Assignment 2 Proposal 2 Further Work

I've continued to research into the idea of a 'jet pack' for Metroid, as cunningly illustrated below. One train of thought was how the item would be activated by the player - I've considered using it as a permanent upgrade once acquired, but I'm also now looking at having the jet pack function more like the morphball, requiring a double tap of the up button to activate. This is in part to prevent the item from clashing with existing upgrades, and in part so that a visual distinction between the standard mode and the winged variation.

As already mentioned in the previous post, the item serves primarily as a means of easier navigation whilst underwater, which would allow for larger areas and a different approach to exploring or fighting enemies.

I've also developed the concept of how the item would function outside of the water. To prevent such an item potentially breaking the flow of the rest of the game, I quickly decided against the item allowing flight and instead opted for the item functioning as a tool to slow descent and float over larger distances.

I almost gave up on the idea when I really felt like this wouldn't be nearly enough to open up new puzzles or changes to the gameworld. I began to look again into environments for more answers, looking at how else an item like the jet pack could prove useful, and eventually stumbled upon the idea of directional air flow pushing the player to previously inaccessible areas. For example -

 In essence, the upgrade can make use of the environment to enable progress, and thus new puzzles can be created to utilize such an ability.

I'm going to work at it a bit more and get some feedback before writing up the proposal proper.