The time is flying (and so are the jetpacks and tulip snakes) (Patreon)

Hello, it's an exciting time, so here is a progress report on what's going on.

Tulip Snakes

If we're going with chronological order, it makes sense to start with the tulip snakes. Their concept art is already in the previous post. The original idea was simply a critter that scurries around in the grass. I specifically wanted to replicate those moments in real life where you see something like a snake or lizard suddenly move from its position, which makes a lot of rustling noise and can cause you to jump.

I don't think that's what the tulip snakes really became though, because I'd been keeping two other ideas in my mind for way too long.

Idea #1 was of a silly gremlin that latches onto you and deals some kind of status effect. Very early on, the idea was that it jumps onto your back and only increases your weight by a couple pounds; the funny part is that you yourself would not know it was on you until other players saw it. I never got around to making this, because it would be a lot of work for a simple gag. The second variant of this idea was that many gremlins could jump on you and weigh you down considerably--but this would just be annoying after the joke was over.

Idea #2 was of a giant bird-like enemy that could grab you and fly you up into the air before dropping you (like some actual birds of prey.) This could easily have been an enemy similar to the bees which protects an egg in a nest. And maybe that idea is still on the cards. But since we combined these two ideas, we now have something more unique and absurd which subverts the most obvious idea of an annoying weight penalty.

Jetpacks

For the tulip snakes I had to make adjustments to the jetpack physics code, so I took this opportunity to fix some issues with the jetpack. I had also been wanting to address the fact that it is far too easy to pilot the jetpack; the original intent of the jetpack is that it has an incredible use case, so it should be dangerous and challenging to drive.

The reaction I saw to this was so bitter that, to be honest, it rubbed off on me. So I flippantly dropped whatever I was doing with the jetpack and moved on, leaving it as it used to be.

But I made Lethal Company by doing whatever I personally thought was the most fun. If I couldn't do that anymore, I'd end up finishing Lethal Company ASAP so I can move on and make something else. So I'll just do what I think is fun from now on. I'm also probably not going to release updates to the public beta, so things will be as they were before.

All that aside, I found it more fun and impressive to fly low between buildings and trees rather than through the sky. So by limiting the jetpack's fuel and upward acceleration, I was trying to encourage that without forcing it in every instance. I did see some players recognize this, but it was not enough. So I'm working on something new which may replace the jetpack (at least at its price) and be more interesting. This new thing will follow in the footsteps of the jetpack by totally breaking everything and requiring me to make new systems!

(Maybe due to its high price and absurdity, many players treat the jetpack as the current "win condition" of Lethal Company? I wouldn't really want to drag down the victory of soaring straight up into the sky and exploding like a firework.)

The Dark Place is growing

I took a break to work on Welcome To The Dark Place. I undusted the project pretty quickly and began filling out the map only as much I need to get the game finished, adding some new boundaries to the world to cut off large amounts of space I was probably never going to fill.

Welcome To The Dark Place really is like a zombie at this point. It's come out of the grave like three times. This time was different though, because it's been 4 whole years since there has been real, serious progress like this. This time around, I had to change some of the dialogue and writing of more serious moments, since in some cases I actually found it quite immature and vague. (So I'm glad I didn't release it back in 2019.)

In other places, WttDP simply made predictions or statements about my life that were wrong, flat out. So rather than burn it down, I'm building new places, decision paths, and characters in the world to respond to the previous ideas. This may sound confusing; you just need to understand that one of Welcome To The Dark Place's greatest themes is about the future and about uncertainty. So as time went on, it gained yet another layer of meta-commentary on itself. It grew up.