Developer Commentary: Spiky Situation

Thanks for playing my stage, Roahm! I'm thankful it went smoother for you than it seems to for most people.

So, about this stage. The very first thing you need to know (that you probably figured out immediately) is that I play I Wanna be the Guy fangames. I've beaten 300 of them by now, and even made a couple. ...I'm not weird, I swear.

I made this stage pretty much to pander to myself. Just because I felt like making a stage vaguely themed around what I was playing a lot at the time. Even the music "came" from a fangame. (In the sense that I found out about the track because a fangame used it, specifically I Wanna be the 8-Bit.) Originally, I did consider having traps or trigger platforming to make it more akin to the original IWBTG, but I canned that idea quickly (as in, as soon as I thought about it for more than... say... twenty seconds), figuring that it wouldn't have gone down well whatsoever. Good thing I did. Especially given I expected my stage to be down around Tier 2 or 3 solely due to being based on IWBTG. I was not confident in my design skills, and was very pleasantly surprised I ranked as high as I did. In fact, it's kind of a joke between me and someone else in the MaGMML 3 Discord that we form the "Ended Up Higher Than We Deserved To Be" Club.

My design tends to be more obstacle-focused than enemy-focused, which you likely noticed as the stage progressed as the enemy numbers started to decrease. (I'm not counting the ones I made invincible because they're pretty much obstacles at that point.)

I also considered having my stage start when Under Construction - my entry from MaGMML 1 - left off, but I couldn't really think of anything to do with it. I kept the Needle Man tileset in the first half, though, just because it was the simplest tileset I liked the look of and could use easily. The whole "needle" joke doesn't hurt either. For reference, "needle" can be used as a replacement for the word "spike", especially in the Asian fangame community. They're both pointy and they hurt, why not.

The brown moving platforms are essentially resprited Crash Man platforms, and were originally broken in the version the judges received by having them solid on all sides rather than just the top. This made at least one room in particular nigh-impossible without utilities. It probably is possible with the broken platforms, but I wouldn't know. Yay, insertion errors?

Speaking of the brown platforms, I am so happy you did the final room on the first attempt, because that is the cause a lot of people's complaints about this stage: that there should've been another checkpoint closer to the final room. Looking back on it, I can completely understand.

The bosses... to be honest, I'm kinda proud of them. I shouldn't be, given they're actually really simple code-wise, but I'm happy with how they turned out.

The Kid originally planned to have an attack where he periodically shoots a regular bullet alongside the fruit every few seconds or so once at 25% health or below, but I couldn't figure out how to code it in and I eventually decided that omitting it wouldn't be a big loss. I am slightly annoyed at the intense good RNG you got during the trap after the boss though. Stand still strats work for you, apparently. :V

And then there's the extra boss, the Avoidance Cherry. I'm happier with this than I should be. It's objectively poorly designed but plenty of people have found it fun... and I'm pretty sure at least one person has called it one of their favourite bosses in the game, which is confusing to me.

The Avoidance Cherry is a remake (reimagining?) of an existing (in)famous avoidance from the community called "I Wanna Touch the Entrance". It's essentially 100 seconds of fast projectiles at random angles and I decided to recreate it. Why?

Well, I wanted an avoidance boss just to see how people would react to it, and this was the shortest one I could think of. Plus, all the other notable avoidance bosses I could think to remake used Vocaloid songs as their background music (the very first avoidance was, so the rest of us followed!) and I wasn't sure how the judges would feel about SUDDENLY VOCALS!

...Okay, maybe Pyro might have liked it, but the rest, no clue. Perhaps some raised eyebrows or something.

I appreciated how you seemed to be impressed by the whole "synchronising to the music" thing. Maybe I'm spoiled by other avoidances, but that kind of thing is a staple and what separates a simple "survival boss" from an avoidance. Maybe that's why people like it so much? I couldn't tell you.

Wow this went on for a while. o.o; I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has if they want to know more! (And... provided I remember what making this stage was like...)