These are screenshots showing off the second major set of graphics we had, after the early alpha graphics. This was probably the ‘beta’ era of frogatto; most of the core was working, and we were experimenting with a variety of different gameplay elements, most of which got scrapped for 1.0 – what we learned at this point was although we could slap some nifty graphics on different projectiles, our whole design for powerups was really boring, and the game engine (at the time) was too inflexible to support something better.

One big thing that really didn’t get implemented until later was working out enough of the scripting idioms to allow decent rpg/story type encounters, with npcs walking around on cue, and having story-driven cutscenes. Nor at the time, did we have any real boss battles to speak of.

There were no multi-tile-patterns at this time. Everything was done with a much simpler autotiling system (which we still use for some stuff today), but which doesn’t quite cut it for doing certain organic shapes. You can see the repetitiveness in all of the rock/etc tiles. It worked, but it was kinda ugly. Forests were especially hideous.