Hello and welcome to the penultimate Deep Climb Demo Dev Log! In which, we will finally reveal the much anticipated art asset-ified platforming sections. But first, let's talk about Oasis, our main level, and the changes which it has undergone.

Oasis was first created for our vertical slice where it was a hastily combined collection of rocks and coral. We had big plans for the level and knew that it was nowhere near our goals and so became a high priority when work started on the demo. Our initial plans had us working on Oasis right from the beginning, however, thanks to early playtesting, we found that our priorities should actually be focused on creating a comprehensive tutorial. As a team, we were able to recognize this and divert our attention, when it would have been easier to ignore the problem and work on Oasis. This has worked out for the best as we were able to lock down our mechanics before working on the platforming that would fill the Oasis.

Speaking of platforming, as we began laying out our sections into the Oasis level, we found that the game was not playing how we had envisioned. This was because we were placing the sections in a linear order, completing one goal and moving to the next. This is in contrast to the types of games we had based the design of Deep Climb on where, if the player falls, they are able to land on an earlier section to minimise progress lost. To fix this, the team spent some time with the greybox level instances, moving them around and positioning them in a column. This solved the problem but created a new one; how to connect each section together.

We used our experience from the very first Oasis version and combined our 3D assets to create smaller platforming sections in between the goals, drawing on the skills the player learnt in the section they just completed. This type of connection is most notable between the last and second to last section where concepts from the tightrope style section were used to bridge the gap. See images 1 and 2. This was extremely rewarding for the team as work which had been cut from the game was able to be reused and recycled to make Oasis a more engaging level.

Our next dev log will be our last before the demo is published and will likely cover our last-minute-rush to get Deep Climb as good as it can be.