Hello, Drivers!
With our lil’ Truck launching in five days I wanted to quickly come here and say, on behalf of the whole team, THANK YOU! The level of interest this game has got has been HUGE for us, and as a small team it’s genuinely humbling and exciting to see.
We’ve made a bunch of changes since the demo came out based on all the feedback you’ve given and we’re really excited to see what you all think.
While I’m here though, I wanted to expand on some in development footage we shared across our social channels and offer some insight into the development process.
"Well hey, some of that looks different to the demo I played!" I hear you think (that's right, I can do that) so I asked Xalavier Nelson Jr, the head of Strange Scaffold and the games Director, to explain a bunch of things that haven’t made it into the final game.
First up, pedestrians used to have levels - why and why the change?
“Carissa was supposed to level up, and we found that system and progression layer pulled away focus from the main points of the project (and made her less of a badass), so we removed it!”
There was a Phoenix Down revival system, along with a health system for the truck and Carissa. Other than “we don’t own the name Phoenix Down”, why did that system change?
“The way we originally interpreted support was managing Carissa's existence in another world. So, she had a health bar, your driving and hitting power ups adjusted her abilities or gave her armor or gave her higher attack power… and she could die. So you had to juggle completing objectives with getting health, potions, and Phoenix Feathers when you failed to manage her health correctly.
Not only was this a giant amount of cognitive load that detracted from the rest of the game (and the fun driving!), it also meant, again, Carissa was allowed to be less of a strong character because you needed to be her caretaker. So, in the final days of the project, we interpreted support as cheering on a entity of equal power and agency, and it allowed the whole game to flourish.”
What did "someone's getting fired" gap found" mean?
“We originally were trying to fill the map with Tony Hawk style gaps, but with a limited amount of time to build the game, and with a difficulty of communicating the feature and making those gaps meaningful, we instead chose to focus on just building a world that felt fun, no matter where you drove or what you did, and allowed you to notice more small details as you drove through the same areas. Building and rewarding. The gaps also would have taken away from the time level designers were putting towards iterating on the primary game map, so we put the energy into the map rather than meta progression on top of it!”
I’m assuming the Rank system in the isekai window protoype was replaced by stars? Why was that?
“Not only was the rank system replaced by stars – we found it was an enormous problem in general. Because for the different versions of the game, from the more freeform open world version, to the one inspired by Mega Man, to solve some of the aimlessness of those segments, we added a system that would show just how much Carissa had been mowing through enemies during that session of play.
But, no matter what we did, as soon as there was a rank there, even if it didn't matter, players did not feel they had had a rewarding game session, unless they had completed objectives AND put a bunch of focus into the isekai window to reach an S-rank. It pulled focus from both the story and the primary driving gameplay, and made people feel like the game was at odds of itself.
Once we refined everything down to opening the Galactic Gate and collecting stars, and there was no ranking system of any kind outside of the milestones, players could more properly judge how successful they were in a session through the lens we wanted them to use.”
I know I'm biased but game development is a facinating thing. Lots of very skilled, passionate and dedicated people come together and through refinement and iteration like this, create the games we love.
Again, thank you all so much for supporting a Truck who is Supporting You from Another World?! We can’t wait to get the game out to you in five days! Please do tell other folks about it, as it makes a huge difference to the visibility of the game. And another thank you for everyone who has streamed, made videos, posted on reddit and socials, it all helps!
THANK YOU and see you in five days!
- Chris @ Strange Scaffold
