[Spoilers!] Let's talk about progression.... and the "hidden events"

Greetings, R.A.V.S.O. here, reporting in!  o/

These are a series of devlogs where I'll be mainly talking about AudioBreak's roadmap, intents and general ways in how the game works, and pretends to keep developing afterwards.

 For ease of reading I usually like to label these under specific tags which look [Like This] and help give viewers an idea on the type of content I'm about to disclose.

(I usually like to add images like this one pertaining the nature of such topics beforehand)

/!\ Coincidentally speaking, this particular devlog will talk about spoilers regarding this game!

if you're the type of person that likes to experience these at your own pace I suggest you stop reading this devlog for now! /!\

...

...

...

Still here? excellent, now let's get into the meat of the content shall we?

Although AudioBreak is presented as a standalone little game in which you control a player character (canonically speaking Joe by default) you're given a tutorial at the start and the freedom to choose whatever tracks you desire to play at your own pace, what the game doesn't actively tell you is that there IS some form of progression to follow.

Triggering the chain of events:

Given the nature of the game, at the end of a track, the player is awarded with a grade along with a comment based on the player's performance in general (which is also determined by what character you played as)

That being said....

As you keep playing your favorite tracks in AudioBreak you might run into something a bit.... ominous:

While the previous message itself offers no significant meaning (at least for now) it has however enabled a new mode in the game called [Nightmare Mode] that when played through inches you closer towards the the game's main objective, Nightmare Mode might seem vague for now, but you'll soon begin to notice some particular changes...

An introduction to Nightmare Mode:

Whenever you get the previous message after playing any track, it means that the next track that meets certain criteria will spawn your first boss encounter.

Boss encounters are events that occur after the following criteria has been met:

• Nightmare Mode has been (and is being actively set to be) enabled.
• Your last 5 music tracks played had no encounters.
• Your previous track gave you an ominous message from ???
• The next track that you choose to play has a duration of at least 3 minutes.

If all of these conditions have been met a boss will successfully spawn in your next selected track.

Nightmare Mode is by default disabled until the player has at least cleared 5 tracks in any difficulty, Nightmare Mode is required to remain active in order to work towards endgame progression.

How boss encounters work:

If the next track you play has all of the above requirements met, after 30 seconds of starting the track your game will be interrupted and a hostile entity will spawn into the playing field:

Bosses in AudioBreak are physical entities that share the same playing field as your player avatar does, unlike the passive damage that notes cause from missing them, bosses have ways of directly harming the player, if you miss too many notes or take too much damage you'll fail the track!

Whenever a boss spawns into the play area, the player character has a total of 2 minutes in order to eliminate the boss or suffer one massive penalty to your HP, boss characters come with their own life bar and must be depleted before the time is up, depending on the boss that appears you'll have to use your skill or power-ups to get rid of them.

Let's take a look at Nightmare Joe:

Nightmare Joe being your first encounter has a fair amount of HP (higher difficulties give him a bigger pool of HP) and offers a grand total of two different phases that trigger when he's at full HP and at half HP respectively.

Nightmare Joe in particular will mirror the player's movements during Phase 1, in order to damage him in this phase the player character must break 10 notes before they can manage to break 10 themselves, the character that manages to break the 10th note before their opponent does will cause the opposition to take some damage.

Once you take half of Nightmare Joe's HP, he'll change attack patterns and begin phase two, in which he'll actively lock on to you and attack whatever lane you happen to be standing on in the playing field, his attack is devastating but luckily players can skillfully evade this attack provided they time it correctly and leave the lane before the attack goes off.

(IMPORTANT: The speed and frequency of Nightmare Joe's phase 2 attacks are determined by your music's BPM!)

Like the previous phase, Nightmare Joe can only be harmed with every 10th note you break in succession.

Once a boss has been defeated, the player may resume playing as they usually would for the remainder of the track.

Future Progression:

Defeating a boss awards the player with additional score + extra grade score for their troubles, if Nightmare Mode is enabled the game will take into consideration how many times a boss has been defeated previously, once this number exceeds a certain value, a new boss will be added into the pool.

Ideally speaking, in order to reach the "endgame" the player is expected to have defeated all available bosses at least once.

For the sake of keeping expectations in check for now, this current version of AudioBreak only contains Nightmare Joe as the de-facto boss encounter, but I hope it gives you enough of an idea on what to expect for future stages of progression!

...But I DON'T WANT to play Nightmare Mode, I want to play without boss battles!

Nightmare Mode too intrusive for you? Want to play AudioBreak without having to worry about your next track spawning a boss battle?

Not to worry dear player! Once you have Nightmare Mode unlocked and you've cleared your very first boss you'll also get the option to freely turn Nightmare Mode ON or OFF no strings attached!

Do consider however that Nightmare Mode must be kept on in order to progress into the endgame, but the game remains as playable as ever even if you opt out of it.

Hopefully with this understanding you can work towards the endgame at your own pace!

Have fun o/