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radramblog · 3 years

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SPM

According to my list of topics, I should talk about Super Paper Mario. Fair enough, I really enjoyed that game as a kid. Slight problem, though, is that I haven’t played it in at least a decade, and definitely don’t have time to pick it up right now.

(shit how did i miss that IS worked on this?)

So what the fuck do I, of all people, have to say about this game in particular?

When my family got our Nintendo Wii, we did end up getting a fair few games with it. Living in Malaysia meant that after we got the thing modded we could have it run the counterfeits and burned discs that flooded the country’s market in the late 00s, so there was plenty of cheap options to pick up- I’m pretty sure I’ve still not played half of the Wii discs we have.

As you may guess, not a lot of them stuck. Super Smash Brothers Brawl was one of them, obviously, as well as the Guitar Hero games. The Lego games (Batman, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars) were pretty big between my brother and I, and there was obviously Mario Kart in the mix somewhere. Funnily enough, I don’t think I ever actually finished Super Mario Galaxy, and I barely touched the sequel, and regrettably we never owned Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime, or Return to Dream Land. What I’m getting at is that I didn’t really experience the full might of the Wii, because I was too busy hyperfixating on a few specific games. And playing the DS.

So where does that leave Super Paper Mario? It definitely fell into the latter camp. I think the thing that drew me to the game in the first place was having thoroughly obsessed over New Super Mario Bros when that game came out- I have distinct memories of huddling up with that game at a mate’s place just passing back and forth trying to beat 8-1, trying to stay quiet so we wouldn’t wake his parents up. Kid me wanted more Mario, and New Super Mario Bros Wii was still 2 years out, so SPM was the first console Mario I actually got to dive into. And obviously, it’s a bit different.

Super Paper Mario has a lot of things other Mario games didn’t. A real plotline, complete with cutscenes and dramatic turns. Dialogue, and a lot of it, and all of it wittily written to give the game a great comedic tone. It has RPG elements, it has puzzles (which I was a big fan of), and it had the ability to play as Bowser. What wasn’t to love?

It does kind of go beyond that, though. Just about everything about SPM’s design is unique, and also, really freaking good. As an example, while the idea of a lot of platform games is for each set of levels to have a theme, each of the eight worlds in Super Paper Mario (save perhaps the last one) has multiple aspects to it to make sure everything stays fresh. World 1 is the traditional Mario field level, but eventually you pass through a desert town and into a huge temple. World 3 is a homage to gaming’s routes, with its pixelated landscape and enemies, but also has its plot and final level centre around playing fun at the nerd culture that would obsess over details like that. World 6 appears to be a Samurai/Feudal Japan world, until it fucking ends in one of the bleakest scenes in any Mario game, ever.

Oh yeah the plot of this game gets surprisingly dark. The cute style used means that the writers were able to intensify the game’s creepier elements without bumping the rating up, and they make full use of that. The noises made by the World 2 boss when her true form is revealed, the part of the game where you quite literally end up in hell, not to mention everything to do with the river Styx equivalent. I have no idea how they got all that under the radar, frankly.

I’m not going to act like this game is perfect, though. I recall trying for 100% completion until I eventually realised that collecting every single trading card and making every single recipe was basically just pointless busywork- honestly, once the game’s story ends, there’s not much reason to keep going unless you’re really keen on grinding through the Pits of 100 Trials or Sammer Kingdom Challenge. The mechanics can be a little wonky, and some levels can get pretty confusing, and it does have the early Nintendo console release issue of awkwardly (but mandatorily) cramming the console’s gimmick in- you literally cannot play this game without a Wiimote, even if you’re in postgame and don’t need Tippi’s advice. But I do think the game is genuinely excellent despite all this. It’s funny, it’s fun, and while it’s not as consistent, it’s probably overall more interesting than most 2D Mario platformers in my opinion.

However, this isn’t the viewpoint most people talking about this game have, to my knowledge. I believe most of the people you see online talking about this game are those who played the original Paper Mario or its beloved sequel before coming around to this particular entry, and as such were probably disappointed by a lot of the changes made to its formula. Every other Paper Mario game has ben a JRPG, as opposed to the hybrid system this game goes for, and that’s going to be a serious point of contention for long time fans. And my understanding is that The Thousand Year Door would have been a nigh-impossible act to follow for any game, major changes to the gameplay or not.

Because I have a different entry point to the series, however, I don’t see it the same way. Super Paper Mario is Paper Mario to me, especially since I still haven’t played any of the other games. And I think that’s something worth noting when more divisive topics come up- it’s a microcosm of the value of perspective in debate. I’m not going to judge someone for really not liking this game, because there’s a really solid chance that it just wasn’t what they were looking for in a Paper Mario game, same as I wouldn’t judge someone for loving the Star Wars prequels because those were the Star Wars movies of their childhood. Which, thinking about it, is also true for me. How you came to a game like this I think defines a lot about what you take from it, and I guess I’m just lucky enough to have been coming from the right angle for this one.

#ramble #video games #super paper mario #spm #guaranteed theres something else with that initials which that tag is for but w/e

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hopoo · 6 years

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DEADBOLT Q&A

I tried to answer every question as honestly as I could, so I hope this is a good read. If your question isn’t there, it’s either identical to another one asked or joined together with another question. Cheers!

Q: In total, how much time does the campaign of Deadbolt span? It’s hard to tell, what with it being infinite nighttime and all.

A: I would imagine a month-ish. It is implied that the Candles are doing some sort of investigative work between missions, which would surely take some time. Q: Did you have any major inspirations for the visual design of DEADBOLT? A: John Wick is obviously the biggest one! Q: What would hopoo do if someone made a game completely based and inspired from Deadbolt and its… Concept? (with permission and not) A: There’s no way DEADBOLT is that unique in settings or thematics – ultimately, you know what’s right and what’s wrong when you’re inspired by a work, and so will everyone else! If you feel obligated to ask for permission, maybe you’re not exploring enough original ideas? Q: When will we get modding? if so could we get a simplified modding kit? Any plans for updating dedbort, even just the map editor? Feature for adding custom sprites, rotation tool, copypasta tool, just to name a few… A: So the thing with that is that the map editor is only half the equation – while the map editor may be writing stuff to files, it also has to be interpreted on the end by the DEADBOLT game itself. Therefore, adding features that aren’t supported in engine simply won’t work – it won’t know what youre talking about. While rotation is supported in the engine, it doesn’t know how to read that from the files, etc. I also am trying to avoid any legacy issues where old maps are required for old versions of DEADBOLT, or vice versa. Q: When is deadbolt 2 coming with werewolves and mummies A: Werewolves aren’t undead you dingus. But mummies could be cool.

Q: Will the stuff that came with the release of Deadbolt on Play Station, will be added on PC? A: Nope, that was sorta our deal-sweetener for getting on the Sony consoles. Q: Will we ever see expansion levels for Deadbolt or would we get Deadbolt 2 instead? A: DEADBOLT 2 maybe sometime

Q: Does Ibzan is gay? A: I haven’t really thought of the sexual orientation of any of the characters, and I definitely don’t want to pull a JK Rowling and retroactively assign them. So in terms of canon, that just hasn’t been explored.

Q: Would you prefer deadbolt 2 to be in 3d and 2d? Would you do a sequel? A: DEADBOLT is probably the narrowest design space I’ve worked with – there’s no dodging, insta death, insta travel attacks. By the end I felt very stretched out in terms of enemy design, and for that alone I’d think 3D. But hey, I may also just hate 3D by the end of RoR2 so who knows :^). I’d love to do a sequel one day, most likely from the perspective of Ibzan. But who knows! Q: Did Ibzan want to kill the Fire, or just try to reconcile with it? A: He just wanted to talk – but who knows what would’ve happened after the Fireplace rejected him? Q: Would you be interested in going back to the world of deadbolt sometime in the future? I remember hearing somewhere a 3D concept would be interesting to work on. A: I wish I was talented or driven enough to write comics for it – I think DEADBOLT is more about the stories of individuals, compared to RoR who is a story of the universe. I wrote the Cassette Tapes to reflect that. Q: Looking back, is there anything you’d change about Deadbolt? A: Hmmm… I just wish I somehow could expand more on the lore and gangs, and what their goals were. Gameplay-wise, it was a tad too short. I liked doing a few standard stages, and then a mix-up stage (sniper, trap, boss, etc) – maybe we could’ve fit in a few more rotations. Q: What’s your favourite loadout? A: Death/Taxes and Flashbang, like a scrub. Q: Would you ever be interested in restarting the asset suggestion thread A: I consider DEADBOLT to be done – as a 2 (now 3!) man team, we financially can’t do the games-as-a-service thing like most big companies can for smaller games like DEADBOLT. I also intended DEADBOLT to be a one-and-done thing as a contrast for Risk of Rain, which we updated for years after release.

=CONTROVERSIAL OPINION ALERT= I personally also think that EVERY game getting a bunch of DLCS and updates and patches for a long time is, in a way, exhausting as a player. I think it makes it hard to feel satisfied when you finished a game and it’s over and you feel completed in the journey, knowing it’s not ~technically~ over until the devs stop patching. I think it’s great for some games (mostly multiplayer-based ones), but some games you just gotta let… finish, on a good note. Semi-open ended endings are always unsatisfying, in my opinion, and so recently it just feels like you don’t ever complete a game. …On the flip side, we are planning on doing lots of post-launch support for RoR2 because it’s actually inline with our design goals, so don’t fret! Q: Will bugs like Scythe not having a cover sprite or some enemies not having a falling sprite (which causes the game to crash) be fixed? A: Which enemies have been missing a falling sprite? They should be resorting to idle, not crashing. Bosses? Q: Just wanted to say, you guys are my favorite games studio, hands down. Now for the question: Now that the Reaper has completed his task and is allowed to rest, what’s next? Is the Fireplace going to keep him resting for a while? Does our MC have another task to accomplish? A: The Fireplace has never let a reaper “rest” before - the reason he is allowed to rest is because Ibzan never got to, and the Fireplace is trying something different with you. This is unexplored territory for the both of them – presumably he just pets his cat and gets bored before getting back to work. Q: What happens to everyone else in the afterlife? A: People who aren’t in the Place? Who knows, and who cares about boring happy afterlife 😊 Q: I had a question about the lore. There’s mentions of places outside the city, across the river Styx. What are they and what are they like? A: The Styx connects the other realms together, including (presumably) wherever the demons came from. This is explored lightly in one of the demon cassette tapes. Q: Will you ever expand more on the world of deadbolt or are you 100% done with it at this point? A: Nope definitely not done, really wanna explore more one day Q: What’s your office address? For post and stuff, maybe I want to send you a box full of A4 sheets of paper with a thousand hoopters on each. A: Maybe this is the paranoia in me but I’m not comfortable posting my address online – you can just tweet it at me a thousand times instead Q: Did Ibzan think the flames would give warmth to the Dredged or was he just lying to them and using them for his own gain? A: He was lying to himself, but he did truly believe that this was going to work, because this (at the time, anyways) seemed like the only way out. Metaphor woawoawo Q: Could you add some sorta DEADBOLT reference into RoR2? Will the Reaper be playable in Risk of Rain 2 as a bonus? A: Definitely references happening in some form, but playable might be stretchin’ it a bit, especially since it’d be taking up the slot of some more in-universe secret character. Q: How excited are for RoR2? A: Honestly very nervous for the reception, with very big shoes to fill as a sequel for RoR. I just hope people like it, and that we don’t get burnt on 3D because there’s so many possibilities in the future for our games in 3D. Q: How are the Demons born? We know they’re made in birthing chambers, but then is it just like humans or is there anything specific needed for a demon to be born f.e. skeletons>suicide, zombies>overdose, etc. A: Demons aren’t undead and don’t naturally exist in the Place, which is why they have to be smuggled over – they exist in whatever version of hell is in the DEADBOLT universe, and are natural denizens of the underworld. Q: was izban hot before he died? A: The hottest Q: do all the nightclubs canonically have chris c. as the dj A: Yes Q: I love Deadbolt very dearly and i’ve listened to its soundtrack (particularly “Now I Am Become Death”) more times than i can remember. What’s your favourite tune from Deadbolt ? A: Defunktorum or The Proverbial Dust Biters Q: In the Hardmode Cassette Tape it talked about a Reaper that wasn`t the current Reaper that we play as in the Game. Was this Reaper Izban? Since in the tape, he talked about the fireplace as his friend and that could be why he wanted to go back to the fireplace through the portal at the end of the game, to revisit his friend. A: Yes yes and yes. This was most heavily implied in Ibzan’s “home”, which parallel yours. Q: Will RoR2 still have opportunities to create silly messy builds like covering the screen in missiles or releasing an endless stream of Thqwibs? If so, how are you working to mitigate the performance impact of those crazy builds? A: Yep! Currently we have a system that detects the average particle count in a scene and slowly adds a chance non-important effects (like hitsparks or impacts) don’t ever spawn. This will at some point also involve turning off expensive effects and reducing particle LODs. Q: I really love the attention to detail to the characters, environment, aesthetics and gameplay mechanics. Its themes on the criminal underworld and the supernatural give a unique identity in a high-octane/stealth pixel action game I have not seen before. Additionally what prompted or inspired you to make DEADBOLT in the first place? A: DEADBOLT in its entirety was supposed to be not-Risk of Rain. It’s a gorey, violent, moody singleplayer puzzle-stealth game. We were just burnt out from the Risk of Rain experience, and we also wanted to flex our design muscles a bit and show that hey, we’re not just a one-trick pony of gamedevelopment :^) Q: I just played through this game on PS4/Vita over the weekend. Huge fan of Risk of Rain. Even bought it through Limited Run Games. So I had to pick up Deadbolt (Didn’t previously know you had made it either.) and I love it. Its a super solid experience. I’m not sure I have any questions about it. I guess I was curious if co-op multiplayer was ever considered in development? Keep up the great work. Can’t wait to see what you guys make next. A: Nope, because of the reasons above – we wanted a single player game, since RoR was a multiplayer one. Q: First of all, congratulations!! I really loved the game since came out, I bought it for my birthday, since risk of rain made me fell in love with all the pixel art in it, deadbolt didn’t disappointed me!! Everything in it I love it! Thanks for the game!! Now the question You already answered about how the skeletons or vampires came to be in that Place, how the vampires are killed by their lovers, but, how a reaper, becomes to be a reaper? I mean a candle said “I’ve never been so close to one” A: Originally, the reapers were actually supposed to be from suicides – if I remember right, the reaper when going down the stairs to the docks still has the hole in the back of his head in his sprite. Currently, it’s not explored how a reaper is made – I think a bit of mystery is always needed in making a believable universe J Q: Lorewise how many reapers are there total? Why are they incredibly fragile compared to the undead? What makes the reapers not undead? A: IIRC there were 4 fireplaces in the final stage, which was supposed to represent the way the fireplace was communicating to all reapers in the field. Q: Do you like turtles? How about corgis? A: Yes, and yes (although there’s way too many in Seattle now). Q: Did you have any idea Chris would break out a whole band’s worth of musicians for the soundtrack? His work was superb and the OST remains my absolute favorite to this day. A: DEADBOLT OST was actually done with many people – it must be in the credits somewhere! If I remember right, there is at least a drummer and a musician.

Thanks for all the questions, and happy hunting :)

hopoo

#deadbolt

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