Avoiding Overpowered Gameplay — Time Limits on Powerups.

If the player it too strong, there is no flow to keep them entertained!

Let’s take a look at the triple shot powerup that the player can acquire.

It’s … Kinda strong.

While flooding the screen with red hot death may be fun for a few moments, it destroys any chance the player has at feeling pressured or challenged. Powerups need to feel substantial and meaningful without breaking the flow of the game.

Using a coroutine, I set up the triple shot powerup to only last 5 seconds once acquired. Picking up a new triple shot while this timer is active will reset it back to the maximum of 5.

Simple coroutine to flip the boolean after 5 seconds.

The actual fire code checks the boolean status every time the player presses the spacebar.

I also increased the time between powerup spawns from 2 seconds up to 7.

Very similar to the enemy spawning system I previously covered in the Spawn Manager script.

With these two edits, let’s see how the game plays now:

It’s still a bit easy, but certainly more manageable.

As development continues, more powerups are going to be added and they will all share the same spawn system, meaning that the odds of seeing tripleshot will go down with each new addition.

Also, more intelligent and powerful enemies are planned, so this will be a good spot to leave the triple shot for now!