While developing Astro Shipping Co. we have been inspired by a lot of different video games. The primary inspiration for Astro was the game Super Mario Odyssey. We thought Super Mario Odyssey did a great job bringing back our nostalgia when we played Nintendo 64 , Sony Playstation era games. Spyro, Banjo Kazooie, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom and other games were all great games that we were inspired by to create Astro. All these games are 3D Platformers with a focus on collecting different items... aka Collect-a-thon games.

The basics of Collectathons is: "collect X number of Y things to advance further into the game. There are barriers, natural or not, that will prevent the player from just moving on to the next level unless they explore and collect enough of the resident Plot Coupons; however, very rarely are those conditions unfair (especially in the early game) and having to gather every collectible possible is never necessary in case you just want to beat the Final Boss and finish the game, Golden Ending aside."  - Collect-a-Thon Platformer by tvtropes.org

Collectathons fill their games with various types of items, each with their own importance. Primary collectibles are rare and the most important to get, always requiring one or more objectives of relatively moderate-to-hard difficulty to be completed before awarded (they're often shiny and/or gold, to highlight their importance). For Astro, we opted to include a Battery item that progresses the game overall. As you are playing as a space package delivery bot, the idea is that you crash landed in a Sector Planet and you need to repair your ship by collecting these batteries.

Secondary collectibles, are plentiful and are meant to help the player obtain primary collectables, either by giving a primary collectible after enough secondaries are picked up, or by guiding the player towards points of interest or even being used as "currency" for new moves and weapons that will be necessary in the long run. To accomplish this, we've added a Packing Peanut Collectable which helps us with level design and placement of the primary collectable. We are able to "lead" the player to points of interest in our map through the peanuts. We've discussed implementing a shop into the game so that we can use the peanuts for something, but we haven't figured out what to give the players in return yet. 

Unlike in traditional 3D platformers, our character Zazi has a limited moveset and isn't able to double jump or dash. We wanted to implement these abilities through collectable items. Zazi can find a Jetpack that will grant Zazi a double jump and the ability to hover. Zazi can also pickup a Fire Hydrant that grants him a dash dive move similar to the move found in Mario or A Hat in Time.  We also give Zazi a Shrink Wrap Heat Gun and a Lifting Harness pickup ability that allows Zazi to solve puzzles. We intend to block parts of the map and make them depend on these puzzle abilities.  We have some work to do to make Zazi feel better to control and we have to work out the abilities but in this point in time, we have the base of the abilities set in and we can further expand on them.

There are also "bonus" collectibles that are generally optional to a non-100% Completion run, meaning they can be either easier or harder to collect depending on how useful the reward provided is. I personally would like to eventually add bonus collectables if I have the time but for right now, we don't have any plans to add them.