DevLog #03 — Masks, gods and a boss that is a red rectangle

The previous devlog ended with a question:

What do we do with the masks we inherited from the previous project?

The short answer: we turned them into the heart of the game.

The long answer is this devlog.

The first mask: Ghost

From the start, the idea behind Raccoon was this: each mask gives you a different power and changes how you solve a level.

The mask code already existed, but the new level wasn't using it. So the first step was giving the raccoon the Ghost Mask:

• Press Q and you turn translucent, with a cyan tint.
• Enemies can't detect you: you pass through them and they can't hurt you.

The first version lasted a fixed number of seconds and then had to recharge.

It worked... but it felt like a "win" button.

So we switched it to stamina:

• The green bar drains while the mask is on (3 seconds when full).
• It refills when you turn it off, and you can turn it off halfway to save the rest.
• But if you empty it completely, it turns gray and stays locked until it's completely full again.

Burning all of it has a cost. And that forces you to think about when to use it.

Another big change: the mask used to freeze enemies. Now they keep patrolling and you have to pick the right moment to slip past them. It's harder, but a lot more fun.

The infinite jump bug

While testing the mask, a strange bug showed up: the raccoon could jump in mid-air forever.

The reason: to know whether it's on the ground, the game checks for something under its feet. And what it found under its feet was... itself.

The player was detecting itself as ground, so it always thought it was standing.

The fix was to ignore the player's own colliders in that check. One line. One hour to find it.

Enemies learn to shoot

Until now enemies only hurt you if you touched them. That didn't leave much to dodge.

Now each one shoots differently:

• Turret: if you're close, it fires up and to both sides at once. You have to jump the bullets.
• Drone: it only fires in the direction it's facing. Come from behind and you're safe.

This is where the Ghost Mask really started to make sense: while you're invisible they don't shoot at you, and bullets pass right through.

The sword arrived too. The free art pack has no melee animation, so for now it's a white rectangle that sweeps from top to bottom. Ugly, but it works, and that same rectangle is the damage area.

Raccoon on mobile

If the game is going to reach phones, touch controls had to exist now, not at the end.

The good news: Unity's input system lets you put a virtual gamepad on screen (a stick and buttons) that the game reads just like a physical controller. Since every action already worked with a gamepad, nothing else in the code had to change.

The buttons show up automatically on phones, or the first time you touch the screen.

Spoiler: the first version had plenty of problems on a real phone. Buttons too big, controls that vanished after dying, and an imprecise stick. That's a story for another devlog.

Finally, a story

Until now Raccoon was "a raccoon with masks". We needed to know why.

Here's the idea:

Mexico, in a cyberpunk future. Huge corporations captured the power of the Mexica gods, and each one ended up locked inside a mask.

The raccoon is a thief who doesn't care about anything but money. He steals the first mask thinking it's just another score.

But the god comes with the mask. And the god forces him to free the others.

At first the relationship is rough: blackmail, sarcasm, a raccoon who just wants to get paid. Little by little they become allies.

Each mask is a god:

Mask	God	Power
Ghost	Tezcatlipoca	Invisibility
Rabbit	Centzon Totochtin	Jump
Dash	Ehécatl	Speed
Detect	Xólotl	See enemies
Charge	Huitzilopochtli	Break obstacles

A note: the original list had a "Bull Mask". We removed it because there were no bulls in Mesoamerica. If the game takes its mythology seriously, the details matter.

The tone is serious and raw. The Mexican side shows up in the details (taquería neon, art, voices), not as parody.

The first boss

Each mask is earned by beating a boss. And the bosses are not the gods: they're cyborgs and robots using technology built from the power they guard. Fighting them gives you a taste of the ability you're about to earn.

The first one guards the Rabbit Mask, so it's a cyborg with spring legs:

• It jumps at you every 2 seconds.
• When it lands, it sends two shockwaves along the floor.
• It takes 6 hits.
• When it dies, it drops the mask and opens the exit.

What does it look like? A red rectangle.

And that's on purpose. The project's rule still stands: fun first, pretty later. There's no point drawing an amazing boss if fighting it is boring.

The Rabbit Mask

The second mask lets you jump much higher.

A physics detail that surprised us: jump height grows with the square of the speed. At first the Rabbit jump was 1.6 times faster and the raccoon went 2.6 times higher, way too much. At 1.35 times the speed it goes about 1.8 times higher, which feels right.

Masks are now swappable: E switches masks and Q uses the one you're wearing.

And to break it in we built a second level, short, with a ledge you can only reach with the Rabbit jump.

What's next

We now have masks, enemies that shoot, a boss, a story and two levels.

What we still don't have is the raccoon: the protagonist is still the human character from the free pack.

In the next devlog we'll tell how we made him with AI help (PixelLab), what went well, what went very wrong, and why a raccoon that looked "too still" made us redo almost all of his animations.