It’s been a couple of long months with the pandemic lockdown going on. Nevertheless I found something on what to focus on – Pyramid Plunge!

This update is pretty huge and here’s a rundown of the biggest changes.

New graphics for the Egypt theme

I wasn’t happy with how the Egypt theme was looking which is the first theme players will be playing. So I experimented a bit with different color schemes and settled on this:

So the Egypt theme is almost complete. Need to create an improved Boss graphics, as for now the same graphic as the mummy is being used. I’ll be adding an evil Pharaoh kinda vibe to the boss where he will be getting angry and scarabs coming from his mouth, as well as farting spiders.

A New Theme

When killing the boss level of each world, a new theme will be used. There will be four in all, and the next theme to be implemented was the Mayan/Aztech theme. It’s still a WIP and the boss for this theme has not been implemented yet.

Switcheroo

You can now play as the female character. It’s pretty hilarious seeing thin Felicie throwing fat George against an enemy! Controlling Felicie will only happen when you find a Switcheroo ghost in a crate, which will hunt you down and if it comes in contact with George or Felicie, they will get switched. This “powerup” was quite hectic to implement especially with all the animation frames that had to be done, so you could control Felicie, and have George act as the one needing all the help. Surprisingly there were more animations for George to be done.

Multiplayer

I really believe multiplayer mode in this game is a lot fun. I know because I play it with my kids and it gets hilarious very quickly. If you’re not careful, your opponent can take your Felicie and put it on a trap to get hurt and subsequently killed. You can throw anything at each other, and if you get hit, half of your coins get thrown out. This results in some crazy action where if someone got a lot of loot from the level, the other opponent will try to hunt him down to steal from him. You can see some of this action in this gameplay trailerhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/PG8OAEEcE58



Implementing multiplayer correctly is tough. I’m trying to get some help on this as I got stuck back in November. Meanwhile Parsec can be used which is free software for 60fps online coach multiplayer. It’s pretty amazing at what it can do! I tried it with a friend of mine, and it was butter smooth and pretty lag free.

Secrets

This has been put off for a long time. I always wanted to have some sort of secret in the level. But I couldn’t nail down an easy way how to implement it which would make sense also in a multiplayer game. I finally found an easy way how to add secret. Randomly, on murals, there will be a specific spot which if hit by some thrown object, it spews out a number of coins. It’s quite satisfactory to hit jackpot, especially in a multiplayer scenario

New Music for Jelly-fish time

In multiplayer, if you exit the level before your opponent, the flood is triggered and you can control a jellyfish to hunt down your opponent. Initially I had made the jellyfish remove 1 heart to the player on touching them, but that was too punishing. So Instead I made it that you would be just zapping your opponent if you touch them, and so decrease his breath since he’s under water. The jelly fish isn’t as fast as the human player, and so he has to be careful how to control the jelly fish to continue zapping and annoying his opponent. This adds another layer of fun in the multiplayer

Give Up option in multiplayer

Sometimes a good opponent will take all the loot and exit. There isn’t any loot left so the only option was to die by the hands of some enemy or let the flood come up and remove all  your breath. But that was killing (pun intended) the fun. So now there’s an option where you can give up by pressing the shoulder buttons simultaneously.

Make sure to check out this update as it’s a lot of fun. And I encourage you to try out Parsec with a friend to get a laugh.