The whole story

After being chased by LOST and getting bigger again, it's going to be a loop: back to where it started.

EDIT:
The first time you have no choice but enter the loop. After being chased by LOST monster, you'll be back where you started.
The second time you'll have some HELP to begin with. If you're good, you can avoid being chased by the LOST monster... and discover something else.

EDIT 2:
The first expression you will see is "IGNORE ME", then a FLOWER and other friendly items.
If you hit IGNORE ME, you'll automatically become smaller. You can win the level if you avoid all the friendly items.
If not, you'll stay "average" and will have no choice but hit the first flowers and "enter the loop".

FREEDOM: if you hit FREEDOM and if you did not touch any of the friendly items, you can go back and touch them now without hurting them. Instead of being LOST, they will all THANK YOU.

If you touched one of the friendly items, the LOST monster will appear and chase you.

= ANGER will be ANGER ME
= AVOID will be AVOID ME
= FAIL will be FAIL ME

Like a rock

GDD - to sum up

Concept:

This is a tale of a black monster, coming out of nowhere, living in a world full of strange words.
When Blobby is facing nice words, he grows up... but also ends up destroying nice words and cannot go much further in life.
When he hits bad words... bad words make him shrink.
But it is also the only way he has to be smaller, and to stop hurting things.

In this 2D puzzle-platformer, players need to pick the right words... to become a small, and happy little monster.


Chapter 1: Lessen up

Scenes

This 1st level could be divided in "scenes".
Each scene would be a platformer/puzzle to solve.

As in: Limbo

Intro: Biggy walks on the grass, then meets a first flower.
Biggy walks on it: it turns red (or black? = deathly shadow instead of a red trail)
Biggy is sad. (Lose all his happiness points)

Biggy goes further, meets other flowers and kills them all. (Always sad, visual + sound feedbacks)

1st:
Biggy meets a pike... stepping on it he hurts himself.
After that, he meets another flower... but is not big enough to hurt it. He is a little bit happier.

2nd:
Biggy is too big and cannot go any further: there is a tunnel but he cannot go in there.
Biggy has to bump on a "wall" (or anything) 3 times to make a kind of "stalactite" fall on him.
The stalactite hurts Biggy (and disappears): Biggy shrinks.

Tests

That was not on purpose, but it's still a good ref:

Dev notes - LD, instances, items

Instances:
grass

cute things to avoid: flowers, cats, smileys, rainbows, butterflies, words?... = static
change GONE to LOST?

platforms

hurting things: pikes, knifes, bottles of poison, bad mushrooms = 1st is obvious, others can be hidden, static

Space: has to be designed regarding the size of the PC = unavailable zones if not at the right size


HUD: Monster's happiness gauge bar? / happiness points?


UPDATE:
2 kind of words: nice words and bad words.

nice words:

small words, but you're too big to avoid them:
flower
butterfly
cutest kitty

bigger words, which cannot be easily skipped/but are easy to lose:
friend
laugh
warmth

small words again, fragile but numerous:
hug
will
freedom: the last word. the most difficult to avoid hurting it (very small and appears several times)


bad words: 

anger: you bump on it (like bumping your head on a wall)
ache: moving - strikes you only once - hard to reach (because you tend to avoid pain: tension between wanting it and avoiding it)
but you have to face it to go further (over a bigger rock)
OR it does not appear first. First there's a single word, moving : "Alone", you hit it as angry, but it then slowly change to "Ache"
You get smaller, but as you are smaller, you are lighter
= you can jump into a cloud a reach the top of the rock

loss: delayed effect? (you pass through it several time before it strikes you)

Sketch