Shantae Risky´s Revenge (feat. Pehesse)

Shantae: Risky´s Revenge

Beatiful pixel art graphics and humor.

I had the great luck of being able to discuss this game with Honey Rose creator Pehesse:

• correojon: About backtracking: I´ve been playing Shantae Risky´s Revenge this week on the 3DS and well, the game´s beautiful and fun, the dungeons are great...but the constant backtracking really hurts it. It doesn´t use the upgrades you get to facilitate traversal in any way, in fact the game adds more and more time consuming enemies (the strong mummies, the mermaids which can hide in ponds of water to become invincible...) in the parts you have already traversed many times, placing them in locations that stop your momentum (like the fucking Imps in the trajectory of jumps over bottomless pits), making them respawn infinitely or without sense (enemies spawning just behind you, or right before you and instantly attacking). This hurts the game flow tremendously and even permeates into some dungeons: it seems the devs said "hey, a Metroidvania must have backtracking" but they didn´t stop to think about how to make it fun or even include it in the flow of the game. Instead of using backtracking to show the player how powerful he´s become it achieves the opposite effect and makes him feel like the new abbilities are extremely circunstancial and have only been designed for gating and to have an excuse to backtrack. Also, warp point locations make no sense, I can´t understand why there isn´t a general warp point in the city. The controls (turning and attacking always fails) and the hitboxes are a mess. I´m right before the last dungeon, but I just don´t want to traverse again the same locations to get to the door or to find more magic jams (which is a big pity, as the reward system for finding jam is awesome!). Is Pirate´s Curse better in these regards?
• Pehesse: Yes, I can see how you'd take things that way (I found your thoughts on Duck Tales Remastered quite interesting in the same regard, though I have a much more forgiving outlook on the game overall - I still prefer the original, and as you found out, find the experience on easy quite enjoyable). I agree about some of your points on enemy placement and rhythm on Risky's Revenge, though don't necessarily agree with your conclusion - I think it's actually part of the fun that they consciously throw you for a loop and off the common "flow". I believe it's a conscious design decision to have them work off a different rhythm than what you'd commonly expect, making the game hard to play when you rely on usual platformers rhythm and requiring to adapt to slightly different patterns. However, the backtracking overall is very poorly done, that I completely agree with, and the warp squids system especially is almost inexcusable - I hope it is a relic from the original design of the game which was butchered when the game was segmented into smaller parts, and not something that was planned at the later stages of development, because it demonstrates pretty poor judgement. Shantae games overall I don't find have the greatest level design (I'm surprised you criticize their controls, movement and hitboxes, though, since I think they're fairly precise and faithful to what's going on screen) - their use of backtracking is spotty, forward prevision isn't always the best either with blind jumps galore in the original and a general lack of sense of direction in RR. Pirate's Curse I think is better in all respects, though what it learnt in the process, it lost in personality - it feels a bit like a collection of design tricks used and recognized in many games since, which evidently work, but can't really claim originality or impact anymore. The heart of those games lie elsewhere for me (slightly off rhythm, as I said, and general presentation), so I can understand how viewing them strictly from a platforming study standpoint would make them a disappointing experience. Though that's why the adage exists: a game is sometimes more than the sum of its individual parts :-D
• correojon: I loved the Metroidvania approach at the beginning, but after revisiting the same location for the 4th time it stopped being fun. Besides, the upgrades you find for the monkey, elephant and mermaid seem almost one-time-use: you just use them for some very specific obstacle and may as well loose them afterwards; they are effectively keys. The controls worked pretty well most of the time, but turning and attacking would fail more times than work. Also, when walking next to a wall you had to release all buttons for Shantae to respond to any new commands. The hitbox of Shantae is fixed to the sprite instead of having soem safety zone, which would make you take some hits when only the tip of the sprite was colliding with the enemy, this is a big no-no and something games have been doing correctly by separating the sprite and hitbox since 30 years ago. When crouching I don´t know if it was because the controls took some time to react or the hitbox didn´t update in time, but I could never evade any attack at the last moment this way. The opposite happens when you are in monkey form: your hitbox is so small it was very difficult to grab chains or other things to climb in the middle of a jump. The backwards dash...it looks nice but I think I haven´t needed it once during the game. Maybe I used it in one bossfight, but apart from that it´s a move that makes no sense. It seems the devs put it in because Castlevanias usually have it, but didn´t take it into account when designing anything else in the game. The game has some platforming challenges, but I wouldn´t call this a platformer either. Anyway, it looks gorgeous and I´m studying it´s pixelart with detail and the music is great too, though not as good as Shovel Knight´s for my taste (after playing SK I´m a fan of Jake Kaufmann), though it may be more because of the style than anything else.