The Version 55 post! (Patreon)

Hi, I'm sorry it's been almost a month; I basically missed two posts at this point.

In the last post I mentioned that the release date announcement was to serve as a deadline to motivate me, and it absolutely worked (in the last week.) Now I'm focused on keeping this momentum, so the next update will come within less than a month. The downside is that V55's beta got released in a somewhat rushed state, but the only real indicator of that is that the Kidnapper Fox's AI (along with the logic that generates its Vain shrouds) was a little undercooked.

The CC

The Company Cruiser, on the other hand, went about as well as I had hoped. Just six hours before I released the beta, I finally decided to make trees destructible, and this actually resulted in no issues related to performance as far as I've been able to tell. This, the ability to rock the car in any direction by pressing Space, and the warranty system have made the truck almost viable on a few moons. However I still haven't gotten great use out of transporting items in the truck, since we always die the moment we step inside the facility. The only moon for which I may change the terrain to accommodate the truck is Artifice, since it's almost impossible to drive the truck up next to the ship in a hurry. (Although if you kept the magnet on and ready, it might not be impossible.)

I've been kind of amused by the disappointed reactions of people who expected the Company Cruiser to behave like a Fortnite car. Because it's pretty clear Lethal Company isn't about empowering the player... yet I kind of intended the Company Cruiser to subvert those expectations. The commercial I made for it was feeding into that. The name itself is practically false advertising, because this hunk of metal does anything but "cruise". In some ways your reaction to the Company Cruiser is like a test of whether you understand what this game is about. If you get the Company Cruiser, you get Lethal Company.

The Kidnapper Fox

The Kidnapper fox is one of my favorite enemy concepts. Its idea is very unique and ridiculously complex, because it is like two enemies were in development at the same time and then fused together.

I'm currently in a renaissance of creature ideas because I figured out a meme-like formula for drawing concept art that just works. Perhaps it's because it makes me focus less on the drawing. Perhaps it's because the silly, humble meme depiction of it makes me more affectionate for the idea.

Here's the first enemy. This was one of those concepts from early times--perhaps even before development began, since it's inspired by Duskers.

I decided to try it out, because I loved the idea of landing on a planet which has already been completely overtaken by the fungus before you even got there. The idea of persistent changes to moons is very exciting because it gives more distinctiveness and character to each run and further complicates your choices on where to land.

Then at the same time, there was this idea which I hadn't cracked:

Now you can see the "aha" moment I had. For a long time I had pictured an enemy which runs into the ship and just outright grabs a player and runs off with them still alive, like some kind of King Kong. But I couldn't make sense of this behavior because I didn't know where the creature would run to and what it would do to the player afterwards. I also didn't know what you would do to counter the creature. The weeds are the perfect answer, because they limit the enemy to a certain territory (which gradually expands over the course of days), and they make sense of the creature's behavior and give it a way to be cunning.

I still think the Kidnapper fox's appearance is a little too cute, since I wanted it to be scary and intimidating without being pitifully gross and nasty--I wanted it to be kind of badass, since it's inspired by real-life predator animals like cougars, as well as the xenomorph. I think its design hasn't quite scratched that itch, but I am satisfied with its sound effects and animations. In solo testing I found it too timid, but I had a suspicion it would become an evil bloodthirsty gremlin. That seems to be the road it took when it was unleashed upon the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdognFuVRlQ

The Barber

The Barber has no concept art. It came about while I was developing the Kidnapper fox because I had an idea that the fox would snap your body into two halves with its jaws, like a pair of scissors. But in order to make this make sense, it would have needed to look like a crocodile, and I didn't want to do that. So I took this death animation and used it for a new enemy that would hold a pair of scissors and snip you in half. That's about it, and the other mechanics about it being invisible and moving quickly but in bursts (inspired by Baldi from Baldi's Basics?) were an after-thought. I might make changes to this enemy's design still, such as making it faster but removing the invisibility. If I can come up with a better visual design for its body that works well to explain why it has a pair of scissors and marches to a parade drum, I would probably change that part of its design, but it's not a big deal to me. It's kind of a bonus to this update.

I'm maybe the happiest I have been all year, and I have big plans for the next update. There's at least three creature mechanics I am trying to work out, and I'm planning an excess of new scrap. I also want to add new interiors, and maybe I'll finally get to that. Version 55 was very much a quality over quantity sort of update, so I'm excited to move on from these few big additions and release another update that feels like a comprehensive package.