Welcome to LIFE+ World!

Alright, somebody suggested I do sort of a digest post to welcome people to the concept. What we have here is a thematically organized, largely nonlinear Metroidvania. What I mean by that is, different areas (plains, mountains, facilities, etc etc) will place a higher emphasis on certain aspects of a Metroidvania, such as platform jumping, combat, puzzle solving, item hunting and so on. To add a bit of pressure, there's a time limit of about an hour. There's constant opportunities to gain back lost time, but when time is up you get the bad end. Speaking of combat, the way it works in Life+ is a bit of a departure.


Toss!

More similar to Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario Brothers 2 USA than anything else, the combat involves ripping up chunks of floor and hurling them at enemies and obstacles. You can pluck certain projectiles out of the air, stand on some particular enemies and rip them asunder, and stuff like that. When you pull up a tile, its constitution depends on what you're standing on and your luck. If what you're standing on is too thick, you won't be able to pull it up until you find a strength building powerup.

When throwing, there's three basic modes. A quick release, done by holding attack, simply hurls a projectile along the ground. You can tap attack to pull something up and carry it around, then press it again to throw it straight ahead. Lastly, you can hit Z to target a nearby enemy and throw things directly at it. This works with quick release and carrying.


Let's dig and let's dig, future digging game.
In that vein, there's also digging. Certain places might look suspicious, for instance in this place holder area there's a single patch of white flowers. If you try to pull up something to attack with, you'll start digging in these areas. Sometimes you'll find things like restoration items, sometimes treasures like hats, powerups, or secrets to be accessed from the menu. Some of the powerups you'll find aren't buried, but simply laying around or being guarded by a boss.

Things like triple jumping, swim jumping, walking on water, strength boosting as mentioned earlier and more come into play. Other than powerups and bosses, decisions you make at certain times affect the world as well. For instance, releasing a loch before hitting a certain switch floods a portion of the caves region. Not stopping a speeding train from crashing obstructs a portion of the canyon region for a while. At certain times other things happen, like earth quakes and plants blooming.

Let's see.. What else? I suppose I can just post more as time goes on, but hopefully this was a good introduction.