platform Pixels – Beta 6

Nov 27, 2015 • 2 min read

Android Beta: Visit Beta Link
iOS Beta: DM your email to @PlatformPixels

It’s been a couple weeks since the last beta, but that’s fine because this is a big one! Along with an entire engine rewrite, this beta includes a bunch of visual improvements and refinements.

Changelog

Here’s what’s new:

new lighting effects
better visuals
moving obstacles
tweaked levels
coins now remain collected
total coins now shown in the UI
now have gold and silver coins (10 silver == 1 gold)
rewrote controller logic
rewrote/refactored entire game engine

New Lighting Effects

The most noticeable thing in this beta is the new visual effects that I mentioned above. I posted Platform Pixels on /r/playmygame and got some great feedback. One piece of feedback mentioned that the game mechanics were solid but it wasn’t very visually interesting. So, I spent about two hours and ended up with something I’m really happy with.

Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like.

Platform Pixels New Visuals

Compared to what it was before.

Platform Pixels Old Visuals

New Coin Mechanics

Coin mechanics are something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. This beta introduces the concept of gold and silver coins. Each gold coin is worth 10 silver, and gold coins are generally harder to find. Coins now also stay hidden once collected.

The current plan for coins is to make the player collect a certain amount to unlock a boss level. I’m not 100% certain that this will be the final use for coins, but that’s what I’m going with for now.

New Engine

The thing that I spend the most time on this beta (that you probably won’t notice) is rewriting the game engine. This was mostly for fun, but it has also made it easier to add new features and enemy types, so hooray for that!

Up Next

Surprisingly, there isn’t much left on the pre-1.0 road map. I’m satisfied with the current 8 levels and am finally happy with how the game looks. My plan is to release v1.0 to the Google Play store by the end of the year, along with an iOS version shortly after. Here is the current list of what’s left to do.

level completion summary screen (after beating a level)
better level selection screen (show fastest time, number of coins, etc)
add a few more levels to the first world
add a boss level
add a “Coming Soon” screen for the next world

See? Not much left! I’m sure there are a bunch more things in there that I haven’t thought of yet, but the end is in sight.