A Few New Faces

Hey! What’s up, everyone?  My name is Josh Defries and I’m the new guy here at Choice Provisions.  But I’m not just the new guy, I’m also an artist and when I’m not working hard on art for a character or level asset, I’m usually sinking shots at will from anywhere in the office on our basketball hoop.  For real, I can’t miss.  

Why am I telling you about my basketball skills?  Oh, I don’t know, most likely to remind the person I sit next to how much better I am than he is.  This probably isn’t terribly interesting to you, but I do know something that is, and its Runner3 and the characters that live in its world.

As many of you know the RUNNER universe is filled with an amazing collection of characters and personalities.  Some of them are a little more on the tame side and others not so much (I’m looking at you, Reverse Merman!).  But one thing is clear, they are all fun and bring their own unique flavor to the world.  For Runner3 you will see some familiar faces as well as a few new, and today I wanted to show you one of the latter.

Any clue what her name is?  Who she may or may not be romantically involved with?  Go ahead and speculate in the comments and be sure to check back as we reveal more details about the characters and worlds.

- Josh

It’s Schlörtz Tuesday!

Hey, everyone. I hope our twice-a-week posts have been keeping you entertained. More than that, though, I hope they’ve been increasing your excitement for Runner3. 

Today’s post is a new take on an old favorite. Many of you likely remember Schlörtz from Runner2, most notably as the preferred beverage of Bigfoot. Well, you may be chuffed to hear that the Schlörtz brand is doing better than ever, and you can expect to see it make a serious comeback in Runner3!

Here’s a sneak peek of everyone’s favorite Premium Malt Fluid:

The cans may be a little rusty, but the beverage inside is surely no worse for the wear.  Much like Twinkies, Schlörtz never goes bad. Our lawyers won't allow us to say why that is, but you can trust us when we say it's all on the up and up.

While I have your attention, I’d also like to mention that we’ll be announcing something appropriately spooky about the game next week. Does Monday work for everyone? 

Stay tuned!

- Dant

Let's get the juices flow'n...

DISCLAIMER: I would like to point out that this is some of the first imagery that we are sharing. It's a screenshot in-engine--this means that there are no post-rendering effects, you can see the engine widgets, and of course you can see the placeholder art in the background. In other words: Don't consider what you see here to be final art in any way!

As my nasty little "hombre" Alex said in his post last week, we are beginning to find the fun! This has been quite a process and we are going in FULL blast! 

We wanted to share this image, because it showcases some of the things we have talked about in our past posts. You can see our path splitting up and down and a curving path going off down another route. We can also see our old friend THE MOON peeking in on his friend Commandervideo. 

This is a very small slice of what we have planned for Runner3. In fact, we are VERY excited to share what lies beyond that sand dune, because it's part of the game's special dipping sauce...

Any guesses as to what it is we're hinting at here? Feel free to speculate in the comments so that we may respond with cryptic-yet-friendly replies!

-Mike

Friends Both Old and New

When we announced Runner3, we said in no uncertain terms that the game was going to introduce some big changes to the RUNNER series. We still stand by that statement, but we've also realized it may have given some people a scare. We totally get it, which is why we wanted to share a familiar face with you all in today’s post.

If you've played Runner2, then perhaps you remember this beautiful, gleaming face watching your every movement in the Supernature:

You see that look? That’s the look of reassurance, right there. We want Runner3 to be big and new and exciting and surprising, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bring a few old pals along for the ride!

- Dant

Finding the Fun - The Beginning

You'd think that after making RUNNER and Runner2, we'd already know exactly what to do to make Runner3 the powerful jab jab that it deserves to be.

We've been making frantic and fun sidescrolling auto-running games since before the genre even existed. We've got RUNNER, Runner2, all the retro levels in those games, and the addictive free-to-play Go! Go! CommanderVideo behind us.

So, slam dunk, right?

Well... as my incredibly handsome and pleasantly aromatic business partner Mike Roush pointed out in his most recent post, we're not content with just making a bigger/better sidescrolling auto-runner. We are plagued by always wanting to try something new. It's in our delicious essence. With the original BIT.TRIP series, each game was a distinct genre, with a wholly new gameplay style (except, arguably FLUX). And after Runner2, we went on to make Tharsis and Laserlife as well as several other smaller projects in our quest for new challenges. 

So for Mike and I, making sequels is somewhat problematic, which he talked about last week. 

And that's why we spent the first couple months of development prototyping a level that had the beginnings of each new feature we wanted to fart around with.

We started by playing a lot of Runner2 and drawing what we wanted our Runner3 prototype to be on a giant ream of paper in our war room.

Like any prototype, you find some things that work well, and others that are best left to the cutting room floor. 

Here's some of what we learned:

What tickled our funglands:

  • Changing CommanderVideo's speed
  • Interesting use of camera animations
  • Riding vehicles in frantic, short bursts
  • Runner2-style gameplay
  • Changing the music tempo
  • A few multiple paths

What gave us mind-herpes:

  • Drastic camera animations
  • Long over-the-shoulder gameplay sections
  • Long vehicle sections
  • Super long levels
  • Lots of multiple paths

By focusing on what we liked from the prototype, we've moved on to actually making the game. Hopefully the new sauce will be special enough and will keep the series as fresh as those ridiculous Garden Sausages we all know so well.

It's going to be a wild ride, and if you follow this devlog, you'll be along for a good part of it.

- Alex