As the great creators of soulslikes said: If the game allows you to do something, use it for your passage

Yes. We have a strong lore, but a lot of emphasis will be on the game design, and, of course, on the mechanics. Without them, there would be no metroidvania as such! The world is linear, but many branches are planned, different passages both to the right and to the left, and up and down. Of course, all this is not in the prototype, but in the beta we wanted to try to implement this at least in the first level.

Oh yes, this kind of thing is very annoying!

Thank you for your great opinion! This is very important! About the details. About boss fights, we plan to do a lot of testing. As for the combat system itself in principle. It’s funny that you mentioned map keys in this sense. Because we literally thought about how to solve this issue in a cool way. Therefore, each ability will add interactivity to the combat system, and will give abilities for combat. Well, and about the story, don’t worry. Ours is huge, cool and very well thought out. It was written by 2 people, and it was around the lore that the idea for the game grew

There will be an inventory, but it will be extremely limited. More for viewing your pistol upgrades (and changing them at certain points), for notes with lore and special items with upgrades and hindrances

Thanks for your opinion! I found this mechanic weird and overdone in Prince, but I’ll think about it since people find it convenient

🤣 Agreed 👌

A must 👌 Secret items and secret pieces of lore

I’m not sure we want to do that. We’re targeting players who can play, die, learn, die again, and enjoy the difficulty. And that’s the main spirit and theme of the game. So I don’t think there will be much customization. There will be different tactics, so everyone can choose what suits them best.

This is the essence of the genre of metroidvania and soulslikes. To die, learn, and start again, change approaches and tactics. Perhaps this is just not your genre

Well, it’s part of the gameplay that you have to come back to. The benches are an important part of the difficulty, just like permanent death is part of the genre.

Honestly - we don’t want to please more casual players unless it’s part of balancing difficult moments. For example, considering the speed of combat, one of our refs is Laika: Aged Through Blood. But ours is still slower, so there will be features of classic metroidvanias in the mix. Simply because the player will have a gun in his hands. In the future - with various improvements

Thanks for your opinion! We wanted to do it like in Dark Souls, that you need to go to the place and pick up souls. Although, I want to think about mechanics like the one in the game Blasphemous, if I’m not mistaken. That you can return souls to yourself for some item without reaching the place. We need to think about it. And about bosses - of course. This pisses me off myself :D That’s why the bosses will have an epic exit. But after - get ready to fight right away

Thank you for writing out your opinion! However, for now we are planning not to make any divisions into different difficulty levels at all. As in more classic metroidvanias, we want to make a single difficulty level for everyone, which ranges from difficult to normal

Sure. Although, of course, one of the main audiences is experienced players of complex games 🤔

Oh, we have a small but diverse plan from the very beginning. Firstly, we are planning a metroidvania shooter, which immediately imposes faster mechanics. And we are also planning interesting buffs and debuffs with consumables 👀👀 I wonder if it will be possible to immediately add movement, but maintain balance?