I have been making conceptual progress on my game Inferno of Anger 2 with the only recent physical progress being an animation, because I had enough of using graphical assets from 2008 that I plain disliked. So in any case, I'm basically restarting the game, oops. I believe I only worked on the game's code base since February for a week before ditching it until now. So I don't think there's that much of a loss.

The idea has always been to make Pan run around, dating chicks (based on twentieth century historical figures in China) and earning their love by taking them to self-gladiatorial feats of zombie-pounding under the dark dreamy moonlight. But the game's concept when it came to the main narrative and how the game would progress. I didn't want something like a time period before you get slammed the ending.

I was juggling the idea of missions handed out by an elder, but I decided to settle on a sort of Metrovania system where the world is there for the player to explore.

The village with all the love interests would be positioned in the main hub to the game's world. The "hub" itself would be something akin to Geryon Hill in PS2 Rygar. A level in its own right, but with many branches to and fro in it. I believe that a sort of center hub is the best way to approach a Metrovania. I believe one example of it exists in SoTN's Marble Gallery. It leads to Outer Wall, another sort of connector area, the Underground Cavern, Olrox's Quarters, and the Alchemy Lab.

It's great. SoTN's had great flow. Despite being a metrovania, it was pretty blunt on where to go (for the first castle). But that's okay. It had such great rhythmic and flowing enemy placement allowing it to maintain the combat emphasis of its classic precursors. I'm hoping to employ that type of design idea in IoA2. It should be pretty interesting to implement given the more brawn, crowd-clearing, combo combat mechanics in IoA2.

Though in contrast with SoTN, I'm hoping to encourage a lot of enemy exploitation and sequence breaking. For that, I guess I have to make a pretty nonlinear story. I'm still thinking how I would do that. I'm guessing most of the story would be subtle hints or vague discoveries, even if just in the background and not addressed in a cutscene. The only linear and story-heavy part will probably be the recap of the first game if anything.

Additionally, while the successful dating offer Pan new weapons, I decided I should also include secret martial art scrolls that would teach Pan new moves to reward players for exploration. They would be input sequences akin to fighting games, while the weapons offered by dating would be assigned its own button. I am thinking that these martial art scrolls would allow Pan to learn moves that are puns on cinema.

Like Werner Hurtlog.