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rip working for the knife

As we said like a dozen times in the playthrough, I don't think it's much of an issue that like, players can acquire so much power. From the old days of TES: Arena's magic crafting system, to modern roguelikes, players have enjoyed earning significant power, especially within a system that gatekeeps it from them. Like, lets analyze what Working for the Knife does, gameplay wise - 
you need a significant amount of money for it to start to eclipse the other 3 characters, damage wise, to the tune of a few thousand dollars. In addition, it soft locks you out of using Ramona's other skills, or at least, you can't use them AND get the boosted damage from the weapon effect. Not only this, it significantly handicaps your spending; this means while you have Ramona cracked out, your ability to do things like purchase gachas is limited. This creates an interesting inverse of the usual build, where Ramona is the main lead on DPS, and the rest of the team is playing support, and creates new issues with stuff like confusion that are mechanically interesting. But as high as the ceiling for working for the knife gets, its no easier, faster, or more busted than simply dropping the money on artifact gachas and using Ramona 'normally.' Adding a cap like this only removes a possible avenue for power and a playstyle. 

Yeeah, sorry for being late with a reply, I've had a bunch of stuff in mind. I've been thinking on this, and yeah, this was too big of a change to make. How else could Zoey accidentally kill Ramona's friends without confused Working for the Knife shenanigans

In general I've been thinking about a rebalanced endgame that encourages getting super busted lately... maybe a proper hard mode where you're required to go nutty with things...

I think a hard mode would be wonderful if you felt like devoting the dev time. I'm not sure how much it would really take, but I think current endgame is maaaaybe fine? It's hard to say, I'm not sure how apparent the really broken stuff would be to someone that isn't trying to approach the game from that angle, but adjusting the endgame might not be a bad idea. The starting the game on your first playthrough is already fairly challenging, and cranking it up for the very end might just be in line with the intended narrative experience! I do think it's fine as is tho and hard mode is the preferable option here. Getting to trivialize end game stuff is the reward for meta-gaming, increasing difficulty too much could offput a more casual player. A hard mode however, presents a challenge for those who want it! You can get brutal outside of the fights too if u wanna script an event or two - like the landlord coming out at random overworld chance for a down payment on your rent, and taking all your money.