Howdy, Impostors!
It’s time for another session of Behind the Beans with our principal game designer, Dave. If you missed the last deep dive, you can read it here! This time, he’s here to talk about our newest Impostor role: the Viper. This venomous role has increased the levels of chaos and added lots of spitting (ewww) to lobbies.
Remember to say it, not spray it.
Dors
Viper
The Viper is a simple role to understand. This was important to keep in mind when designing and iterating on the role. But don’t be fooled – there’s actually a lot of depth! Where and how you choose to kill now requires more thought. “How can I give the body more time to dissolve?” and “What are the entry and exit points of the location?” are just two questions to consider. The more discrete the location, the higher the chances of the body fully dissolving without a trace.
Exhibit A, the Viper’s Acid ability in all its glory
A good Viper also uses their sabotages to the fullest. Need to give a dissolving body more time to disappear? Lock it behind a Door Sabotage. Need everyone to move as far away from that kill you did in Navigation? Trigger the Reactor Meltdown. A clever Viper that uses their full toolset can get away with multiple kills without ever raising a hint of suspicion.
Prototyping Phase
During the initial prototyping phase, it was just the design and programming teams working on it. To create a placeholder dissolved body, I took the existing art asset and erased it using dynamic jittering to get the intended look.
Exhibit B, the prototype version of a dissolving body
The Viper had an instant impact in our games! If a dissolved body was found, the discussions were a lot more engaging around the state of the body and who was around it. On the other hand, games were very scary when Crewmates were dropping like flies but bodies were never being found.
The Viper checked off a lot of boxes for a good role:
It promoted more discussion in meetings
It allowed the Impostor to strategize their kills in new ways
There is push and pull between the Viper and Crewmates
Thus, the Viper was good to move on to the next stage of development!
The Post Prototype Process
The next steps were to work with the art team to figure out the theming of the role. Since the dissolving body was so core to the Viper, figuring out the theme revolved around that. Here are some of the concepts from our brainstorming session that the art team explored:
Exhibit C, a body dissolving through interdimensional means
Exhibit D, the Impostor spewing a horde of tiny Impostors
Exhibit E, commanding an army of ants to kill a Crewmate
Exhibit F, on the left: killing a Crewmate through dehydration and on the right: killing a Crewmate by creating a black hole where they stand
Beyond this, there were a ton of other interesting and wide-reaching ideas, but ultimately none of them stuck as much as the dissolving acid. The Viper is a great theme and the dissolving acid is a fun visual to work with.
Testing a Color Matching Option
One final idea we explored with the dissolving body is the color scheming. By having the acid match the color of the victim, it was a gruesome visual of a melting Crewmate.
Exhibit G, testing a version of the Acid where it matches the color of the killed Crewmate
As fun as this was, we ultimately went back to having just one acid color. The Viper having a specific color for their acid made for a stronger identity with the role, and it gave us time to do more fun things like creating the Viper’s kill animation!
Finale
The Viper was a great role to work on. Since it was so fun right off the bat, it gave us more time to explore the art. I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek on some of the exploration we did with the acid! Seeing all the cursed ideas from the artists was hilarious, so I figured you’d all like to see this too.
And behold, the final Acid:
Another Q&A
Before you run back to spit on other Crewmates, take a look at the Q&A video we did to answer questions about the Viper, featuring Daniil!
Avoiding Acid like always,
Dave
