Hey guys! This might come as a bit of a surprise, since I'm sure a bunch of you were expecting a regular blog post around this time. However, I've decided to take a little break from this blog. 


My reasoning for this is that as we draw ever closer to completing the game, I am getting more and more tasks that won't produce any good blog posts - there's a lot of smaller editing of things I've already made, big backgrounds that take several days to make but only make one post, a lot of administrative work and work on the (pdf) book on our development process, all things that wouldn't be very interesting to post about here. Also, my promise to myself (and you) has been to update this blog every weekday, so during times where there aren't a lot of blog-worthy tasks I tend to spend a lot of energy trying to "find" something to work on that would make a nice blog post anyway, instead of actually doing the work that needs to be done at that moment. Overall not a great combo!


Don't worry, however! Our main development blog over on the main site will go on as normal and have a new post every Monday :) This is basically just me trying to streamline things and not have to worry about having something interesting to post every single day, even during longer stretches of time where I've been doing other kinds of work for the game. 


We'll see what the future holds - perhaps I'll go back to updating here once I have more interesting stuff to show, of keep this for more personal work stuff. Either way, thank you so much for following me all these years, your comments have been great and I'm so glad for each and every one of you! 


See you on the main site! :D

 In Fred's department, there's more final dungeon stuff, including a spring version of the hydra and the summoning animation for that platinum level Frosty Friend: 




 Today it's time for something a little bit different, namely a post written entirely by Teddy on our design decisions behind the final dungeon! Here goes:


So a while back we shared an intention of overhauling the final tower quite substantially, shifting from a large surrealistic "travel through the game again but weird"-type dungeon, to having it be a boss rush of sorts.


Nearly all feedback we received on this has been negative! We actually were expecting some feedback like that, but not of this magnitude. The main worries were: 


* Shorter dungeon = less content

* Without a proper dungeon there won't be storytelling

* It violates the game-design philosophy of a final dungeon being an exam on the rest of the game (think Wily's Castle in Mega Man)


All these things are very reasonable, and because of this feedback we sat down and talked it all over again. But to even our own surprise, we've decided to stick to our guns! We'd like to share our reasoning, since it would be pretty weird to invite feedback, get it, and then ignore it silently.


First off we completely get that it "feels off" that there isn't going to be a huge old-school dungeon at the end of the game. On paper, it is pretty much objectively weird, considering our primary sources of inspiration! 


That said, after designing the dungeon two times now, we fear there is an uncomfortably high risk that it wouldn't become a very good one, and we really don't want to end on that note. 


So why would we say that? Well, we feel the best "dungeons" of our game were those with the most engrossing context, and we weren't satisfied with what we came up with for this dungeon.  


A "go-to" strategy for us has been to load the dungeons up with story. But we neither want nor need to give any more exposition on the main plot until you reach the top of the tower, and having a side-plot at this stage felt off-beat.


So the first iteration was a plotless chimera-design where we just made random rooms based on old areas in the game, sometimes with combined themes (like season change + time travel in the same room). This was in spirit of the "exam"-philosophy, combined with a tribute to old mechanics. But when going through potential room designs, it felt hollow and without the charm that made our best dungeons good.


So as a "plot substitute" we decided to design a version that's a surrealistic recap of the entire game. It ended up very similar to the "Curse of the Moon", but much much longer. We felt this version had more character, but it had some glaring holes design-wise, and when we imagined playing through it we got very worried that it would feel a lot like treading water. 


For us (including you guys) a recap might seem like a cool nostalgia trip, but looking at it from a new player's perspective, it might just feel like weird filler. And while we've seldom cared about workload, we also saw that to make this version enjoyable would take a huge amount of work. If we had been in love with our design that wouldn't have deterred us, but while we felt optimistic about some of it, a lot felt shaky.


So having recently played some very well-received games that actually had done away with giant dungeons before the end (a couple skipping them entirely), the blasphemous idea struck us: how would that feel in our game? Thinking back on playing those titles, our hope and belief is that in the context of an actual playthrough, the player will likely go along with what's presented, too focused on playing to analyze and compare (though we don't doubt some players will react).

 

Another thing that weighed in favor of the light-weight path is thinking about the Catalysts in the context of an average playthrough. Many of our Early Access players have undoubtedly gotten these already as part of full completion, but seen holistically, it's probably quite a small percentage that will get all three catalysts before going into the tower.

 

For such a playthrough, getting the (remaining) Catalysts will in fact serve quite well as the Wily Stage of our game: one catalyst for combat, one for quest/puzzles, and one for grinding.

 

Now, about the boss rush: we're planning remixes of some iconic battles, and we'll make sure they all bring something new. One commenter came up with a pretty interesting idea that we'll likely try out, namely having the elevator stop at some point, during which a short puzzle-section could play out as a change of pace.

 

We're quite optimistic that we'll be able to make this feel like a cool transition to the finale, that will keep the tension of the latest story-beat fresh.


That said, we totally understand some of you still would've preferred a classic big dungeon. We hope we'll be able to win you over when it's all said and done!


Now, as I mentioned before we're gonna add a little statue shop with housing items, so I better start making a bunch of statues right? Let's have a look at some of the ones that will be available: 








 The portal leading up to the Grindea battle will look a little different and more abstract, illustrating the fact that something rather strange is about to happen. Playing around with a couple of colour options here: 





 Today we've been playing around with a bunch of different options for what the gate will look like when you reach the final Arcade Mode floor and it's time to either go back to Arcadia or proceed on to the Bishop or Grindea battles. Starting off with the portal back to Arcadia:




The portal to Bishop meanwhile has a more sinister tint of purple and shows a dark sky:



 Meanwhile, Fred has been working on a cool platinum level Frosty Friend that will be summoned by someone really powerful in the upcoming final boss fight! First up we have a bunch of sketches, and at the bottom, the final version we picked: 




 The second batch has trophies from Flying Fortress, Tai Ming and the Temple of Seasons: 








And here's all the trophies, one for each floor: 

 After we asked about whether you preferrd statues or trophies as reward for getting the 'complete all challenges on a floor' achievement, we thought a bit about it and found that we'd like to have the stonecutter have a little shop in town instead, where you can purchase whatever statues you'd like. As such, I'm going ahead to not only make more trophies, but more statues as well! Starting now with another batch of trophies: 








 When it came to the boss preview effect of Astrid's room, we had a couple different ideas. Our very first one was that she'd have a well of sorts, that would show which boss would appear: 


Our other idea was to use a goblet and smoke effects to show it: 

Fred then made a prototype for a cleaner effect than just the smoke:

And here we have the current version, some iterations later! In the video below, you can see what it looks like when you change boss as well: 

 This week we'll start by adding the background of another Arcade Mode room, the one where Astrid tells you which boss you're about the face and helps you change that fate, should you wish to:



 Meanwhile, Fred's been starting work on the first boss in the boss rush we were talking about: the shadow slime! Here's some tests and an animation of one of its attacks:



And here's the Tai Ming, Desert and Ghost Ship suggestions: 







Finally, here's all of them side by side: 


Which ones do you like the most? Would you prefer that every reward was of the same type, so that all of them were some kind of statue or golden cup? We haven't really decided if we prefer this version where it's more mixed or if one specific type would be better. Let us know what you guys think!





 For the Temple of Seasons, here's a suggestion featuring the Hydra, with three different skins: 









Next up we have the flying Fortress, Seasonne and Mount Bloom floors: 









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