Someone asked me yesterday what the progression and upgrade system will be for OctorSpace and well its a game where people can make levels themselves. Introducing upgrades suddenly turns into a whole other beast as then the game gets more challenging to test. Rather than dropping in and testing a level you need to incorporate giving upgrades to anyone making their own levels.

To compensate for this and to again make it different from AquaNimble there are now power-ups in OctorSpace. Players can hold one power-up at a time and taking damage will lose the power-up. When you have a power up your vessel has an aura around it indicating what you have. This could be a temporary visual solution. What you picked up also pops up in the corner. Having the pop up should solve AquaNimble’s problem of no one understanding what they just collected even when they’re marked with letters.

Some of the power-ups are a bit generic. Double damage, double defense, shoot twice as fast, shoot faster bullets, shoot larger bullets, regenerate shield twice as fast, regenerate shield twice as fast, regenerate health. The list goes on and on. These are noticeable differences.

Then to make things a bit less generic, there are power-ups that will let you fire rockets, shotguns, and lasers along with your default weapon. This should also alleviate AquaNimble’s problem of “what I had before this was better.” More weapons firing at once will always be better. Even if that sounds yawn worthy, there is a power-up where when you take damage your vessel clones itself. The clone at the moment sits still, but its there for 10 seconds and shoots when and what you shoot.

The twist here is enemies too can have the same power-ups. They have the same color hue around them indicating which power-up they have. The only catch is enemies keep the power-ups when they take damage. In the editor you can now assign power-ups to the enemies. This should add a brilliant twist to diversify the same enemies.

If an enemy never shoots, giving it the shotgun, laser or rocket power-up will force it to shoot these weapons. There is a score multiplier power-up that doubles points for each enemy destroyed. When your foes have multiplier power-ups assigned, they will give double points when they are destroyed. The clone on damage can also be used, but so many enemies die in such few hits that its only useful on larger enemies.

These 20 or so power-ups are in addition to the extra weapons that you collect which have limited ammunition. You can collect purple gems to replenish a bit of ammunition, but once its all gone, you lose the weapon. Its part of the dynamic to spare the extra weapons. Depending on what default weapon you are using at the time it will increase the rate of fire for the extra weapon.

OctorSpace was designed to be a basic game and now it has a heap of diversity added onto it.