0.4.0!

A new tutorial, some sparkly ropes, and a plethora of secrets!

Ok! I know I just uploaded a post yesterday! But if I’m honest, that was mostly a ‘state of the game’ post. And maybe you’re wondering. What’s the difference? Well, yesterday this update wasn’t ready. And today it is. And that makes a lot of difference if you ask me! So let’s get to it, because honestly, this is my most impactful update yet

New Tutorial!!!

So! For a long time, I have been disappointed in the start of my game, and in response, I went ahead and began developing the rest of it. In hindsight, I think I would have retained more players if I had built a proper tutorial from the beginning.

So what makes the new tutorial better? Well, visually, I think it’s a lot cleaner. Now, instead of just opening up in the game, the player will drop in!

This is a lot more fun if you ask me. And almost sets the stage so much better. You get to see Flyph’s best side(their squishy-ness) right from the get-go!

On top of this, the tutorial now properly teaches all my game mechanics! Ya crazy I know, most tutorials aren’t doing this in 2025, but after the first 5 minutes of the game, you should know most of what there is to know. Hopefully.

It’s kind of crazy, but what has come to be one of the game’s main mechanics wasn’t really taught in the old tutorial! The only time you would hear about it was if you decided to read one of the signs! And players don’t know how to read, so it was never read. (This is a joke, kinda)

New Secrets!

So on top of a tutorial, I have also begun adding in more secrets to my game! What does this mean? Well:

I created fake walls!!! I know this isn’t an original mechanic. BUT I am excited to hide a bunch of thinly veiled secrets for you all! So please play my game with your eyes open, I have goodies and secret challenge rooms hidden for you!

Bee’s Technical Explaination(BTE):

So if you’re wondering how this was accomplished, I have another tilemap layer on top of the base tile map, except when the player draws near to a tile on this layer, it registers the player’s position, and passes those arguments to a shader that selectively and stylishly reveals the section the player has uncovered! This is not

A big consideration in adding these secrets was ensuring they would be found, which is contradictory to most secrets, but essential in games where you want to hide a lot of your content behind secrets. On my first attempt at hiding tells to these secrets, I watched as my little brother ran past all of them. This was disappointing, and I learned as obvious as I think a secret is, I need to make it 10x times more obvious.

SO Hopefully y’all are finding my secrets. The first ones might feel obvious, but I plan to slowly make the ‘tells’ to a secret less and less apparent, and over time build the player’s 6th sense for, ‘I think Bee hid something over here. If I can put a fake wall in one area with no tell and have, like 25% of my player base finding it, I’ll consider that a success!

New Rope?

I also finally have gotten the rope texture to kinda shimmer in the way I want it to! This took a lot of trial and error to get right, and honestly, I might still tweak it a bit, but I’m just glad people probably won’t be mistaking it for bones anymore.

BTE:

This was done using a combination of the texture, a normal texture, and a specular map. While most textures within my game are flat by design, I felt I needed to utilize these things in order to properly give the ropes the feel I want. On top of this, I used a shader that gives them a scrolling ‘water-like’ vibe, to make the glittering feel more, well, I just like how it looks.

Slide Boost Circle Particles

Now, at this point, I’m sure it’s going to start feeling irrational, the details I include in here, but this one is very special and I am sure everyone will understand why it is included:

Did you see that? When you Slide Boost, now the game throws a little ring particle as you slice through the air. It’s a small detail, but I think it really does a lot to make the maneuver feel better. After I implemented it, I began spamming it for probably hours. It’s just so fun, and it makes you feel cool now, too.

BTE:

This was done in less than an hour by drawing a circle in Aseprite, and then attaching a particle emitter to the Slide Boost FX scene that takes its launch direction from the players, and then emits 2 rings along with the other Slide Boost FX.

Camera on Rails

And finally! I set up a camera dolly system where I can ensure the camera, instead of being fixed on the player, glides on a rail system!

This probably won’t be used often in my game. Right now, it’s only used during the one section where I was disappointed that the moon was completely hidden for the final climb when the player was centered, and looking for solutions, I decided that putting the camera on a track was the best solution I had!

BTE:

This one could be its post if I am being honest. There is a lot that went into this; hell, describing how I made it fit into the existing camera solution would be a paragraph on it’s own.

But, in a nutshell, whenever the player enters a specific area, the camera is fixed alongside a path2d where it moves towards the position on the path closest to the player. There is more going on within this that makes it so it doesn’t just teleport as the player moves, and ensures the camera’s movement along the path is smoothed.

If you’re curious how I do it, please comment. I wouldn’t mind doing some technical write-ups about my game!

Misc Changes:

You may have noticed some other changes from random visual tweaks I made in a fugue state at 4AM, to finding your FireFly just a touch floaty at the peak of your jumps. There really is a lot that has gone into this over the last few months or so. Hell, I’ve added TWO new secret areas to my game in this update that didn’t even get a mention in this update.

MAYYBEE I should’ve mentioned them, but they’re the type of thing I would rather you experience yourself than read about in my blogs,so really try out this update! I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and well, a lot of tears into this game. So if you tried out my game and wanted to say something nice, well, I’d probably put more tears into this venture. And if you felt compelled to say something mean… more tears.

So thanks for reading! And if you dislike any of the changes I’ve made, or think I could’ve done even better in one area, or spot a change I didn’t mention but definitely should have, well the comments are below. There’s much more to this update than this blog post is open about, but I will leave that for you to find!

And do keep in mind, there are also some secrets I kept to myself. If you see any fireflies wandering around, my recommendation is that you chase after them. I’d bet they’d be impressed if you’re able to keep up.

~ Bee