Music and Particles

I added several features to my game that didn't affect the gameplay, but are important nonetheless.

Firstly, I added some music. When I originally made this game, it had no music or audio at all. This is because I didn't know how to make good music, and I didn't think music was that important. However, now I know that music is very important. It adds to the feel and emotions of the game, and makes the game feel more polished. If the player doesn't like the music, they can just mute it. If they do, then that's great. I added a different piece of music for each type of area of the game, with the music representing the feeling of being in that kind of area. For example, the music for the volcano area has high tempo to convey the feeling of being in a hot, fiery place. 

I also added some particle effects every time the player defeated a set of monsters, or received an item from a statue. This adds to the aesthetic of the game and makes it look nicer. A burst of stars makes the player feel like they accomplished something important. I also added particle effects on opened portals to indicate that they are open. The previous version had two different images for open and closed portals, which are hard to distinguish for players. Adding particles makes it easier to tell which portals are open and which ones are closed. The particles come from a library on making particle effects that I'm currently in the process of making, and these particles are a way of showing off some of the progress that I did so far. 

Finally, I added the width of the dependency graph in the end screen. Since this game is based on a mathematical concept (topological sorting), there should be some kind of indication of this. I don't want to link to the article on topological sorting itself, since the player probably already figured out that part by the time they get to the end. However, the width of a directed acyclic graph (equivalently , a partially ordered set) is a measure of how far away it is from being linear. Since the non-linearity of the dependency relation is a feature that distinguishes this game from other, similar games, I chose to display the width. I also added a link to the article on Dilworth's theorem, which relates two equivalent definitions of width (size of the largest antichain and size of the smallest chain decomposition) so players can learn more if they want to.