Since it's been a few years and I fixed the major bug and have played around a bit with the game, I want to make some changes to it to make it a better game.
Resources
This is a big sticking point -- you have to grind way too much early on to make progress because of all the colors. Additionally collecting gems is way too hard.
The upgrades area is a big mess as well. I want to simplify things.
So starting out there should be a single metal resource and everything should be heavily desatted. Since you have no abilities yet you're kind of learning how to navigate effectively.
With enough metal accumulated, you can repair the driller. This gives you access to weak versions (maybe 3) of hole jump and grapple. It also makes the world start having color and colored metals and gems will begin spawning.
Gems remain uncolored -- they'll be random on a contrast.
Gems allow you to unlock additional abilities -- phasing, shooting, scanning, and warping. Dash is pointless because of the forever thing. Gems also unlock things like double grapple, grapple 2, etc.
Metals meanwhile are colored and the different colors will upgrade various things progressively (with increases in the amount needed). All metals appear in all areas but the weights vary.
Warping will allow you to move to a new area but remain in the same position. Gravity applies when you warp. Warping costs metal.
Scanning lets you see where the gem is. It costs metal.
All abilities that consume metal consume colorless metal (white, presumably). Metal can be converted to colorless metal somehow. Maybe via fixtures along the bottom of a region -- drill into those and activate it. Could have other things down here too. Otherwise you drill through the bottom layer to continue.
All regions should be 5x5.
There should definitely be a preview the way there is in alchemist. -- sort of working, but world generation isn't working the same way it does in alchemist
Bridge -- consumes colorless metal and adds a solid to an existing solid. Has a max range like everything else -- doesn't consume metal if it poofs.
I'm thinking that the grapple, shoot and bridge are all guns, activated via shift (since dash is useless) and you can switch between them. There should be other guns.
Gravity gun -- makes a resource affected by gravity. You can't move until it/they drops to the floor or reaches oob. It should be pretty fast though. Upgrades should widen your beam and phase through a certain number of tiles (starting values are 1/+2 and 0/+1). If it drops on you you should swap with it.
Reorg -- hits a tile within range and magicsels up to another range, and then these tiles will move around randomly N steps. Useful for mass-altering terrain. Consumes metal. Can't move while this is happening.
Climb -- if there's no valid hole jump target, pressing up will move diagonally upwards if there's a block that would support you. No upgrades.
Clear the bottom air gap of each region and stick all the upgrade fixtures down here. A title that says what it does (with arrow syms) will also appear along the bottom. This should prevent the need for menus altogether.
For UX there could be a white one every so often that when interacted with makes the menu items appear around it. That way you don't have to move around so damn much but you can still do stuff from the bottom of the screen.
Ditch the lore. I'm thinking that there should instead be a boss that unlocks when you hit all the upgrades.
The boss is a kind of turn based thing in an infinite region. The boss can do some amount of moves during its turn and same deal with you. The goal is to kerjigger it and shoot its weak points or whatever and then get yourself to safety.
You have infinite metal but limited health. If you die the fight restarts.
