How Two Students Created Risk of Rain and Why They Sold the IP Rights
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This Risk of Rain documentary details the development of indie 2D pixel art action platformer Risk of Rain and 3D roguelike shooter Risk of Rain 2 and goes behind the scenes of their creation. Discover more about developer Hopoo Games and its two founders, Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse. Risk of Rain’s development journey goes all the way back to 2012, when Duncan and Paul embarked on a university project focused on programming. In the game's initial prototype, players defended their crashed ship from an onslaught of monsters, and straying further from the ship would increase the difficulty. This concept eventually transformed into the “time = difficulty” system and gave Risk of Rain its own identity. The documentary also explores all the design decisions that Hopoo Games made and shows how much the team experimented with the game’s difficulty, especially when it comes to how enemies scale in power. Additionally, they had to come up with a clever solution when the enemy spawn AI started spawning way too many monsters on the battlefield and caused performance issues.
It also takes a close look at all the hurdles the team had to go through. Going from a 2D pixel art action platformer to a 3D roguelike shooter presented many challenges, mainly because neither Duncan or Paul had any experience creating 3D models, let alone other technical nuances that came with designing a 3D game. They soon discovered that they couldn't directly adapt any of the original gameplay elements into the sequel. Therefore, every class and monster taken from the original had to undergo substantial revisions. Furthermore, the documentary also provided insight into the deal made between Hopoo Games and Gearbox and why Duncan and Paul sold the rights to the Risk of Rain IP. Lastly, Duncan and Paul share their thoughts on the recently announced remake Risk of Rain Returns and what’s next for them and their game development studio.
Article sources:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AtL-iav41hYanX7ivlyhOGHn86C8?e=QRaOXG
Video sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3nI1HqkL9A&ab_channel=HopooGames
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqDGYdnsPKs&ab_channel=ShinyRawrquaza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmziwiQ9gzc&ab_channel=ShacknewsInterviews
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO-qE36ytjnH0PtiZ7ClKfA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqjq2HPLdJk&ab_channel=GameSpot
Outro song: Thank You R.G.E. - Joe Bagale
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