How Rusted Moss Developers Collaborated to Create Physics-Based Grappling Action – PlayStation.Blog

Rusted Moss is an action exploration game developed by solo individuals (not affiliated with any development studio) that revolves around its unusual method of movement: a grappling hook that bounces to an absurd degree. We won’t lie: physics-based grappling will bring you both great pain and great joy. But victory will come when you master it — you’ll virtually fly through the game while slaying enemies with your arsenal when Rusted Moss arrives on PS5 on June 20.

In this melancholy world, humans prepare for an invasion by capricious fairies from another realm. You play as Fern, a changeling determined to end the war. As you explore the story behind the world, will you ultimately choose a side: elves or humans?

With the PS5 release, we’re also adding seven to eight hours of additional content — almost as much content as the base game itself. This includes new areas (ranging from medium to very difficult), boss levels, and an additional playable character.

A unique grappling hook

During a presentation to indie developers, Emlise (lead developer) introduced a grappling hook that works like a bungee cord or rubber band. She pulled off crazy, amazing moves that made traditional platforming abilities like double jumps and dashes seem very limited. I’ve never seen anything like it – the grappling hook in most games just pulls you to an anchor point or rotates the player in a static arc.

It looks so slick that I’m sure she’ll develop it into a full game. But she had no plans. She considered this a programming exercise to learn about verlet integrals (a numerical equation used to calculate orbits).

“Players will find it too difficult. It took some getting used to, says Emlise.

Then we each did our duty as friends and pressured her to keep going. My sister and I also joined her, forming a 3-person development team. It was strange because we had no intention of making a game together before that point.

Rusted Moss was created to bring this mechanic to life, not for the sake of making a game or being a full-time indie developer (my sister and I work daily jobs). days outside the games industry).

I think its origins brought purity to Rusted Moss’s foundation because there was no doubt about what kind of game it could be. Everything will revolve around one core mechanic – the grappling hook.

Let’s break our game

Synergy with the grappling hook has been central to Rusted Moss’s game design. All of the abilities you gain enhance physics-based movement – whether it’s a dash jump that makes you fall further or a kickback from your gun.

This maximizes players’ opportunities for expression and creativity. Progression does not rely on a simple lock and key solution, which is a common design pattern in other action exploration games.

With these combined capabilities, we’ve seen the same platform challenge solved in five different ways. If players are creative, determined, and skilled enough, they can “break” our game and show us moves we didn’t even consider during the development of Rusted Moss. .

We have applied this philosophy to its fullest extent throughout our quality assurance testing. A tester found a bug that gave them the ability to move unintentionally. Instead of fixing it, we added a visual effect when that skill is activated. We love seeing players discover these “secret abilities” in the game.

Unusual children

The main character Fern has a sharp and bitter personality. Women are often pressured to be nice and think about what “nice” means to those who interact with them. Based on our experiences as an all-female development team, Fern is a power fantasy character who opposes that narrative, sometimes to the extreme. She says what she thinks, which is often quite annoying and honestly…hilarious!

This is consistent with her identity as a changeling – a fairy who took the place of a stolen baby. In folk tales, children who act strangely are considered changelings and treated cruelly. Today we might consider them different nervous systems or unusual in some way. We wanted to explore themes around children turning out to be what the parents didn’t want or expect.

Prepare to learn all the tricks Fern has up her sleeve, and maybe discover some new ones when Rusted Moss launches on PS5 on June 20.