RyoDavis

Same. Fennel is my favorite fight in Reverie, and Pardoner's Dance plays no small part in that. I could fight that fight for hours on loop. Super enjoyable.

rdein, you mentioned in one of your answers that you'd like to build an intricate 3d world akin to Dark Souls 1, and one of my favorite things that DS1 and Momodora RUTM shared was a tightly packed map during the first sections (DS prior to Lordvessel; Momo while collecting the crest fragments) where individual sections link together in interesting ways to form a satisfying explorative experience.

So my question is (for rdein, specifically, but open to any Bombservice member who wants to answer): What's the process for making a tight map with many shortcuts, interlinked zones, and epiphanies where the player gets to realize they've stumbled back to a familiar area from a confusing wilderness, only this time from a direction they've never seen?

And as a bonus question: I notice that both of these games lost a lot of that tightness in their later sections. What can be done to extend the tight map layout to the whole game, rather than only having it as a feature of the first half or so?

Yeah! That makes total sense, and I hadn't really considered the verticality being so much of a potential limiting factor. Do you think the sidescroller part helps build a big world in that regard more than it hinders it? I think a great example of the potential there is Salt and Sanctuary, though admittedly, by the time you unlock a lot of the later connecting passages, you have little reason to go back through said areas.

But would you ever be open to doing a top-down, handheld Zelda style game? And if so, do you think you'd have an easier time with the linking of zones in that setting, or are they just both different aspects of the same overall problem?

And, I guess, do you think 3d works better for this overall than either of the 2d options? I'm a bigger fan of the 2d, myself, but I love hearing other people's thoughts on the matter. Thanks for your answer! ^_^