Optional Phase Puzzle(s) Prototype

Ready for an extremely GIF heavy post?! You better be, cause we've been prototyping the optional phase puzzles you will (or won't, if you decide not to) encounter in Mount Bloom!

For these puzzles we came up with a new mechanic: dangerous "sparks" that throw you out of the barrel if you're inside of it. In the end, we'll probably change the look of them, perhaps turning them into electricity instead. We might also swap the dotted lines that the barrels travel along into something else as well... But we'll see! All those things are for the next stage, and this is still a prototype!

On to the actual GIFs.... Here's the first prototypes of the spark puzzle in action:

The early stage serves as an introduction, as usual. While we want these puzzles to be a lot harder, we still gotta introduce people to new mechanics, right?!

It gets progressively harder, until you reach the stage(s) where both the barrels and the sparks move, which means you gotta be spamming that phase key or you'll get thrown back to the beginning:

Here's the second prototype, where we made the paths longer, but the actual challenges are more or less the same (just a little bit harder): 

But don't worry! There won't only be spark puzzles here. In fact, there are several regular puzzles with multiple chests as rewards depending on which path you take! Can you get them all?! Or will you end up like me, spending half an hour failing before I could even get past the first part?

After some struggles, I finally managed to reach all the chests, but I dare say I was pretty frustrated in the beginning! Fred seemed to think it was a lot easier than I did, but he had problems with the spark puzzles instead (mwahahaha)... So, it'll be interesting to hear what you think once they are uploaded to Frontline! Stay tuned~ :)