Sunday Funnies: The inspirations behind Nightmare Fiends' Mushroom Forest
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 04:58:45 PM
Happy Sunday backers!
Welcome to the second part of our series on the comic inspirations of some of our levels. In the last episode, we covered the Little Nemo in Slumberland comics that will inspire our Night Sky level. This time, we want to explore some of the inspirations for our Mushroom Forest level, and how we're incorporating elements of the comics into our gameplay (Warning: some of the comics in today's update feature McCay's "Impie" character, so content warning for racial caricature.)
For us right now, this level is super-important, because it is the level that we'll be working with for the next few months as we make our "vertical slice" - the very polished demo of a small portion of a game that developers use to establish the workflow for their whole project.
Early concepts
The Mushroom Forest was one of the earliest areas that we talked about - the second piece of concept art that we created for the game. The classic "all mushroom" version is one of the earliest and most famous episodes of the Little Nemo comics, where Nemo is tasked with walking through a forest of huge mushrooms to reach Slumberland.
The comic is the first one where McCay would use his staircase panel layout, where panels on the second tier grow taller and downward, and the third tier has panels that grow shorter, down to the size of the "wake up!" panel. Since this is early in the strip, it falls within the "can Nemo get to Slumberland?" arc, where every week Nemo tried some new way to reach the Princess. In this one, he's asked to not touch the sensitive mushrooms or they will fall. McCay used the panel size in the second tier to introduce the scale of the forest, then used the collapsing size of the frames on the third tier to make the collapsing mushrooms feel more claustrophobic.
So first of all, this level needed mushrooms! Not just mushrooms though, falling mushrooms that challenged players. Falling mushrooms allows us to utilize a platforming video game classic: falling platforms.
We've got some of these objects implemented in the game and set up to collapse with the same segmented effect that McCay uses in the comics. We'll keep updating these as we continue to hone these features.
Beyond McCay's Mushroom Forest
That first Mushroom Forest was not the only time that McCay took Nemo to forest-like environments. In the comics, the area immediately surrounding Morpheus's Palace is usually depicted as being heavily forested, so we decided to incorporate elements of several forests throughout Little Nemo.
One of the first we talked about was the forest that Nemo and friends are sent to in the September 8, 1907 episode of Little Nemo in Slumberland, which introduces the characters we've called the "Forest Giants" (content warning for racial caricature.)
In the following comic, the giants are shown to wield trees like clubs as they chase Nemo, Flip, and Impie. We wanted to incorporate these characters as monsters that would slam down their clubs from the background of the stage and into the foreground. This gives us a visually interesting mechanic to base areas of the level around.
In level design, I think it's fun to create drama by adding elements that give the player "one more thing" to keep track of as they play. With the giants, we can create a straightforward area where the player only has to avoid the giants' clubs (as shown above), but we can also start to pair them with other enemies and obstacles to "juice" the idea and make interesting combinations.
Peony's proving ground
As we currently have the game laid out, the Mushroom Forest will be the second level that players visit. It will also be where Peony officially joins the player's team. For this reason, the level will feature lots of places where we'll demonstrate Peony's abilities: her wall and ceiling cling as well as her bomb attack.
One element we're toying around with is the Love Birds from the October 29, 1905 episode of Little Nemo in Slumberland, where Nemo has to walk in stilts over a field of thorny plants to reach Slumberland, and is interrupted by love-stricken birds who walk on stilt-like legs.
This feature is early in development, but the idea is to use the birds as friendly creatures who will walk Nemo and friends over fields of brambles on their long legs. It also gives us opportunities to pair this mechanic with Peony's wall and ceiling climb: players can use Peony to reach areas where they will be able to jump or drop onto the Love Bird's heads and progress over brambles.
Of course, there will also be our bosses, the Pie Eaters, the clowns who try to eat Nemo and his friend Bon Bon in the Little Nemo strip from February 25, 1906. Grappling with these monsters leads Nemo and Popcorn, a royal attendant, to be locked out of Slumberland until the gates open again the following Sunday.
These creepy clowns will guard the path to Slumberland during the player's first trip to the Mushroom Forest level and attack by leaping around the stage (subject to change.) Think of them as similar to Goopy Le Grande from Cuphead or the Bobbins Bros. from the SNES game Plok.
The current plan is to have them fight Nemo and friends in a duo (one clown with red polka dots and another with blue.) Peony's ability to drop bombs behind her will let her leave traps for the clowns as they leap around the stage.
These guys are already kind of terrible, so of course when they Nightmare Fiends offer them expanded powers to take on Nemo and friends, they gladly accept! What trouble will their new monstrous forms cause for Nemo?
That's all for this episode of the Sunday Funnies! Are you looking forward to playing the Mushroom Forest level? We'll keep you updated as this quickly-developing environment goes into development this Summer!
That's all for today! As always, see you in the funny papers!
Chris and Team Nemo
