Swap Monsters

Why I built it: I wanted to learn Godot by building and publishing a complete game. Although the course provided a starter framework, I cleared the existing game content and rebuilt the player systems, mechanics, and level around my own three-character concept.

Project context: Each student worked independently from the same Endless Access Moddable Platformer foundation. I replaced and customized the player systems and developed a new cave game with my own mechanics, route, progression, and character interactions.

The Design Question

Making every character feel necessary.

I wanted switching to be more than choosing a different sprite. Each character needed a movement or interaction ability that solved a different kind of obstacle. The level then had to introduce those abilities clearly and create reasons to combine them.

Character System

Three abilities, one shared route.

Bunny: Air Dash

Crosses gaps and gains height along steep walls. The dash turns open space into a route instead of a dead end.

Owlet: Glide

Slows the fall while preserving horizontal momentum. This makes long gaps manageable when a dash would drop too quickly.

Dude: Projectile

Fires an arrow that breaks crystal obstacles. Dude creates access while Bunny and Owlet handle traversal.

Gameplay Walkthrough

See the three-character system in action.

This walkthrough shows the cave route, character switching, unique abilities, switching meter, breakable obstacles, and the playable level progression.

Process and Iteration

Seven working days from controller to published level.

Level Design

Teaching through the route.

The cave introduces one problem at a time. Signs explain the immediate action, but the geometry does the real teaching: gaps ask for Bunny's dash, long drops ask for Owlet's glide, and crystal barriers ask for Dude's arrow. Later sections combine those ideas and make the player decide when switching is worth spending a meter segment.

Technical Evidence

Organizing movement, swapping, and interactions.

State and Movement

Character Controller

The controller routes movement through the active character state, applies shared physics, manages the switching meter, and hides ability-specific visuals when they are not active.

Ability System

Spawning the Arrow

Dude's ability instantiates a projectile, sets its direction from the player's facing direction, adds it to the scene, and positions it at the arrow marker.

Resource System

Four-stage Switching Meter

Each character swap costs one stage. The meter regenerates while the player is grounded, and breakable green crystals restore a stage. That turns switching from a free menu choice into a limited resource.

State MachineTimersCollisionsProjectilesSignals

Debugging

Thirty minutes. One line.

The bow kept spawning arrows incorrectly. It took about 30 minutes to trace the problem to one line of code. Finding it took much longer than fixing it, but it reinforced why keeping the controller and ability states organized mattered.