Introducing Sadbot

Hey everyone! As those of you who subscribe to Nintendo Force may have heard, we’ve announced a new playable character! 

Feast your eyes on Sadbot: 

Sadbot is a new character, and I think it’s pretty obvious where it got its name from.* There’s plenty to be said about this mysterious creature, but we think we’ll wait until closer to the game's release before delving into that.

In the meantime, I would like to reiterate that Runner3 will feature faces both old and new. If you fear change, stay tuned! We’ll be talking more about some familiar faces in the near future…

*If you were made up of empty cans and other scraps, you’d be sad, too. 

End-of-Year Tidings for YOU

Get your bodies ready, because we’re about to zap some holiday wishes directly into your faces at the end of this trying year.

No matter who you are, what you believe in, what gender you identify as, or how you voted, we believe that there’s common ground with room enough for all of us to stand upon. 

That common ground is a passion for having fun. 

We make games because we understand and enjoy the mammalian need for amusement and joy. What a wonderful thing to be able to peddle and make your living doing. At our offices, we try to have fun as we make fun. 

Fun for you to enjoy. 

In fact, if you recall, in an earlier post, we shared one of our pillars of development with you. Here it is, in case you need your memory refreshed:

"Runner3 needs to be a joyous experience in every moment--both in the game, and during its creation.”

Our holiday wish to you is that you can carry the core of that pillar into your 2017. If all of us bring a little joy with us wherever we go, the world will be a richer place. 

Recently, we had the rare opportunity to have our whole team together in the same place; sort of for the holidays, but also to help finish off a milestone. 

Here’re some shots of the team that will soon bring you an utterly fantastic, silly, ridiculous, beautiful, and fun game. 

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Runner3 will be riding the smiles of the above lovely individuals directly into your funglands next year.

See you on the flippy-poo-poo…

-Alex and Mike

You'd be hard-pressed to find anything festive about this creepy chair

The holiday season is well underway, which means it's probably time for us to share something fun and festive with you! Unfortunately, when I asked around, I was told we didn't have anything with sugar plums, mistletoe, reindeer, or even a tin filled with stale popcorn. This is why I've decided to post this creepy chair instead:

There’s probably something festive about this image, but I just can’t see what. Do you have any ideas? Better yet, do you have any guesses as to what this image says about Spookyland? Let us know!

Oh, and happy holidays! 

Going out with a BANG!

Our sweet and supple Producer, Dant Rambo, tells me that I have a devlog post to write today.

So, I’ll tell y’all what I’m working on at the moment.

You remember the cannon micro-game after you got a Perfect run in Runner2, right?

The anticipation is killing me!

In Runner3, we’re going to be giving this simple and infuriating micro-game a bit more funjuice.

While we all loved the elegant simplicity of the feature the first time around (insert scream here when you miss the bullseye while going for a Perfect+), it could get somewhat repetitive if you were trying to Triple Perfect+ the whole game.

So for Runner3, each playable character is going to have their own distinct target micro-game! 

The barfening out of creativity.

The biggest challenge here is to keep the micro-game as simple as it was in Runner2 for each character’s variation while at the same time making them all distinct from one another.

In game design, one often has to work within constraints, but when the constraints are so simplistic, as in this cannon micro-game, and you have to make so many variations, the constraints can feel overly restrictive. 

It’s also easy to overdesign while thinking you’re keeping things simple. In fact, one of the designs on the whiteboard above is definitely too complex. Which one do you think it is?

The constraints we ended up settling upon were that the micro-game takes one button press, there’s no on-screen HUD telling you what to do, and there’s only one thing moving in each variation. Once we settled on these constraints and made them explicit, the designs fell into place.

So, when you get your fingerhands on Runner3 next year, and you’re trying for an elusive Perfect+, you’ll get to choose which micro-game you want by playing as a specific character.

Now, who are all these characters…

A Crate of Monstrous Proportions

Hey, everyone!

Thanksgiving has come and gone, but most of our bodies are still filled with pie, turkey, potatoes, and determination. It’s the latter item which has inspired me to write today’s blog post and share with you all a creature we lovingly refer to around the office as the “crate monster”:

As you can see, this strange creature has taken up residence inside an empty Schlörtz crate, like a bizarre, landlubberly hermit crab. The fact that it lives in a box makes me think it values its privacy, which I’m going to try and respect here. 

I’m sure you have millions of questions about this odd monster, but as noted above, I really do think it would prefer to just be left alone. Let’s talk about something else in the comments. Maybe you have some guesses as to what the other worlds of Runner3 will be? Or perhaps you have a theory about what CommanderVideo and friends are up to in this game? Let’s discuss it in the comments!

Just please keep questions and comments about this creature to a minimum. 

- Dant