I coded these interactive riddle walls basically, you walk up to a dead end, a UI pops up, and you have to type in the exact right password to a riddle. If you get it right, the wall literally deletes itself and clears the path. I placed four of these riddle gates across the map. Getting the UI to actually work was a nightmare though. but now I finally have actual on-screen popups that yell ‘Right Answer!’ or ‘Wrong Answer!’ in your face and fade out after a couple of seconds.
On top of that, I built out the whole Space Key fragment mechanic and completely mapped out the dungeon layout. You start in this bottom tunnel, solve your way through the main gates, and then have to survive branching left and right mazes to hunt down these key fragments. I set it all up so you’ll eventually have to clear a central boss arena and fight off skeleton mage ambushes just to get the pieces.
I also spent way too long fixing dumb bugs like my character freezing mid-run when opening a menu, or endlessly jumping against flat walls like an idiot because of broken physics code. But I locked the movement inputs down, and it finally actually plays like a real dungeon crawler. The grind was unreal, but we’re locked in now.