This is something I have been thinking about for a while, and I'd like so to see what other people's opinions are.

A long time ago, I thought that gems were basically useless events, and I avoided using them in levels. After all, the only thing they do is give you points, and then at the end of the level you get to see how many you collected. The gem count at the end of the level can be sort of fun, but it doesn't really do anything. You'll notice that in my first two single player episodes, there are hardly any gems at all. The exception was purple gems, which I put 20 of in each level, just for fun. Of course, this was pretty much a useless feature as well, but it at least gave a few players a weird sense of accomplishment.

At some point I changed my mind on this issue. My later SP episodes have plenty of gems in them (mostly red, with green and blue being found rarely, in secret areas), and therefore have a noticeably higher quantity of items you can pick up. My reasoning is that while gems are functionally useless, they have a visual effect of making a level appear more "full" (you can't really do this with food because the player would be getting constant sugar rushes). Also, having a larger number of goodies floating around encourages the player to move around and jump more by collecting them, and I think this makes the gameplay of the level a bit more dynamic. Because of this, I now think gems do serve a purpose.

I also got rid of the 20 purple gems thing in my later episodes, since the gem counter disappears after collecting 100 gems (and in most levels this happens pretty quickly), making it impossible for the game to count how many purple gems you found (the end-of level tally only includes red, green and blue; not purple).

I COULD replace the purple gems with 20 blue gems (and thus have the end of level count include them), but the problem with that is enemies sometimes drop blue gems. That's why I chose purple.



This is a fairly minor topic, but it's one of those things that I think about sometimes. One of the reasons is because it has created a clear stylistic difference between my earlier episodes and my later ones, and I find that inconsistency a bit bothersome. It's not quite enough for me to go and add more red gems to the early episodes though.

So, my main question is, what do you think about using gems in SP levels? Useless? Or not useless? Which style is better?

I also have a second question: what do you think of the purple gems concept? One thing that I might actually just go and replace them with blue gems in ep1 and ep2, and add them to ep3 and ep4. I've been meaning to update them anyway (like I did last year). A lot of people have told me it's fun to try collecting all 20, and even though blue gems can pop up randomly, rarely, it's not that big of a deal.