Bugsnax's Final Showdown Once Included a Tower Defense Mechanic

IGN spoke with Bugsnax Creative Director Kevin Zuhn about how Bugsnax's ending went through some dramatic shifts, originally including a darker ending and some twists that didn't quite settle into the rest of the game's themes. And while diving into the major story changes that occurred throughout development, Zuhn also explained how some mechanical shifts also occurred. And perhaps most notably, the final showdown in the game's Grumpus village was once quite different from what players experience in the final game. Namely, it looked a lot more like a brand-new tower defense game. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/11/09/bugsnax-review"] Spoilers for the ending of Bugsnax follow. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Zuhn explained how, in the original script's ending, the player mostly makes their way back from the UnderSnax, only to have the fate of the other Grumpuses be decided by the amount of Bugsnax they had eaten. There wasn't even much players did at that point. “As far as the way that the ending worked mechanically, this is something we also struggled with for a long time because you cannot catch Bugsnax after learning the truth from Lizbert, that can't be a mechanic anymore because you're not going to feed anyone deliberately.” Instead, in the final version, players defend Snaktooth Village and the Grumpuses, using the various tools they’ve become familiar with throughout the game to defend against waves and waves of Bugsnax. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-ps5-games&captions=true"] The idea was actually even more elaborate at one point, with Zuhn explaining how a sort of Bugsnax tower defense game was introduced at this point in the adventure, and it was actually quite robust. “John Murphy, he designed most of the Bugsnax behavior patterns and systems of the game. He was working on, effectively, a tower defense mode. The early versions of it were, you had a big central location and Bugsnax were coming from every direction. We scaled back on that because it was a little too demanding and hectic for a thing that you have just learned how to do,” Zuhn explained. “You can't have a tutorial for this because it's the end of the game.” Instead, the attack on the village became a little simpler, but still informed by all of the adventure that preceded it. “We wanted to keep it down to dealing with a couple of characters at a time just to make the scope manageable for the amount of things that could happen, especially in terms of whether characters make it or don't,” Zuhn said. “One of the difficulties with the big tower defense mode was, if a character died, you couldn't stop to pay attention to that because too much was already happening. And it felt like people were just silently dropping and that's not thematically resonant.” For more, be sure to read our full deep dive with Zuhn on Bugsnax's major changes. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jonathon Dornbush is IGN's Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

source https://www.ign.com/articles/bugsnaxs-final-showdown-once-included-a-new-tower-defense-mechanic