Making the Rusted Moss Not-Sequel (A semi Rusted Moss post-mortem/Iron Bramble pre-vita)

This post is probably more interesting to those that have played Rusted Moss and are interested in how Iron Bramble came to be and what changes might be seen.

A few years ago, everybody on our team (Mini Bunnies) was involved in some way with Rusted Moss’ development. Rusted Moss came out, we all moved to different projects and felt we were leaving grappling hook game behind. Clearly that wasn’t really the case as we ended up revisiting Rusted Moss several times after release and added more than 8+ hours of additional content.

Even throughout developing Rusted Moss’ DLC, I remember speaking to Emlise about what we would do if we made another grappling hook game. Our conversations would always go something like this: “Well, we obviously don’t want to do a sequel... But IF we were to make grappling game 2, what would it look like?“

Iron Bramble is what grappling game 2 would look like. Not a sequel but still something that shares Rusted Moss’ DNA.

Why not a sequel?

Boring answer but we felt a sequel implies you have to play the previous game. You don’t have to play Rusted Moss before Iron Bramble!

Iron Bramble’s story is different; it isn’t a continuation. Though I guess there isn’t a strict rule that says games in the same series need to have a story or even universe in common (cough Final Fantasy cough).

Rusted Moss is Iron Bramble’s Template

Rusted Moss is a very unique metroidvania because it was built around an unconventional physics-based movement system. Our movement system was made before we even had any intention of making a game. We made a game so we had something to attach our movement system to. It wasn’t built with the intention to further the metroidvania genre or to emulate existing metroidvanias. It was built for its own sake.

I also don’t mean for that statement to come across as disparaging to other games! Sometimes, I notice people call some indie metroidvanias “Hollow Knight clones“. Personally, I see nothing wrong with taking inspiration from existing games. If I enjoy a game, I’d love to play other games that are emulating the same formula. (Rusted Moss also wears its Rain World inspiration on its sleeve!)

I only bring up our creative intention to illustrate a certain difficulty we came across that more conventional metroidvanias can avoid. After all, if one is developing a metroidvania because one wants to make a metroidvania, there is a lot of genre convention to fall back on; there’s no reason not to. Problems that rise up might already have been solved by genre masterpieces and there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. You would know how past games ability-gate areas. You would have a list of upgrades that go beautifully together (double-jumps, dashes etc.). You would have favourite boss fights to reference.

We had to come up with our own standards.

Level design was really tough because we couldn’t approach it like we were designing a precision platformer. The physics-based movement of Rusted Moss gave such great variation that we never felt it made sense to have “intended solutions“; players in our game have the freedom to do a lot. Boss fights were also difficult to design because we weren’t able to copy what worked for other games due to our unconventional movement. It took a lot of trial and error during development to begin moving towards cat-mouse styled chases and larger arenas.

I think what is exciting about working on Iron Bramble is that Rusted Moss can now be that template we were missing. We learned a lot from Rusted Moss’ development and managed to develop our own conventions so not everything needs to get re-made from scratch. Players from Rusted Moss can tell how our improvisational our development was, especially from the DLC areas. Emlise’s lighting system made later zones look so much better to a jarring level (And of course we are using that same system for Iron Bramble so the whole game can have that great look).

Rusted Moss vs. Iron Bramble (Changes in our approach…)

1) Early pacing

In hindsight, if we made Rusted Moss again, we would have just made the player start with the grappling hook. We didn’t design it that way because the rooms before the grappling hook were meant as a soft “tutorial“ on moving, shooting, and healing. However, the grappling hook is the main meat of our game. It shouldn’t have been treated like an upgrade. By keeping it locked behind the first boss, we made the early game a bit of a slog - especially on repeat playthroughs. Also, I think most of our players play similar games. We didn’t need to spend so much time just going over the basics.

2) Tutorialisation of gun recoil

In Rusted Moss, we did not tutorialise gun recoil (until much later in the optional late-game platforming challenge). We wanted players to have that moment of delight/discovery when they figured out they could rocket jump. I think that kind of delight is diminished whenever a game spells something out for you. Our lack of tutorial predictably resulted in some players never figuring out rocket jumping. It was something that we expected and were okay with. After all, we purposely made it possible to finish the game with just the base upgrades.

Iron Bramble does tutorialise gun recoil. It isn’t because we changed our minds and decided Rusted Moss needed more tutorials. There is merit in letting players experiment and figure things out. However, we wanted to even out playing field for Iron Bramble. Gun recoil helps difficult platforming become more manageable. Players that struggled in Rusted Moss because they never discovered gun recoil would now know it is a tool in their arsenal. This lets us increase the pacing of Iron Bramble because we know all players will be better equipped rather than just those that figured it out.

However, though gun recoil is something we decided to tutorialise, Iron Bramble’s movement has more nuance than Rusted Moss. There are a lot more techniques to discover that we do not explicitly teach to the player. Our physics-based movement system makes the game more like a sandbox so even Emlise is still discovering new tricks even though she spends a lot of time playing Iron Bramble.

In many ways, Iron Bramble is going to be easier for players to learn (That’s part of the reason why I don’t think Rusted Moss needs to be a must-play before Iron Bramble). Having a tutorial for gun recoil raises the base level of every player. We can then have more non-tutorialised techniques for players to discover as the base movement potential for every player is higher.

3) Upgrades

We weren’t super happy with the charge jump upgrade in Rusted Moss. It was there because we needed a way to give players a way to gain vertical height. A double jump would have been antithetical to the game’s core design as well because so much of Rusted Moss is based on minute execution and situational reactions rather than “press 1 button to get what you want“. The charge jump was meant to be inconvenient to use. It did its job but we really disliked how it stopped all momentum.

Iron Bramble upgrades have a foundation of letting the players find ways to maintain momentum and chain things together like parkour. We started looking more into movement shooters for inspiration!

4) Systems

Rusted Moss was meant to be a much smaller game than what it ended up being. Its systems weren’t designed to be robust and that led to a lot of growing pains. We had to make an update after the game was out where we added markers on the map to show where important NPCs were as a bubble gum fix to player frustration. It would have been nicer to let players put their own markers but we literally couldn’t without re-writing the whole system. It is very nice to be working on Iron Bramble as its systems are a lot more robust and it has made development a lot more convenient/pleasant.

Conclusion

I wrote too much. This post is too long. Sorry.