Powering Up

The key innovation of Iron Tower Dizzy was a humble slingshot.

I realised that by co-opting the item use/drop routine, I could have an item in the inventory that could spawn arbitrary behaviour. I used it for the walkie-talkies, that let you switch characters, but also for the slingshot. I wrote routine that checked the area around Dizzy for valid targets for the slingshot, and presented that list to the player when they used it. Adding a second method of interacting with objects in the environment opened up a huge swathe of possibilities for puzzles. Dizzy might not be able to reach a spot, but he can still interact with it by pinging stones off it.

I tried to make it clear how important the slingshot was by having the first puzzle consist of Dizzy being stuck in a small cage. The way to get out of it was to experiment with the slingshot and hit objects until they fall within reach. Unfortunately, the sequence of tasks needed to do so was a bit more complicated than it needed to be, especially for the very start of the game. It was easy to get discouraged when you couldn't even walk more than a few paces after getting stuck on the first puzzle.

Part of the problem was that I never made clear to the player exactly how it worked. The list of targets was finite, and distance was a factor, and at no point was it communicated to the player that their position in the room influenced which targets would appear for them.

A forthcoming feature of Splintered Realms Dizzy is that each rescued member of the Yolkfolk can give you a special ability. You can only have one at a time, but they are necessary to find all the coins. I decided against making them essential to any of the item puzzles as that would remove the freedom to complete the realms in any order.

To make sure that the abilities are effectively communicated to the player, acquiring them shows a mini-tutorial describing what they do and how to use them. To avoid confusion between the ability and items, they are put in a separate part of the inventory dialogue, next to the character switch prompt. Each ability works in a different way. So far, some of them have been very easy to implement. Others... have not.