Summary
Although the upcoming twin-stick shooter metroidvaniaBioGunhas understandably looked to some of its genre contemporaries for inspiration, some of its best features can be attributed to classics that hail from entirely different genres. For a game that hinges on thorough exploration, skillful traversal, and fast-paced shooter combat, it makes sense that theindie gamewould look to two iconic franchises that have long served as a blueprint for both adventuring and shooting.
Speaking with Game Rant in an interview,BioGundevelopers John Rogeles and Ivan Elizalde revealed how design choices fromBreath of the WildandDoomhave guided their approach to the game regarding combat and exploration. CombiningBreath of the Wild’s mostly frontloaded arsenal of abilities andDoom’s moment-to-moment rewarding of player aggression,BioGunhopes to keep players meaningfully engaged from start to finish.
BioGun Looked to Breath of the Wild’s Progression
The metroidvania genreis largely based on a core progression loop where players unlock a traversal ability and then use it to enter previously-unreachable areas where the game’s next set of challenges await. While this remains the case forBioGun, the developers wanted to speed things up in the early game by quickly giving players useful tools to play around with, rather than spending multiple hours with a barebones moveset.
When we mentioned trying to start with as much of a complete power set as possible early on, It’s because we were inspired byBreath of the Wildand how it turned theZeldaformula on its head. Instead of the typical way of getting a new item per dungeon,Breath of the Wildgave the players almost all of its arsenal in the great plateau, allowing players to play with all the tools throughout the majority of the game.
We do hold back some of the abilities mostly for the purpose of tutorialization. We don’t want to be like “Here are all the moves and here’s how to use them!” That’s probably gonna confuse a lot of players. Plus it’s a metroidvania, so you expect your progress and exploration to be rewarded with power-ups. It was really interesting to find the balance between theBreath of the Wildstyle of giving you everything at the beginning and the traditional Metroidvania style. I feel pretty confident that we achieved a pretty good balance.
This mirrorsBreath of the Wild’s ability unlocksand how that game contrasts with earlier series entries. In pastZeldagames, major features were typically uncovered after completing dungeons. While this rewarded players' success after each adventure, it made for a stale early game where players mechanically had little to engage with.
Doom’s Rewarding Finishers Inspired BioGun’s Combat Mechanics
When it comes to player engagement,Doomis one of the undisputed kings. From beginning to end,Doomintends to keep the player moving and shooting as quickly as possible and with next to no downtime. BioGun looked to Doom for one particular mechanic that rewards players during combat much the same way thatthe Doom Guyreplenishes himself by performing finishers.
In a later part of the game just shortly after the demo experience, there is a new mechanic that gets introduced, which I don’t mind divulging here. It is a mechanic that rewards players for using their secondary weapons. We felt like this was a fun next step, but it’s totally optional. Using your energy to power up your secondary weapon and vice versa.
How it functions is whenever you kill an enemy with your secondary weapon, you get this secondary type of energy that increases the fire rate of your primary weapon, so your damage output potential gets increased. We now reward you for using your secondary weapon. It’s like how inDoomwhen you have an enemy really weakened and you finish them off and they drop health and ammo.
Players can consume energy to fire their secondary weapon, meanwhile kills with that secondary weapon boost the fire rate of the primary weapon. This back-and-forth energy economy encourages players to keep up the pressure in combat and regularly switch weapons, and it’s a pleasant change of pace from typicalmetroidvania combatwhere players might only be using one primary attack repeatedly. Thanks to a few clever design decisions, BioGun looks to be a consistently entertaining metroidvania both in combat and through exploration.
BioGunis in development and will be available on PC.
