"Turan's Artifact: Remake" notes

Turan's Artifact was a terrible game - not because the idea was bad, but the realization was horrible.

With this firm belief, I decided to almost completely remake it, building up from the code that I've already written and turning the level-design upside down. It's not the best game I could possibly make out of it, but with what time I gave myself - I'm satisfied with the results, and invinte you to join!

I saw the level-design as the biggest problem of Turan's Artifact. It was rather arbitrary than carefully designed. In an optimized walkthrough, you don't need to go through half of the levels, which would be good if there were several ways you could do that, but there's only one. And it was also the level-design that made the game so difficult and frustrating. And it is still, somewhat, but I believe that I made it much easier.
So, there were six levels before, but I decided to cut the amount to just three. That way I could focus on quality. I also decided to cut the amount of features. Before there was a teleport, and some other minor stuff. The things I've settled on were the magic harpoon, gliding through air, and phasing through walls. The thing that got changed the most is the phasing through walls ability. It used to be in a form of a ball that you have to constantly throw around with you. It was fun, but I wanted some more freedom for the player. I didn't want you to be stuck to a ball that can go about anywhere. So instead I decided to use this ability to enhance the magic harpoon, now these two are directly tied together (overall, the magic harpoon ability became the center of the game). Now you can use your magic harpoon to attract yourself to lights even behind walls!

But don't be startled by me saying all the time that I reduced the amount of stuff in the game. Bad things out - good things in. I realized that I underused environmental mechanics in my game. The only way I challenged the player was - spikes. And so, I added quite a long list:

• Moving platforms
• Disappearing platforms
• Retracting spikes
• Switches

and a bit more. The other thing was all the minor features that I forgot, or for some reason didn't want to implement. Or at least most of them. I improved jumping, now it feels more controllable. My tutorials at the begining of each level are now visible, because before it was just an unnoticeable gray rock. The most important thing that I added - checkpoints. Before, you would need to start the level from the begining if you died. Now - it's only a small section. What it allowed me to do is to make the levels bigger. Yes, now there are half as many levels, but they are almost twice as big.

The game is now much better with all the small and big improvements. And I would say that I corrected my biggest mistake, and realized one thing - games should only be difficult as long as they are fun.