We worked on movement this week and prototyped different movement options. Taking inspiration from Celeste, we implemented movement with a focus on smooth and responsive controls, along with dashing and wall jumping. Initially we designed the movement system to be a single monolithic component, but after some careful consideration we've decided to modularize the system so that we can build on top of it in the future, and also support enabling and disabling different systems based on the emotional state the player is currently in. The different emotions should affect movement in different ways, but we haven't yet decided on the specific details. Right now, we're leaning towards the green emotion being a faster, more slippery type of movement, while the blue emotion would be a lighter, floatier movement with higher jumps. The final emotion, red, would be heavy and slow but allow the player to engage in combat. Hopefully soon we can get the movement to a point where it feels good to move around, and start working on levels that take advantage of the different movement options that the player will have.

- Weiran

As a team we decided on a number of important directions for how we wanted to build the game while working on the design document:

First, and most important were mechanics. We bounced around ideas that kept movement and music at the core of the experience while also considering the exploratory nature of Metroidvanias. We thought it'd be cool if each track also had a unique ability, in addition to modifying existing movement options, and hammered out a player progression that would have them collect each track individually, instead of starting with full access at the start. That helped keep us from overwhelming the player at the start with our core track-switching mechanic and collecting the tracks gave us a more concrete goal and progression to design around.

Second was the environment design and story. We fleshed out how we wanted each of the 3 areas to feel to the player: the "underground" area would feel more constricted, abandoned and lonely, using city ruins and sewer tunnels; the "streets" area would feel more lively and crowded, using a cyberpunk aesthetic and city buildings crowded together; and, finally, the "rooftop" area would feel open and liberating. This let us also reflect the player character's different feelings in each of these areas as they progressed through a very loose "story". The original story was about getting over a breakup, but since we hadn't fleshed this out too much, we pivoted to make the story more generally about processing grief and loss through music and movement. On the music side of things, we also scaled back the target number of songs to compose from 9 (1 per area, per track) to 6, musically grouping together the "streets" and "rooftop" areas

We still have to figure out a full timeline, ha, but it's been tricky since different components develop at different paces. We'll get a loose, iterative schedule by the end of the week, but it's so easy to get sidetracked discussing the details of specific parts! That's all for that week, thanks for tuning in, and you'll hear from us next Monday!

- Lia