The hand drawn map was the very first thing I made for the game. I think it was around May of 2018. I had a loose idea of the upgrades and abilities I wanted the player to have, but this was the first time I actually made a place for them to all go. The final version is pretty different, though I'm sure things will move around more as I test everything. Looking at it all now, it's smaller than it seemed as I was drawing it up. I did want to keep the game small, like it could be completed in one sitting. So I'm probably not going to be adding a sixth area or anything. Maybe I'll add a few more secret rooms or short cuts to speed up backtracking.

Area 5 artwork donzo. The way to the surface leads through a volcano. What a massive inconvenience for the player. Got some big rooms with several parallax layers going, along with some lava ember particle effects floating up off the pools. A couple backgrounds are animated with glowing lava cracks. Not much but it helps make spaces feel more alive when there is some extra pieces moving around in it. I have to go back through the areas I've made and see if I can come up with some animated background objects to plug in. I'm thinking about working on getting the crystals in Area 3 to flicker when the camera is moving. Would definitely be a cool effect, but it would be tough to get it to look right. That has been one of the more tricky aspects of doing all this artwork. I'll draw all these different objects and drop them in the stage, but they won't often look like they fit right, and I end up having to play around with the tint and contrast/brightness until it l