VG Thought

2-1! Debut of alma!



2-2! Debut of medusa!



2-3! Debut of don medusa!



There's water in this stage, but again, you can't push any enemies into it.

2-4



Look! Rockies track you even through boulders.



Here's 2-5. I wanna talk about it sometime when I'm not so tired. It's interesting because you have this network of enemies going on, and you know what will happen when they all wake up, it's just a matter of planning for that situation.


1-4 was the first appearance of the three-block puzzle, and it was impossible to mess up. Here we've got a deviation on the three-block puzzle where you have some extra space to push blocks into: an extra tile to push a block deep, and then some room on the bottom side to push a block orthogonally.

Actually, so far I'm finding the enemy set compelling. It's easy to think of block pushing games as these really boring, dense games, but it's neat working out what these guys are gonna do. The actual block pushing has been light so far.

I just played this one like an action stage - it was too difficult to visualize what that many enemies were going to do since they bounce off each other. I just hid in the corner (using a block to close off the entrance) until the coast was clear enough that I could make a run for it. It's nice that there's enough space in the game that you can gauge when that'll be effective.

Whoa, I didn't even know you could play that one like an action stage. Those armadillo guys freak me the fuck out, so I take whatever steps I can to eliminate them. I also feel like it's pretty difficult to maneuver Lolo, but the Zelda no-diagonal-movement thing always trips me up.

I feel like Lolo's half-block stride is what messes me up the most - when I'm trying to move quickly I have a tendency to get caught on corners because I didn't walk quite far enough. Seems like a full block stride would've made that easier to deal with without sacrificing any real flexibility - at least it doesn't seem like there are going to be times when it's necessary to stand mid-row.

Yeah, me too - too many times I've been killed by enemies I'm running from because I get trapped halfways because I just took a half-step instead of a full one. I see no advantages to it (well, so far in the game) and full-step steps would make much more sense.