Stephen, lovable scamp that he is, left me something before he and Charles left to frolic on the floors of GDC.

I’m getting a little giddy just looking at it. He has great taste, and knows just what I like. Should we open it up?

I was thinking the same thing.

Oh wait! There’s a note.

Big words! Still, I must know more. What did Stephen do?

Oh. Huh. There’s something attached to the note.

…what?

Wait, there’s more on the back of the note…

Heh.

Alright buddy, you have a lot to live up to. Let’s see what’s inside.

…Man, great wrapping job, this is taking forever.

…Lid’s off, but still nothing. Where is it?

…Jeez, I wish Stephen was allergic to packing peanuts.

…Found it. Little weirdly shaped. Let’s pull this up.

Wait… don’t I already have one of these?

Well, probably better to give Stephen the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he made some cool changes. Let’s try her out.

Huh, first thing I notice here is that Bubbles’ bullets are big. Yes, sure, this solves a couple problems for us, but it’s not exactly MENSA material, is it? Yeah yeah, Bubbles is now able to hit nearby targets far more reliably and yes, new players will catch on to Bubbles’ short range requirements much faster, but is this all you’ve got, Steve?

…Shoot. So busy keyboard-warrioring I forgot to kill those guppies. In a bit of a spot here. Better try out my gadgets.

Let’s see if THIS does anything!

That’s… actually kind of cool. Sure, Stephen’s graphics are a little basic, but this is a sweet function, destroying enemy bullets in a small area. In this situation, it’s a nice little panic button, but I can totally see how this would help me maneuver into position to blast a boss’s weak point.

After some more experimentation, it looks like the gadget, the Shockwave, produces a field that lasts half a second, and also knocks back nearby enemies. Grudgingly, I concede that Stephen did fine work here. It’s a fun device to toy around with. It’s like the shooting-game equivalent of an action game’s defensive roll.

It’s a small thing, but I also like how Stephen is handling the controls: putting defensive gadgets on the left and aggressive gadgets on the right. It’s a tiny tweak, but it makes new characters so much easier to pick up.

Now, let’s see how the other gadget stacks up.

…Holy mackerel.

Is Stephen a genius?   Wait. Don’t answer that.

Bubbles’ second gadget, Battle Fury, makes her shoot 250% faster for 1 second. To explain why this is so devastatingly brilliant, I’m going to need a quick visit to the Overthinking Corner.

Lane’s Overthinking Corner 01 – Short Range

Thanks for joining me.

Here at Escape Industries, our goal is to bring traditional RPG and MOBA roles to the shoot-em-up genre. Among these roles is the supremely durable Tank. This character is responsible for protecting her more fragile teammates by, among other things, putting herself between her allies and danger. To make this role, we need ways to encourage players to get close to enemies.

This brings us to short-ranged weapons. Certain characters, like Bubbles and Spike, wield short-ranged cannons that either incentivize or require them to close in on enemies before dealing damage. A lot of the time, this works great. The tank player is in prime position to defend allies who need it most.

However, in this genre, tanks must face a terrible truth. Enemies produce bullets. Bullets radiate outward from enemies. Bullets are closest together when they are closest to enemies. Sometimes, bullets are so close together that there is simply no safe place to stay within half a screen of an enemy. Feast your eyes on this, then tell me how you’d safely stay close to this guy:

Crazy, right? What’s a tank to do? Fortunately, another truth of the genre is that enemies have multiple attack patterns; otherwise, things get boring. There will be big, scary attacks, but there will also be smaller, weaker attacks in between. Tanks can sneak in during these moments and deal some damage.

But how much damage? Here’s the tough part: when we make bosses shoot less in order to allow a safe moment for tanks, it doesn’t just affect tanks. A small reduction in boss firepower might allow Bubbles to attack for an extra second, but it may also make the fight much easier for a Finn or Gil, who no longer needs to work as hard to dodge attacks for that period. So far, when we’ve tuned bosses to put up a good fight against long-range players, they end up scaring tanks away about 80% of the time. That’s 80% of the boss fight where the tank is not dealing damage to the boss.

So how do we make up for this? One solution might be to make tanks just deal five times as much damage. They’d come out even against bosses, sure, but they’d be wildly, ridiculously successful at beating other enemy encounters, where enemies allow up-close attacks far more often.

This is where Stephen’s Battle Fury gadget shows its worth. Moreso than any gadget we’ve ever made, Battle Fury allows tanks to capitalize on the rare moments they get to shoot at bosses. By multiplying the tank’s damage by 3.5, Stephen lets a tank deal almost as much damage as a fragile DPS character, but only with excellent timing. Moreover, because it’s only active for one second during each use, Battle Fury gives Bubbles strength against bosses without letting her simply waltz through the rest of the game’s content.

So, what did Stephen do here?

He created a beat-em-up character, and stuffed her in the shoot-em-up genre. In a genre that encourages passive, defensive play, he managed to reward aggression, timing, and strategic thinking. He created a submarine loadout true to its character’s personality, as impulsive and ferocious as Bubbles herself.

Oh, and he let me brag about something awesome in Fingeance without disturbing my Minnesotan sensibilities (I can’t talk about anything good that I’ve done, you see).

Thanks man. Hope you’re having a blast at GDC.

PS — Some dialog from Stephen has been changed. He may not actually be a scumbag in real life.