Sup folks! As we draw closer to our next exciting announcement for Elsie, we wanted to throw some questions at the Knight Shift team about game development and how Elsie came running and gunning into the world!
Check it out!
What inspired you to create Elsie?
Alex: When I started my journey to become an indie game dev, it was a daunting and challenging path. The initial steps were pretty difficult, filled with lots of uncertainty. To make the journey more enjoyable and sustainable, I decided to create a game inspired by some of my all-time favorites from my childhood, such as Super Metroid and the Mega Man X series!
So Elsie has a bunch of procedurally-generated levels. Walk us through the process for procedural generation?
Alex: Procedural generation is pretty simple, it's just generating an output based on some rules. The hard part is learning and iterating through those rules. I spent many months testing different variations for our levels until I found a good fit. I went for overly complex generation to simple rules and over time I landed on keeping it rather simple and focusing on the more hand-crafted experiences.
At the start, when I tried to generate a whole stage, it took so much effort to make platforming challenges that felt natural and placing enemies in places to give players appropriate obstacles. It was challenging to generate something that always felt right to the player so I had to get another solution. I landed on a hybrid solution of hand-crafted the rooms themselves with some randomness inside the rooms then procedurally stitching rooms together to create the whole stage. This approach gave me enough control for the moment to moment while giving players a little bit of a refresh after each death.
What were some of the big challenges during development?
Pedro: Like most indie teams, we have been faced with, what's probably the most common challenge, funding! For around 6 years, we have worked on Elsie part-time completely self-funded. We also had to deal with a revolving door of team members, making it difficult to keep the same style and quality throughout the project, particularly in the art. We are extremely grateful to Playtonic for publishing the game, and assisting with development funds to get the game out the door, and helping us maintain the same team 'til the end of production.
What inspired the cyberpunk setting?
Pedro: Elsie was always somewhat cyberpunk-ish since its inception, but we took a hard shift into the current cyberpunk style when I came onto the project around 2018. The project received a major overhaul, which included this new vibrant, neon, flashy aesthetic. We wanted something that caught the eye at a glance and intrigued folks to check it out further!
What was the design process for the various world biomes?
Pedro: Being old-school game lovers, we definitely stayed in the traditional "elemental" biomes, but wanted to give them some flare artistically. The first environment we designed was the Eclipse Skyport. It was meant to be the "wind" biome, but we shifted away from "wind" or "air" and just more towards a "sky" vibe, where there was a machine that lifted the city underneath into the sky. We've got the usual suspects of fire, nature, ice, and lightning as well, but each with their own distinct feel, style, enemies, and music to really immerse you into the level!
Eric, how did you decide what music would fit the game's aesthetic?
Eric: For Elsie, I started by having conversations with Alex, our lead programmer and project manager, and discussing what we wanted the game to feel and sound like. We had many conversations that resulted in the desire to primarily use modern instruments with an inclusion of retro sound chip sources. After, I explored different sound sources and processing chains to create a general set of sounds that I thought could accomplish what we had in mind. We decided the game's soundtrack would feature influences from musical genres we all enjoy, along with our Latin and European heritage. As an example, I decided to blend in bit of Afro-Cuban rhythms in our Nature biome, as well as Venezuelan joropo in our Ice biome.
What roles do you think music plays in enhancing the player experience?
Eric: The music serves as one of the driving engines that feeds the player with energy. It's primarily role is to add intesity and emotions to the different levels and encounters. I tried my best to match the high-octane gameplay while offering a bit of breathing room. The other role of the music soundtrack to help bring the biomes to life by introducing distinct biome-specific sounds and having thematic materials that are recurrent in other music tracks of the same family. After a bit of listening, the player is bound to associate certain melodies, grooves, and sounds with specific biomes.
What made you want to make a roguelike?
Alex: It's my favorite genre of game so naturally it's what I'd really enjoy making. I love games with high risk to them. Gives every moment you play weight to it that you don't feel in others.
How does Andru's melee combat differ from Elsie's gameplay style, and what was the process of balancing these two characters?
Alex: Wait we were supposed to balance the two characters? In all seriousness, Andru has a whole slew of weapons and his combat really gets you into the heat of battle and tests how good you are with the game's core mechanic of the parry. Elsie's focus is just to blow up stuff and fill the screen with bullets. Andru is more like a scalpel. Very precise and meticulous. He does some builds that allow you to play like a bullet hell boss too.
Who would win a fight between Elsie and Andru?
Alex: Hmmm... probably Elsie or the game would be called Andru, wouldn't it?
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Elsie is coming soooon to a PC (and PS5 and Switch!) near you, hopefully the one in your house, actually! So take one step closer to that happening by Wishlisting it below!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515570/Elsie/