Mega update! New camera, new level

Phew.... Sorry I don't update y'all very frequently, but I am getting a ton of work done. Just looking at the last update and laughing at where my game was at then.

First up! Major change!

I changed the way the camera works a lot. For one, it's a lot closer to the character. I wanted it to be closer to a 3rd person action game rather than a top down game. There's a lot of design repercussion to that, but so far I like it a lot because you feel more like you are the character. Another change is that you can now change more than just the rotation, you can change the tilt up or down as well. So you can look around a lot more with this camera!

Another thing this lower camera lets me do is I can more easily bring it in closer without it feeling too weird. So have this sexy bench sitting animation lol. Benches will act as checkpoints so if you die, you'll respawn at the last bench you sat at! It will also reset the enemies in the level. Think bonfires from darksouls.

Maybe you noticed it in the last gif, but I made little control prompts that appear as light tutorialization. As much as possible I wanna teach players with gameplay rather than straight up telling them what to do, so I'm keeping it very minimal.

One way to ensure the players are executing the skills I need them to, is by gating their progress. Thus the split key system. If you find two halves of a key, they'll combine and let you go thru a key door!

Another thing I worked on is....!! A whole 'nother floor! I want things to feel very connected so I'm going to attempt to keep everything in one seamless and contiguous scene. I just think it's neat to ascend while seeing levels you've already done off in the distance.

And just a preview of the second level, it's all about using these red and blue switches to get around safely!

So yeah, huge amount of stuff done in the month of October. I still have so much more I need to do tho ><;; Thank you all for your support, it really helps to keep me going on this. Here's a bonus image as a thanks

Lion looking on (in horror?) in a cutscene i'm working on.

-Yama