maxcantor

"Now here's a guy whose world is all right. He wakes up. Skips breakfast--sometimes the only fuel you need is what's inside you. Sits down at his desk and enters a strange world... some people can't handle it here, but on Reddit, he feels at home.

...

"Six hours later, nothin's changed but the lights on his screen.

"Come on man, you hafta give me something to work with here. At least go to 4chan for a minute."

Nerd questions:

• Were SG_Andrew and SG_Gavin the only developers?
• From a code perspective, if you could write a letter to yourselves before development began, what would you mention?
• At what point during development did you first have a "playable game"? In other words, did you start with a super-minimal engine with a little blob being moved around by the controller after a couple of weeks/months and then build on that; or did you spend a long time crafting the engine, assets, plot, and other aspects separately before "tying them together"?

On a separate (non-question) note: Thank you so much. Bastion is one of my favorite games ever and I find it utterly inspiring. I hype the game and the soundtrack to everyone I know as frequently and fervently as possible. The soundtrack in particular is simply magical, and I have probably clocked more time listening to it than on my three playthroughs of the game itself.

That scene blew my entire mind. Throughout the game, you guys did a fantastic job of driving the plot and building character without removing the player from the core gameplay. That particular scene was one of the best examples: I think there's a certain expectation from the player's perspective that the game will not give you a binary choice in which one option leads to certain demise, and playing with that was so powerful. The first time I played it I was hanging out with a friend, and my commentary went like this: "Oh, man--look at all of them. I can't even... oh man, I have to heal! Dude, this is... I have to heal again! I'm gonna run out of health potions. What is this? Why would the game designers do this? There's no way I can make it. I'm about to lose all of the progress I--

"Wait... oh, wow.

"Oh my God."

That's outstanding. I was going to write "days/weeks" instead of "weeks/months", but I was afraid you might answer "days/weeks? you crazy fellow, it took us a year just to get that kind of thing moving". Somehow I'm not surprised that wasn't the case :-)

The Proving Grounds were really fascinating to me, from a game design perspective. There was definitely a "puzzle" aspect to them, and each one was definitely easier to the extent that you "got it".

It's a trade-off, though... it's so gratifying when you do figure it out, but conversely, it's teeth-grindingly frustrating when you don't!

I feel like a good balance might have been progressively revealing more hints via narration.

For example, my friend had a lot of trouble with the shield trial because he never got the loading screen tip that you can use the right joystick to guard in a specific direction without being locked on to something.

Also, on the machete trial, we eventually realized that it works well to hang out where the squirts are spawning right at the beginning of the level, and to stay there until the spawning stops. However, it's very easy to just see a mess of enemies and never see the pattern.

Final note: Some trials were cake-walks with an upgraded weapon and nigh-impossible without it. It would have been nice to have some additional reward (bonus world fragments, an achievement, etc.) for doing some/all of them with un-upgraded tools.