9.1 KiB
Light & Dark — Prototype
A 2D platformer built with Pygame. You switch between two forms — Light and Shade — each with different movement, combat, and ability behavior, all driven by a single shared resource: Charge (Flow).
Note: this is a prototype. Some progress (quests, boss tokens, broken walls, defeated bosses) is in-memory and resets when you restart — intentional, for fast testing. Saves (via pause menu or lanterns) persist player state, coins, equipment, inventory, and your respawn point.
Running the game
python main.py
Requires Python 3.10+ and pygame. Game data (rooms, items, sets, enemies, drops) lives in data/. Rooms are edited with the included browser tool: level_editor_v43.html — see Level Editor below.
Controls
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Move | A / D |
| Jump | W |
| Move down / drop | S |
| Heal | Space (hold) |
| Melee attack | E |
| Ranged shot | Q |
| Dash | Tab |
| Shatterstep | R |
| Tether | X |
| Reality Break | C |
| Toggle Light/Shade | Left Shift |
| Interact / Talk / Save | F |
| Use Butterfly Jar | G |
| Inventory | I |
| Stats overlay | H |
| Pause / Settings | Esc |
Mouse: Left button = melee attack, Right button = ranged shot.
Hold-to-recast: Melee (E / left mouse) and Ranged (Q / right mouse) can be held — the attack auto-recasts as soon as its cooldown is ready, and never faster than the cooldown.
The two forms
Light — faster movement, higher jump, and charge refills over time. You take contact damage from enemies.
Shade — slower but tanky: immune to enemy contact damage, deals double melee damage, and can use shade-specific gear bonuses. But being in Shade drains Charge (and Shade is forced off when Charge hits 0). Shade also drains Charge twice as fast while clipping inside an enemy.
Charge (Flow) — base max 100, refills at 10/s in Light (halved to make light sources matter), drains at 40/s in Shade. Standing near a butterfly light source doubles Charge regeneration. Attacks, dash (Light), ranged shots, and healing all cost Charge.
Saving & lanterns
Lanterns are save points. Walk up to a lantern and press F to save — a "Press F - Save at lantern" prompt appears when you're in range. Saving fully restores your health and Charge (and clears poison), and sets your respawn point to that lantern, so dying (or reloading the save) puts you back at your latest lantern. Saving via a lantern in a different room than where you last died also respawns butterfly jars in the world.
You can also save anytime from the pause menu (Esc → Save Game).
Butterfly jars
Butterfly-in-a-jar pickups are scattered through the rooms (you can hold up to 3). Press G to consume one and instantly refill your Charge bar to max. Collected jars are shown below your coin counters (empty slots are greyed out).
Jars are lost when you die. They respawn at their pickup points after you save at a lantern in a different room, or after reloading the game.
Death & recovery
When you die you lose your butterfly jars for good and drop your coins. A faded player model (corpse) marks the spot — touch it to reclaim all lost coins. Dying again without reclaiming keeps only 50% of the coins in a new corpse at the new death spot (the old corpse vanishes), so the rest is lost. Falling out of the world (void deaths) leaves no recoverable corpse.
Abilities (by form)
| Ability | Key | Light | Shade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melee | E | 1 damage, costs 1 Charge | 2 damage, costs 1 Charge |
| Dash | Tab | Costs 10 Charge; stuns enemies hit | Costs 1 HP; deals 4 damage to enemies hit |
| Ranged | Q | Costs 5 Charge, 0.63s cooldown, 0.5 damage; breaks green ability walls | Same, but 1.0 damage |
| Shatterstep | R | Spawns a platform under your feet while airborne (extra jumps) | On landing, creates a damaging shockwave AOE below you |
| Tether | X | Binds the enemy (3s) and fears it (runs away) | Insta-kills enemies below a HP threshold (normal ⅓, miniboss 20%, boss 5%); otherwise slows them |
| Reality Break | C | Doubles drop & coin rates and glows enemies | Instantly kills all enemies but halves drop & coin rates |
| Heal | Space | Spend Charge to heal over ~2s (slower while healing) | Unavailable |
Combat notes
- Enemy contact damage only applies in Light form.
- Boss shockwave attacks poison you for 4 seconds: the health bar turns green and you lose 1 HP per second.
- Attacks and hits use invincibility frames and knockback; your melee hitbox covers ~30% into your body so close/overlapping hits always connect.
Equipment & Armor Sets
Slots: helmet, chest, pants, necklace. Pieces roll stats (move speed, heal, charge, health, etc.).
Rarities: tempered (tier 1) → attuned (tier 2) → awakened (tier 3, unlocks ability slots). The Upgrader NPC turns 5 tempered copies of an item into 1 attuned copy.
Sets (3 pieces of the same set, attuned or better):
| Set | Summary |
|---|---|
| Dawnrunner | +HP; awakened adds Light move speed |
| Gravemark | +max Charge; awakened adds Charge regen |
| Vitalweave | +HP; awakened adds +heal |
| Duskwarrior | +Shade damage; awakened restores Charge on Shade hits |
| Twister | Removes Shade speed penalty; awakened gives move speed after switching forms |
| Paladin | Chance to negate incoming damage; awakened adds +HP |
| Luminal Growth | +Charge regen while standing still in Light; awakened also negates damage |
| Abyss Cleaver | Chance to heal on kill; awakened also gives move speed on kill |
| Umbraflow | Reduces Shade Charge drain |
| Adaptive Traveller | Move speed after switching forms; awakened restores Charge on switch |
The shade-focused sets (Duskwarrior, Umbraflow, Abyss Cleaver, Adaptive Traveller) are intentionally excluded from early boss and town-shop loot, so you can always complete the remaining sets.
NPCs (Town 1: Gloomreach)
- Vendor — sells basic armor pieces.
- Necklace Vendor — sells necklaces.
- Upgrader — attunes 5× tempered → attuned.
- Combat Master — upgrades your boss token to unlock the Hard boss variant.
- Boss Diary — an interactable book: view your collected boss tokens in a grid, slot/unslot them, and start refights.
Rooms & Progression
room_01— tutorial. Contains a quest object (pink): accept the "First Kills" quest (kill 4 normal enemies → 5–15 light coins, repeatable).room_02— first enemies.room_07— hub, branching to the boss, reward room, and town.room_boss_01— Gloom Warden fight. Defeating him drops his boss token.room_reward_01— reward chest + the Ranged ability, locked behind green ability walls.room_town_gloomreach— Town 1 (NPCs above).room_boss_refight_01— diary refight room (same arena, no exits until the boss dies or you die).
Boss Diary & Tokens
- Beat the world boss → collect his token (teal pickup).
- Bring it to the diary in town and slot it (or keep it in your inventory).
- Slotting unlocks Fight (Normal). Upgrading the token at the Combat Master unlocks Fight (Hard) — the boss moves and shoots twice as fast.
- Dying in a refight returns you to the diary. Removing a token from the diary sends it back to your inventory, disabling the fight until you re-slot it.
HUD & Stats
- Top-right: health bar (turns green while poisoned), Charge bar, coin counts.
- Butterfly-jar slots below the coin counters (shown once you own at least one; remaining slots are greyed out).
- Ability icons with cooldown indicators (top-left).
- H toggles a detailed overlay: exact HP/Charge, move speeds (both forms), heal duration, attack rate, Charge regen, the lantern/light buff, and any stat bonuses from gear.
Level Editor
Open level_editor_v43.html in a browser to edit rooms. Highlights:
- Icon toolbar on the right edge of the canvas (Select, Platform, Enemy, NPC, Player, Entry, Exit, Ability Door, Object). Toggle grid snap in the left sidebar.
- Objects catalog (built-in, always available;
data/objects/objects.jsoncan override/add):flow_butterfly(light source),lamp(save point),flow_butterfly_jar(collectible),house,diary, andplayer(a size reference that renders nothing in-game). - NPC support: place/select/move NPCs (vendor, upgrader, necklace_vendor, combat_master) and standalone house props.
- Layers: every object (platforms, houses, NPCs, enemies, props, ability doors, exits) has a layer number. Lower = further back, higher = further forward; lower is set in the Properties panel. The editor and game both draw back-to-front by
(layer, category), and the select tool is layer-aware. - Link lines: enable Draw link lines (with Compare view) to see dashed lines from a room's exits to the matching doors in the other room.
- Load the game's enemy types (
data/enemies/enemy_types.json) to preview hitboxes and aggro ranges; enemy/miniboss/boss are also built in.