Magnetic puzzles

Just a quick devlog to stop the radio silence.

Another functional area has been fully built. This one ended up being a little bigger than I expected it to be, but it's a plot-relevant area so it will do.

Named Teorema, it's meant to be a massive mountain chain that divides the peninsula where the game takes place in two. There are multiple monasteries along its peaks, now long since abandoned and not in the best of states. To make it trickier to navigate, a peculiar dragon with control over electromagnetism has decided to temporarily make it his nest, accidentally filling the place with magnetic obstacles.

All through the stage there are... I'm still not sure what to call them. Magnetic rods? They are loosely based on cathode rays. The idea is that each of these obstacles is magnetized with a certain polarity (positive or negative), and they cast up to four orthogonal beams around them. If the player is also magnetized they will interact accordingly, being repelled from rays with the same polarity and attracted to those of different polarity.

I've yet to prepare graphics for them, so for now they're just plain rocks.

This basic idea is spiced up with small additional puzzle pieces, such as using pushable rocks to hold your position and counteract attraction/repulsion, or having open pits that can only be crossed by throwing yourself at one of these rays.

When combining multiples of these, things can get stupid fast:

Additionally, entering battle while the player character is magnetized will result in the entire party showing that magnetization while in battle, repelling each other each turn and making many support strategies less practical.

Future plans involve areas with toggleable or pushable magnetic rays. Pure chaos, I tell you.

I also took care of writing some more plot dialogue and a few other behind-the-scenes things that are not terribly exciting to write about. Also, I never know how to end these devlogs. End.