Devlog 005 - Silent Forest Part 1 Release

Well, well, well,

It’s Sunday again, which means… a new devlog!

This time, we’ll take a look at some of the new things added along with the Silent Forest — which also went live today. Well, part of it anyway. The first part.

I ended up making the Silent Forest bigger than planned, so load times for this section are a little longer than I first thought. Right now, it’s around 37–38 seconds. Not too surprising though, since the level is packing almost 68,300 objects.

It’s still a fair trade-off if you ask me — once you’re in, performance is smooth, and the forest feels as massive as it looks.

Don’t worry: lots of objects doesn’t mean lower FPS.

What’s New?

Sequence Buttons / Gate

As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve been working on a new mechanic: sequence buttons. They’re like regular buttons, except you need to press multiple in the correct order to open a gate. Mess up the order? They reset, and you’re back to square one.

If you end up at the easy end of the Abandoned Highway, the buttons follow shape colors in reverse. If you land on the hard end… well, then you’ll be facing a bunch of same-colored buttons. Good luck!

Here's the mechanic in action on a tryout that I did to see if it worked properly when failing:

And here's the mechanic in action when succeeding:

Falling Trees

Another addition: falling trees. Get close, and down they come, cutting off your escape and forcing you forward. If there’s a path ahead, that is.

If not? You’ll be restarting the whole section.

Right now it’s manual (so your play time resets too), but I’m still debating whether to make it automatic like the Appearing Bushes in the Highway.

Here's a bunch of trees falling:

What’s Next?

The next couple weeks will be a little hectic — my wife’s about to give birth to our second kid (in exactly two weeks!). That means less devlog time and less progress on the game.

I’ll still sneak in an hour here and there between diaper duty and hanging with our first kid, but expect more updates on polishing existing stuff rather than adding brand-new features.

Happy playing! – Studio Jephinca