Rusted Moss is an action-exploration recreation developed by solo people (not a part of any improvement studios) that revolves round its uncommon methodology of traversal: an absurdly bouncy grappling hook. We received’t lie: the physics-based grappling will carry you each nice ache and nice pleasure. However the triumph when you grasp it — you’ll virtually fly by the sport whereas blasting enemies together with your arsenal of weapons when Rusted Moss comes to PS5 on June 20.
On this melancholic world, people put together for an invasion by capricious fairies from one other realm. You play as Fern, a changeling decided to put an finish to the struggle. As you uncover the story behind the world, you’ll ultimately select a aspect: fae or human?
With the PS5 launch, we’re additionally including in seven to eight hours of extra content material — roughly as a lot content material as the bottom recreation itself. This consists of new zones (starting from average to very troublesome), a boss rush, and a further playable character.
A singular grappling hook
Throughout a show-and-tell with indie builders, Emlise (the principle dev) confirmed a grappling hook that labored like a bungee rope or rubber band. She carried out unimaginable, loopy maneuvers that made conventional platformer skills like double jumps and dashes appear so restricted. I had by no means seen something like that — grappling hooks in most video games both simply pull you to the anchor level or swing the participant in static arcs.
It seemed so polished that I used to be positive she would develop it right into a full recreation. However she had no plans to. She noticed it as a programming train to study verlet integration (a numerical equation used to calculate trajectories).
“Gamers would discover it too troublesome. It takes a while to get used to,” says Emlise.
Every of us then carried out our responsibility as buddies and peer-pressured her into persevering with improvement. My sister and I additionally joined her, forming our 3-person improvement group. It was unusual as a result of we had no intention of constructing a recreation collectively earlier than that second.
Rusted Moss was made to carry this mechanic to life, not for the sake of constructing a recreation or to go full-time on indie dev (my sister and I work day jobs exterior the sport trade).
I feel its origin gave a purity to Rusted Moss’ basis as a result of there was little doubt as to what sort of recreation it may grow to be. Every little thing would revolve round only one core mechanic — the grappling hook.
Please break our recreation
Synergy with the grappling hook grew to become the main target of Rusted Moss’ recreation design. The talents you acquire all improve the physics-based traversal — whether or not it’s a cost bounce that allows you to fall additional, or the kickback out of your weapons.
This maximizes the chance for participant expression and creativity. Development isn’t primarily based on a easy lock-and-key resolution, which is a design sample typically present in different action exploration video games.
With these synergistic skills, we’ve seen the identical platforming problem solved in 5 other ways. If a participant is artistic, decided, and expert sufficient, they will “break” our recreation and present us strikes we didn’t even take into account throughout Rusted Moss’ improvement.
We took this philosophy to the intense throughout our high quality assurance testing interval. One tester discovered a bug that gave them an unintentional motion capacity. Quite than repair it, we added a visible impact when that capacity is lively. We love seeing our gamers uncover this “secret capacity” in-game.
Uncommon kids
The principle character, Fern, has a pointy and acidic persona. Ladies are sometimes pressured to be good and take into consideration what “good” means to the folks interacting with them. Primarily based on our experiences as an all-female dev group, Fern is an influence fantasy that opposes that narrative, generally to an excessive. She says what she thinks, which is commonly fairly nasty and actually… hilarious!
This aligns together with her identification as a changeling — a fairy that has changed a stolen child. In people tales, kids who acted surprisingly had been recognized as changelings and handled cruelly. These days we would consider them as neurodivergent or uncommon in another manner. We needed to discover themes round kids turning out to be one thing the dad and mom didn’t need or anticipate.
Put together to study all of the methods at Fern’s disposal and possibly uncover some new ones when Rusted Moss launches on PS5 June 20.