Game Watch Curse of the Moon 2 Interview with IGA and Inti
Jun 28, 2020 0:45:14 GMT -6
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Post by dareka on Jun 28, 2020 0:45:14 GMT -6
Damn, this was a long interview, but it's really quite interesting.
Original article: game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/interview/1261747.html
Feel free to repost - just give credit.
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A sequel taking place directly after the original, made possible by the latter’s success
I was very surprised by the game’s sudden announcement on June 24th, so I’d like to begin by asking how Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 came into being.
IGA: The original Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Curse of the Moon from here on out) was developed as a spin-off title by Inti Creates, from an idea to develop an 8 bit style game that emerged during the Kickstarter. Well, since Ritual of the Night was delayed, the spin-off, Curse of the Moon, ended up coming out first. We were surprised by how enthusiastically the fans received it, and so we felt we just had to make a sequel, and that’s how things got started.
So within the series it’s a sequel to Curse of the Moon, which is a spin-off of Ritual of the Night.
IGA: Yes. It shares some of the characters with Ritual of the Night, but think of it as the sequel to a game that takes place in a different setting.
Is it related to the original [Curse of the Moon] story-wise?
IGA: As far as the story, it takes place right where the last one left off. Right after Zangetsu, the main character, defeats the last boss, Dominique appears and tells him about a “Demon Tower” that’s suddenly appeared, and so both of them head off to investigate.
So you’re saying that, while Curse of the Moon had multiple story lines depending on how you played, this one picks up after the regular ending.
Miyazawa (director): Right. It picks up from the ending where you defeated the boss together with your comrades.
The game system from the previous game is basically intact – are there any upgrades to it you can tell us about?
Aizu (producer): Without the original we wouldn’t have a sequel, so obviously there’s a new story line, new stages and new bosses; but that still wouldn’t be enough, so we’ve added a slew of new features.
Miyazawa: Since the basics of playing as Zangetsu haven’t changed, you may not notice anything new in the first stage; but from the second stage onward you’ll be joined by other characters, and all of these levels are designed to make the most of what makes each of your teammates unique.
Like for instance Dominique, who joins you at the second stage, and has abilities such as Vertical Strike and Hoping Strike, the former letting you attack enemies above, and the latter allowing you to advance while attacking the enemies below…
Miyazawa: As far as the new characters, I wanted them to be as appealing as the original’s, so we packed them with new features, the result being that there’s lots of new things you can do.
Aizu: You could say we’ve assembled an array of very unique characters. On top of that, you join up with Miriam, Gebel and Alfred, for a total of 7 characters you can switch between as you play, there’s just a lot more options in terms of gameplay. Since we’ve got more characters we wanted to encourage repeat playthroughs, so we really made IGA work.
IGA: This time, the story changes a bit with repeated playthroughs, so I think there’s a even more of an incentive for replay than the original. There was a lot of story. When they asked me to supervise it they said it would be “about the same” as in the original, but when I got it was actually so much that I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet the deadline. (Smile)
Aizu: The story takes place in “episodes,” and each time you play through the game the episodes change. Another new feature is 2 player co-op. It’s local multiplayer, and while nowadays the hardware allows for online play, I thought it would be worthwhile. It turned out surprisingly fun.
Miyazawa: In co-op mode you can interact with the the other player character in many different ways, such as jumping on top of each other, allowing you to reach places you wouldn’t normally be able to. Like, you’ll be playing the game and in some spots you’ll go “I can’t get there right now, but I’ll be able to later”, but with co-op you’ll be able to go right away. We’re not gating progress in any special way, so depending on how you play you might be able to open up additional paths from the start.
Aizu: In some of the boss battles there’s situations where you have to wait for the right timing in order to attack, but two players you can just get on top of the other and with both of you jumping, you can reach the boss and keep hitting it, killing it right away.
How does character selection work in co-op mode?
Miyazawa: Zangetsu’s the only character two people can play at once, and when you do so one of them is blue. The rest of the cast can’t be chosen simultaneously.
Aizu: Miyazawa is not the kind of man who holds back when he makes games (smiles), so he asked IGA to come up with a backstory to this blue Zangetsu, but…
IGA: I refused (smile).
Aizu: “Zangetsu’s a lone wolf, so there’s no second Zangetsu”, he said (smile). Since he’s got no backstory, we gave him a dark, shadow-like color palette, so that he wouldn’t stand out.
Is there any place you need co-op to reach?
Miyazawa: No, there’s no such place. What happens is that you can earlier to places you would normally need your comrades to reach.
Aizu: Another great thing about co-op is that if one player gets too far ahead, the character that was left behind will automatically move where the other is. So for instance, if one of the characters reaches higher ground by jumping on top of the other, the one left below will automatically follow, so it’s really effective for taking shortcuts. There’s also a button you can press to teleport to where your partner is, so you can use it situations like, for instance, when you make a bad jump, to avoid falling into a pit. It’s not a rescue feature per se, but it allows you to enjoy the game even when there’s a skill level gap between the two players.
IGA: It’s one of the benefits of having linear stages. In an exploration based game, you run the risk of ruining the story by sequence skipping.
So there’s no situation where you’ll encounter a bug or something because you took a path you weren’t supposed to?
Miyazawa: We’ve made sure you can take any path you want once you’ve gathered all of your comrades. If you stray from the intended path, sometimes you’ll discover some unique gameplay elements.
So the path you take doesn’t affect the story, right?
Aizu: The story develops in segments between stages, and the branching occurs depending on whether or not you’ve met certain conditions when you clear a stage, so nothing that happens in the stage itself affects the story.
In the original, Zangetsu could earn new skills by killing his comrades. Is this feature still in place?
Miyazawa: No, not this time. It’s a continuation of the previous story line, so Zangetsu’s matured a bit (laugh).
(laughs) Well yeah, it does pickup at the end of the story where you didn’t kill your comrades, after all.
Aizu: That’s it – that’s probably the best interpretation (smiles).
New characters with new skills, as well as powered-up returning characters
Could you tell us about the distinctive traits of the three new characters?
Miyazawa: This Dominique is from a different dimension than the one in “Ritual of the Night,” so her weapon and outfit are new. She’s the one who tells Zangetsu about the demonic tower that’s just appeared, so you see her from the very start of the game. As far as her abilities, first of all her jumps are high. Her spear weapon is quite versatile as well, allowing her to attack enemies above and below. Her greatest asset, though, are her resurrection and recovery skills. They’re sub-weapons, spitting out HP recovery items for herself and her comrades, letting you bring them back to life, so she’s quite dependable. She’s the character you’d least want to die first, I think.
You’re saying you need to think twice before using her?
Aizu: Well, that’s one way of doing things, but there are plenty of spots where her high jumps and attack options come in handy.
Miyazawa: One skill you use when you’ve got 7 characters, “Resurrection Anthem,” is ridiculously strong. It revives all your comrades and restores them to full health. Dominique herself has pretty low HP, so it’ll often happen that she’s dead when you most want to use that skill.
Aizu: And by the way, another reason her character design changed from Ritual of the Night has to do with the game’s visuals. If you translate her black-based outfit from Ritual of the Night into pixel art, she’ll end up melting into the background, making her hard to see, so I shamelessly got them to change her palette to brighter colors.
Next is Robert...
Aizawa: I wanted the new characters to be distinctly different from the original four, while at the same time being just as useful, so I thought what the hell, let’s do this, and made him a projectile based gunman. Since the game takes place at the end of the XVIII century, his weapon’s a musket, and the story’s that he’s a former military officer. I knew a projectile based character would be overpowered for this type of action game, so I gave him low HP, which is kind of odd for someone who was in the military, so the idea is that he’s “weaker” because he doesn’t have any special powers like the rest of the cast.
IGA: He’s weak against demons, so to speak.
Miyazawa: As far as his personality goes, we wrote him so that he comes off as kind of a jerk at first, but then opens up as the story progresses, so that you’ll be fond of him by the end.
Aizu: He’s a very well rounded character: good with sub-weapons, does lots of damage, has very long reach. He’s the kind of character you’ll want to use to just plow through the game, but he’s got low HP, so if you start getting carried away you’re sure to die, so be careful (smile).
It’s rare to be able to attack all the way across the screen in this type of game.
Aizu: He uses a musket, though, so you can’t fire continuously. So those enemies that gang up on you are tough to deal with, since you’ll take damage if they get too close.
Miyazawa: He’s particularly bad against enemies that come at you moving in a wave pattern.
Aizu: Also, he can jump off walls, so he’s also useful for reaching high places in a different way than Dominique does.
And last, we have Hachi…
Aizu: His sprite may not look the part, but he’s actually a Corgi. His story’s that Zangetsu saved his life a while back, so he ended up following him, keen to show his gratitude. At that point he was caught by an evil alchemist, who turned him into the living core of a magicked armor. There’s a cut scene between stages where the characters are talking around a campfire, and there you can see Hachi without his armor, running around playfully, so I’m sure everyone will fall for his charm.
He can just take off the armor?
Miyazawa: There’s no scene in the game that shows him taking it off, but imagine he can take if off with no problem whatsoever (smile).
Aizu: During gameplay he can do things like hover and smash spikes, which gives him a great advantage in terms of mobility. Also, for his sub-weapon he becomes invincible. He’s pretty strong overall, so I wanted to nerf him to better balance the game, but everyone else at the company wouldn’t have any of it (laughs).
Miyazawa: Yeah, some people were saying “we can’t beat the game without Hachi!” (laughs). I tried playing through the game with each character without switching, and Hachi was strong enough that I didn’t really miss the others.
Have there been any changes to the returning characters from the original?
Aizu: They've all been buffed overall.
Miyazawa: Alfred in particular was really buffed.
Aizu: He was an offense-type character in the original as well, but since we now have Robert, he just came off weak in comparison, so we increased his damage output a bit.
Miyazawa: Way more than “a bit,” I’d say (smiles). He’s pretty strong. What I’m going to talk about now is a bit in depth. In the original there was a really strong technique where you’d freeze the enemies and then hit them with the ax. It was so strong, in fact, that his Voltaic Ray spell, supposedly the strongest, paled in comparison. So we’ve really buffed Voltaic Ray this time. Provided you charge it enough, you can quickly dispatch enemies with it.
Aizu: I won’t say which one, but there’s a certain boss you can kill instantly with it if it’s fully charged (smile).
Miyazawa: Also, Soul Vision, which creates a doppelgänger, was deliberately designed to be weak in the previous game, and it’s also been significantly improved and is very useful now as a sub-weapon.
Wasn’t it really tough to get the level design right in a game with so many characters?
Miyazawa: It was incredibly tough. It’s what we struggled with the most during development. Just like the original’s Nightmare Mode, there are paths you can take once you’re in a new episode, and this time we’ve designed them so that characters that didn’t get a chance to shine do so. In the original it just like OK, there’s a new path, but this time there are rewards and such that’ll make want to go off the beaten path; though, of course, it’s true that some people might not ever go through those sections with the characters we have mind…
So there’s loads of replay value.
Miyazawa: There are lots of little things to discover, like going through a section with a character that you normally wouldn’t, and finding out that it was actually the biggest shortcut and such, so player’s should try lots of different things.
The game has both “casual” and “veteran” modes. What’s the difference between them?
Miyazawa: It’s pretty much the same as in the original: there’s no limit to the number of lives, there’s no knock-back when get hit, etcetera. Also, this time around in casual mode, when you leave a room through the stairs and then come back in, all the item lamps are replenished. And in veteran mode, it’s not just the lamps: the enemies respawn as well, so it’s a bit more challenging.
Aizu: This sort of feature reflects some of the feedback we got indirectly by looking at what people were streaming and sharing on social media and such.
Is there anything else for which you used this type of feedback as reference?
Miyazawa: For instance, we saw situations where people would be left with a single character who happened to be the worst for that particular section, so they would kill themselves. The game’s actually designed so that its possible clear all of it with any single character, but for those who just want a do-over, we implemented a full party suicide command (smiles).
You can change the difficulty whenever you want, but the ending won’t change depending on the difficulty, right?
Aizu: Right, the difficulty has nothing to do with it. It’s like we design the game based on veteran difficulty, but we realize that there are plenty of players for whom this old-school gameplay may be a bit too difficult, so we also provide a casual mode.
When you say that “the difficulty has nothing to do with it,” do you mean that the ending does change according to other conditions?
Aizu: Yes. I can’t go into details, but there’s definitely some of that.
Who was responsible for the sound this time around?
Aizu: This time it was basically all done by the company’s sound staff. Last time we also used Michiru Yamane’s “Ritual of the Night” track, but this time it’s all being done internally.
Was there anything in particular you wanted to achieve with the music?
Aizu: I heard they created a ton of tracks. I heard rumors that the number of tracks discarded was probably greater than the number of tracks that made it into the game.
Creating graphics that would look good against today’s games, while keeping an 8 bit aesthetic
Just like last time, you guys really captured the feel of 8 bit games with the sprites and background art. What’s your secret?
Aizu: We’re in fact very careful with our graphics. For example, on the old hardware you couldn’t actually do a fade-in or fade-out effect, so you would change the character and background palettes to produce a similar effect. What’s more, you had to chose from the 8 bit system’s limited color palette, so we take care to replicate things like that. The color combinations are also taken from 8 bit systems. We’re being careful to follow the restriction of using “just 4 colors including transparency for each 8 x 8 sprite,” in order to be faithful to the coloring you’d find in character sprites from those days. However, as far as the background’s concerned, due to palette limitations the old 8 bit systems had to use background colors from an area adjacent to the colors used for the characters, so you’d have fewer colors; we decided to ignore this limitation, so there’s actually more colors.
What did you think when you first saw these graphics, Igarashi-san?
IGA: That [Inti Creates] lived up to their reputation. We remember those games through the lens of nostalgia, but they wouldn’t hold up today, so you can tell that they’re showing the graphics that you remember, but if you back and compare them they’re much more sophisticated.
Aizu: The amount of stuff going on is actually at the level you’d find in the later 16 bit systems (smiles). We’re way over the amount of sprites you could show, and VRAM capacity of the actual 8 bit systems.
Miyazawa: Within the dev team we actually created some guidelines for replicating the feel of 8 bit graphics in terms of “we can go this far in this regard, but no more,” and made sure to stick to them.
Aizu: Yeah, that’s what you say now, but I remember struggling to reign a certain creative director who was all like “make it flashier!” “the flashier the better!” (laughs)
(laughs) By the way, is there a chance we’ll see a further sequel to Curse of the Moon?
Aizu: Ritual of the Night recently became a million-seller, but unbeknownst to many, Curse of the Moon has also sold-through more than half a million units. This allowed us to make the sequel, so whatever happens in the future depends on how well received it is; but if it sells anything like the first one, I think I’ll be giving Igarashi-san a call once more.
Miyazawa: But whenever we make a game we put everything into it, so the truth is we can’t even imagine a sequel. I don’t think we can add any more characters (smiles).
In terms of what you could do with a sequel, going from 8 bits to 16 bits would seem to be a natural progression for the series in my view … (smiles/laughs)
Aizu: I see what you did there (laughs).
So heading into your July 10th launch, who are you hoping will buy the game, and how do you hope they’ll enjoy it?
IGA: It’s a game chock-full of features from “the good ol’ days,” so of course we’d love for the people who grew up with them to enjoy it, but to tell you the truth, in my mind games haven’t really changed that much since then. We’re in an age where the improvement of the graphics and visceral flare has far outstripped that of everything else, so I’d like younger players to try it and be able to say “yeah, this is what games are all about.”
Miyazawa: Whenever I make a game and not just for this one, my goal is to make something that may be “enjoyed by everyone, regardless of how good you are at games,” so my design baseline is that my father, who doesn’t play videogames, can clear it. This game is no different: we’ve added a lot of features to make it enjoyable for people who don’t normally play games, so I’m hoping players will coax their friends into playing it.
Aizu: We’re also again supporting multiple platforms, so users have choices. I hope everyone will pick it up and enjoy it on the hardware that best suits them. The Nintendo Switch version supports preloading, so be sure to make use of it!
Thanks for your time.
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Original article: game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/interview/1261747.html
Feel free to repost - just give credit.
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A sequel taking place directly after the original, made possible by the latter’s success
I was very surprised by the game’s sudden announcement on June 24th, so I’d like to begin by asking how Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 came into being.
IGA: The original Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Curse of the Moon from here on out) was developed as a spin-off title by Inti Creates, from an idea to develop an 8 bit style game that emerged during the Kickstarter. Well, since Ritual of the Night was delayed, the spin-off, Curse of the Moon, ended up coming out first. We were surprised by how enthusiastically the fans received it, and so we felt we just had to make a sequel, and that’s how things got started.
So within the series it’s a sequel to Curse of the Moon, which is a spin-off of Ritual of the Night.
IGA: Yes. It shares some of the characters with Ritual of the Night, but think of it as the sequel to a game that takes place in a different setting.
Is it related to the original [Curse of the Moon] story-wise?
IGA: As far as the story, it takes place right where the last one left off. Right after Zangetsu, the main character, defeats the last boss, Dominique appears and tells him about a “Demon Tower” that’s suddenly appeared, and so both of them head off to investigate.
So you’re saying that, while Curse of the Moon had multiple story lines depending on how you played, this one picks up after the regular ending.
Miyazawa (director): Right. It picks up from the ending where you defeated the boss together with your comrades.
The game system from the previous game is basically intact – are there any upgrades to it you can tell us about?
Aizu (producer): Without the original we wouldn’t have a sequel, so obviously there’s a new story line, new stages and new bosses; but that still wouldn’t be enough, so we’ve added a slew of new features.
Miyazawa: Since the basics of playing as Zangetsu haven’t changed, you may not notice anything new in the first stage; but from the second stage onward you’ll be joined by other characters, and all of these levels are designed to make the most of what makes each of your teammates unique.
Like for instance Dominique, who joins you at the second stage, and has abilities such as Vertical Strike and Hoping Strike, the former letting you attack enemies above, and the latter allowing you to advance while attacking the enemies below…
Miyazawa: As far as the new characters, I wanted them to be as appealing as the original’s, so we packed them with new features, the result being that there’s lots of new things you can do.
Aizu: You could say we’ve assembled an array of very unique characters. On top of that, you join up with Miriam, Gebel and Alfred, for a total of 7 characters you can switch between as you play, there’s just a lot more options in terms of gameplay. Since we’ve got more characters we wanted to encourage repeat playthroughs, so we really made IGA work.
IGA: This time, the story changes a bit with repeated playthroughs, so I think there’s a even more of an incentive for replay than the original. There was a lot of story. When they asked me to supervise it they said it would be “about the same” as in the original, but when I got it was actually so much that I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet the deadline. (Smile)
Aizu: The story takes place in “episodes,” and each time you play through the game the episodes change. Another new feature is 2 player co-op. It’s local multiplayer, and while nowadays the hardware allows for online play, I thought it would be worthwhile. It turned out surprisingly fun.
Miyazawa: In co-op mode you can interact with the the other player character in many different ways, such as jumping on top of each other, allowing you to reach places you wouldn’t normally be able to. Like, you’ll be playing the game and in some spots you’ll go “I can’t get there right now, but I’ll be able to later”, but with co-op you’ll be able to go right away. We’re not gating progress in any special way, so depending on how you play you might be able to open up additional paths from the start.
Aizu: In some of the boss battles there’s situations where you have to wait for the right timing in order to attack, but two players you can just get on top of the other and with both of you jumping, you can reach the boss and keep hitting it, killing it right away.
How does character selection work in co-op mode?
Miyazawa: Zangetsu’s the only character two people can play at once, and when you do so one of them is blue. The rest of the cast can’t be chosen simultaneously.
Aizu: Miyazawa is not the kind of man who holds back when he makes games (smiles), so he asked IGA to come up with a backstory to this blue Zangetsu, but…
IGA: I refused (smile).
Aizu: “Zangetsu’s a lone wolf, so there’s no second Zangetsu”, he said (smile). Since he’s got no backstory, we gave him a dark, shadow-like color palette, so that he wouldn’t stand out.
Is there any place you need co-op to reach?
Miyazawa: No, there’s no such place. What happens is that you can earlier to places you would normally need your comrades to reach.
Aizu: Another great thing about co-op is that if one player gets too far ahead, the character that was left behind will automatically move where the other is. So for instance, if one of the characters reaches higher ground by jumping on top of the other, the one left below will automatically follow, so it’s really effective for taking shortcuts. There’s also a button you can press to teleport to where your partner is, so you can use it situations like, for instance, when you make a bad jump, to avoid falling into a pit. It’s not a rescue feature per se, but it allows you to enjoy the game even when there’s a skill level gap between the two players.
IGA: It’s one of the benefits of having linear stages. In an exploration based game, you run the risk of ruining the story by sequence skipping.
So there’s no situation where you’ll encounter a bug or something because you took a path you weren’t supposed to?
Miyazawa: We’ve made sure you can take any path you want once you’ve gathered all of your comrades. If you stray from the intended path, sometimes you’ll discover some unique gameplay elements.
So the path you take doesn’t affect the story, right?
Aizu: The story develops in segments between stages, and the branching occurs depending on whether or not you’ve met certain conditions when you clear a stage, so nothing that happens in the stage itself affects the story.
In the original, Zangetsu could earn new skills by killing his comrades. Is this feature still in place?
Miyazawa: No, not this time. It’s a continuation of the previous story line, so Zangetsu’s matured a bit (laugh).
(laughs) Well yeah, it does pickup at the end of the story where you didn’t kill your comrades, after all.
Aizu: That’s it – that’s probably the best interpretation (smiles).
New characters with new skills, as well as powered-up returning characters
Could you tell us about the distinctive traits of the three new characters?
Miyazawa: This Dominique is from a different dimension than the one in “Ritual of the Night,” so her weapon and outfit are new. She’s the one who tells Zangetsu about the demonic tower that’s just appeared, so you see her from the very start of the game. As far as her abilities, first of all her jumps are high. Her spear weapon is quite versatile as well, allowing her to attack enemies above and below. Her greatest asset, though, are her resurrection and recovery skills. They’re sub-weapons, spitting out HP recovery items for herself and her comrades, letting you bring them back to life, so she’s quite dependable. She’s the character you’d least want to die first, I think.
You’re saying you need to think twice before using her?
Aizu: Well, that’s one way of doing things, but there are plenty of spots where her high jumps and attack options come in handy.
Miyazawa: One skill you use when you’ve got 7 characters, “Resurrection Anthem,” is ridiculously strong. It revives all your comrades and restores them to full health. Dominique herself has pretty low HP, so it’ll often happen that she’s dead when you most want to use that skill.
Aizu: And by the way, another reason her character design changed from Ritual of the Night has to do with the game’s visuals. If you translate her black-based outfit from Ritual of the Night into pixel art, she’ll end up melting into the background, making her hard to see, so I shamelessly got them to change her palette to brighter colors.
Next is Robert...
Aizawa: I wanted the new characters to be distinctly different from the original four, while at the same time being just as useful, so I thought what the hell, let’s do this, and made him a projectile based gunman. Since the game takes place at the end of the XVIII century, his weapon’s a musket, and the story’s that he’s a former military officer. I knew a projectile based character would be overpowered for this type of action game, so I gave him low HP, which is kind of odd for someone who was in the military, so the idea is that he’s “weaker” because he doesn’t have any special powers like the rest of the cast.
IGA: He’s weak against demons, so to speak.
Miyazawa: As far as his personality goes, we wrote him so that he comes off as kind of a jerk at first, but then opens up as the story progresses, so that you’ll be fond of him by the end.
Aizu: He’s a very well rounded character: good with sub-weapons, does lots of damage, has very long reach. He’s the kind of character you’ll want to use to just plow through the game, but he’s got low HP, so if you start getting carried away you’re sure to die, so be careful (smile).
It’s rare to be able to attack all the way across the screen in this type of game.
Aizu: He uses a musket, though, so you can’t fire continuously. So those enemies that gang up on you are tough to deal with, since you’ll take damage if they get too close.
Miyazawa: He’s particularly bad against enemies that come at you moving in a wave pattern.
Aizu: Also, he can jump off walls, so he’s also useful for reaching high places in a different way than Dominique does.
And last, we have Hachi…
Aizu: His sprite may not look the part, but he’s actually a Corgi. His story’s that Zangetsu saved his life a while back, so he ended up following him, keen to show his gratitude. At that point he was caught by an evil alchemist, who turned him into the living core of a magicked armor. There’s a cut scene between stages where the characters are talking around a campfire, and there you can see Hachi without his armor, running around playfully, so I’m sure everyone will fall for his charm.
He can just take off the armor?
Miyazawa: There’s no scene in the game that shows him taking it off, but imagine he can take if off with no problem whatsoever (smile).
Aizu: During gameplay he can do things like hover and smash spikes, which gives him a great advantage in terms of mobility. Also, for his sub-weapon he becomes invincible. He’s pretty strong overall, so I wanted to nerf him to better balance the game, but everyone else at the company wouldn’t have any of it (laughs).
Miyazawa: Yeah, some people were saying “we can’t beat the game without Hachi!” (laughs). I tried playing through the game with each character without switching, and Hachi was strong enough that I didn’t really miss the others.
Have there been any changes to the returning characters from the original?
Aizu: They've all been buffed overall.
Miyazawa: Alfred in particular was really buffed.
Aizu: He was an offense-type character in the original as well, but since we now have Robert, he just came off weak in comparison, so we increased his damage output a bit.
Miyazawa: Way more than “a bit,” I’d say (smiles). He’s pretty strong. What I’m going to talk about now is a bit in depth. In the original there was a really strong technique where you’d freeze the enemies and then hit them with the ax. It was so strong, in fact, that his Voltaic Ray spell, supposedly the strongest, paled in comparison. So we’ve really buffed Voltaic Ray this time. Provided you charge it enough, you can quickly dispatch enemies with it.
Aizu: I won’t say which one, but there’s a certain boss you can kill instantly with it if it’s fully charged (smile).
Miyazawa: Also, Soul Vision, which creates a doppelgänger, was deliberately designed to be weak in the previous game, and it’s also been significantly improved and is very useful now as a sub-weapon.
Wasn’t it really tough to get the level design right in a game with so many characters?
Miyazawa: It was incredibly tough. It’s what we struggled with the most during development. Just like the original’s Nightmare Mode, there are paths you can take once you’re in a new episode, and this time we’ve designed them so that characters that didn’t get a chance to shine do so. In the original it just like OK, there’s a new path, but this time there are rewards and such that’ll make want to go off the beaten path; though, of course, it’s true that some people might not ever go through those sections with the characters we have mind…
So there’s loads of replay value.
Miyazawa: There are lots of little things to discover, like going through a section with a character that you normally wouldn’t, and finding out that it was actually the biggest shortcut and such, so player’s should try lots of different things.
The game has both “casual” and “veteran” modes. What’s the difference between them?
Miyazawa: It’s pretty much the same as in the original: there’s no limit to the number of lives, there’s no knock-back when get hit, etcetera. Also, this time around in casual mode, when you leave a room through the stairs and then come back in, all the item lamps are replenished. And in veteran mode, it’s not just the lamps: the enemies respawn as well, so it’s a bit more challenging.
Aizu: This sort of feature reflects some of the feedback we got indirectly by looking at what people were streaming and sharing on social media and such.
Is there anything else for which you used this type of feedback as reference?
Miyazawa: For instance, we saw situations where people would be left with a single character who happened to be the worst for that particular section, so they would kill themselves. The game’s actually designed so that its possible clear all of it with any single character, but for those who just want a do-over, we implemented a full party suicide command (smiles).
You can change the difficulty whenever you want, but the ending won’t change depending on the difficulty, right?
Aizu: Right, the difficulty has nothing to do with it. It’s like we design the game based on veteran difficulty, but we realize that there are plenty of players for whom this old-school gameplay may be a bit too difficult, so we also provide a casual mode.
When you say that “the difficulty has nothing to do with it,” do you mean that the ending does change according to other conditions?
Aizu: Yes. I can’t go into details, but there’s definitely some of that.
Who was responsible for the sound this time around?
Aizu: This time it was basically all done by the company’s sound staff. Last time we also used Michiru Yamane’s “Ritual of the Night” track, but this time it’s all being done internally.
Was there anything in particular you wanted to achieve with the music?
Aizu: I heard they created a ton of tracks. I heard rumors that the number of tracks discarded was probably greater than the number of tracks that made it into the game.
Creating graphics that would look good against today’s games, while keeping an 8 bit aesthetic
Just like last time, you guys really captured the feel of 8 bit games with the sprites and background art. What’s your secret?
Aizu: We’re in fact very careful with our graphics. For example, on the old hardware you couldn’t actually do a fade-in or fade-out effect, so you would change the character and background palettes to produce a similar effect. What’s more, you had to chose from the 8 bit system’s limited color palette, so we take care to replicate things like that. The color combinations are also taken from 8 bit systems. We’re being careful to follow the restriction of using “just 4 colors including transparency for each 8 x 8 sprite,” in order to be faithful to the coloring you’d find in character sprites from those days. However, as far as the background’s concerned, due to palette limitations the old 8 bit systems had to use background colors from an area adjacent to the colors used for the characters, so you’d have fewer colors; we decided to ignore this limitation, so there’s actually more colors.
What did you think when you first saw these graphics, Igarashi-san?
IGA: That [Inti Creates] lived up to their reputation. We remember those games through the lens of nostalgia, but they wouldn’t hold up today, so you can tell that they’re showing the graphics that you remember, but if you back and compare them they’re much more sophisticated.
Aizu: The amount of stuff going on is actually at the level you’d find in the later 16 bit systems (smiles). We’re way over the amount of sprites you could show, and VRAM capacity of the actual 8 bit systems.
Miyazawa: Within the dev team we actually created some guidelines for replicating the feel of 8 bit graphics in terms of “we can go this far in this regard, but no more,” and made sure to stick to them.
Aizu: Yeah, that’s what you say now, but I remember struggling to reign a certain creative director who was all like “make it flashier!” “the flashier the better!” (laughs)
(laughs) By the way, is there a chance we’ll see a further sequel to Curse of the Moon?
Aizu: Ritual of the Night recently became a million-seller, but unbeknownst to many, Curse of the Moon has also sold-through more than half a million units. This allowed us to make the sequel, so whatever happens in the future depends on how well received it is; but if it sells anything like the first one, I think I’ll be giving Igarashi-san a call once more.
Miyazawa: But whenever we make a game we put everything into it, so the truth is we can’t even imagine a sequel. I don’t think we can add any more characters (smiles).
In terms of what you could do with a sequel, going from 8 bits to 16 bits would seem to be a natural progression for the series in my view … (smiles/laughs)
Aizu: I see what you did there (laughs).
So heading into your July 10th launch, who are you hoping will buy the game, and how do you hope they’ll enjoy it?
IGA: It’s a game chock-full of features from “the good ol’ days,” so of course we’d love for the people who grew up with them to enjoy it, but to tell you the truth, in my mind games haven’t really changed that much since then. We’re in an age where the improvement of the graphics and visceral flare has far outstripped that of everything else, so I’d like younger players to try it and be able to say “yeah, this is what games are all about.”
Miyazawa: Whenever I make a game and not just for this one, my goal is to make something that may be “enjoyed by everyone, regardless of how good you are at games,” so my design baseline is that my father, who doesn’t play videogames, can clear it. This game is no different: we’ve added a lot of features to make it enjoyable for people who don’t normally play games, so I’m hoping players will coax their friends into playing it.
Aizu: We’re also again supporting multiple platforms, so users have choices. I hope everyone will pick it up and enjoy it on the hardware that best suits them. The Nintendo Switch version supports preloading, so be sure to make use of it!
Thanks for your time.
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