Redesigning Menus & Making New Levels

I have been working on Hex-a-Decimal for the past few months. Since the original game jam version released, I have changed pretty much everything, from the internal game logic to the visual design. However, many remnants of the original Hex-a-Decimal remain, and some of them will be polished and fixed in the upcoming Version 4.

The first thing to be changed is the menu. Specifically, the display at the bottom of the level screen. Here's what the menu looks like in the current version (V3):

It's obvious that, despite the visual polish of the main puzzle area, the menu still looks like it came from a game jam game. Now, here's a screenshot showing some of the changes I made to give the menu a similar amount of visual polish (do note that I will likely make more changes to the menu leading up to V4's release):

If you haven't played Hex-a-Decimal, when you select a tile you can change it to suit specific needs like splitting a signal, changing a signal's colour, etc. Certain tiles can also be disabled, as shown in the new menu, but no levels in V3 use this feature as it was added after the levels were made.

SPEAKING OF! The levels are another part of the game that hasn't changed since the game jam ended. Slight changes were made to a level or two but the general progression stayed the same. To show what I mean, here's the level select screen:

The progression in the difficulty of levels and the complexity of the mechanics wasn't something I had the time to think about when I was originally creating the game. The levels are split into groups of 10 and this is how progression works in the most recent version:

The first 10 levels introduce the player to the game's core mechanics, as well as allowing them to place their own Sensors.

The player unlocks the Pauser in level 11 and levels 11-20 explore a new mechanic that relies on this introduced tile.

Levels 21-30 don't introduce anything new, it's just more of the same.

Level 31 introduces new colours, and players are allowed to place colour rotators to change the colour of signals. Levels 31-40 explore the colour related features and mechanics.

Levels 41-50 don't introduce anything new, it's just a collection of 10 "difficult" levels for a player to prove their mastery over the game's mechanics.

So, that's how progression used to work. Unfortunately, making 50 levels for a game jam game with a limited set of mechanics led to a lot of them being tedious or boring instead of challenging and engaging. I paid a lot of attention to the first ~10 or 20 levels because I was playtesting a lot and wanted to make sure anyone who picked it up could understand the game (something I had struggled with in regards to previous games and jams), but I simply didn't have enough time and energy to make sure that all of the later levels were fun to play.

This needed to change, so after redesigning the menu I decided to do something ambitious. I started by condensing the current 50 level progression into the first 30 levels, leaving the last 20 blank for new levels that explore new mechanics. This was done by cutting levels that didn't meet my standards, moving later levels into the newly empty slots, and then increasing my standards until only 30 levels remained.

For example, this is the new level 29, but if you've played Hex-a-Decimal you might recognise it as level 45:

And yes, I know I'm spoiling a solution for this level, which is why I won't be showing any more levels!

Anyway, you might have noticed that cutting out all the boring levels and condensing the current level pool to 30 levels means that there are 20 empty levels that I need to fill. So, what will the new progression look like and what should be expected in these fancy new levels?

Levels 1-10: same as before. In fact, I don't think a single level has been changed yet. Introduces the core mechanics of the game.

Levels 11-20: made up of levels from the 11-30 pool that survived the cut. Introduces Pausers and Octals

Levels 21-30: made up of levels from the 31-50 pool that survived the cut. Introduces Rotators and different colours

Levels 31-40: new levels that introduce Teleporters and the ability for levels to disable certain tiles.

Levels 41-50: I'm not entirely sure. They either follow the pattern of introducing a new tile for the player to place as well as a new mechanic, or they maintain the previous 41-50 progression by serving as a collection of the most difficult levels for a player to prove their mastery over the game's mechanics (except this time the levels will actually be difficult instead of tedious).

Either way, cutting out all the bad levels and adding new ones means I'll need to start playtesting the game again, which is good because playtesting is what made Hex-a-Decimal's development worth continuing in the first place. Once V4 releases, I'll start reaching out to ask for playtesters so that Version 5 can be even better. After that? We'll just have to see...

If you enjoyed reading this, consider downloading Hex-a-Decimal for yourself!