Flipbound

• Finally, finished designing all the levels which took the majority of time
• Created more traps, the newest one being - crumbling platforms which break after a few seconds, so you have to react fast
• Swaped the box with an actual player character and added proper hitboxes
• Created some developer tools so It’s easier to create the levels (godmode, checkpoints, debug outlines)
• Did a lot of code refactors, split code that was in one file into multiple files for easier maintenance

• Created a new mechanic - bounce pad. It’s a yellow pad that launches you in the opposite direction. New trap - The void. The moment that you drop in to the void, the screen starts shaking and you explode into particles.
• I spent a lot of time fixing another major bug - the character was sliding off fast moving platforms. I created a standingOn check and when you touch a platform, the game performs the check and now carries you with that block’s exact movement speed.
• Fully finished designing and creating the first 4 levels. Also, tuned up the speeds a bit so the player moves a bit slower and the gravity is floatier, which gives you more time to react.

• Created a particle engine, so now when player flips or dies - particles scatter out. additionally, when dying your screen shakes up now.
• Fixed a major keybind delay issue, where when you press Space, sometimes the character didn’t react. So, I created Input Buffering, so now the game remembers you Space key press and doesn’t wait for the character to touch the floor to make things happen.
• Experimented with the speed and length of the game and lowered the movement speed (from 5 to 3.5) and gravity (from 0.8 to 0.4). Expanded the levels to be 6000 pixels wide.
• Started working on levels 1 through 4. Created new jumping mechanics, moving platforms and many new traps such as - lasers, crushers and moving spikes.

Since my last devlog, I made a quite a few changes:

• Implemented a timer in the top right corner of your screen. The timer starts, as you soon, as you start your run. Timer resets if you die or complete a level. Your best times per level are saved in the browsers localstorage and in each level your current time and best time are being displayed

• Upgraded the overall game flow, created a level select screen, where it shows your best beat time. Also, levels are now locked, so you cannot play level 2 unless you beat level 1. The game saves your unlock progress in localstorage

• Created a level complete screen, so now when a player touches the doors, a “Level Complete” overlay pops up showing your time. If you beat a record, it flashes “NEW BEST TIME” and you get choices to Retry, Play the next level or Go back to the level selection screen

• Created a pause menu. When pausing your timer stops. In the pause menu, players can choose to either continue, reset or exit the level

Flipbound is a 2D platformer game that I’m building with the main mechanic being - flipping gravity. You press Space and you fall up. The game is being built in plain HTML, Vanilla JavaScript on a <canvas> and tailwindcss.

Today, I made the core mechanics of the game. Got the player movement, gravity flipping. Decided to add a Gravity Meter, which means that you cannot hang out in the ceiling forever. When you flip, the meter starts draining and you have a few seconds before you fall back to the floor.

After the gravity meter was done, I started making the level creation. Created a few levels with spikes, standing & moving platforms. Made the player move with the moving platform, so he doesn’t fall. After that, created the death & respawn logic.

Finally, added a camera so I could make the levels bigger, made a quick main screen and a door that transports the player between levels.

The red rectangle is a spike, the gray ones are standing platforms (they don’t move), the orange one that I’m standing on is the moving platform and the green bar at the top is the Gravity Meter.

At this time, there are no graphics and everything is ugly because I want to focus on mechanics first and then design.