When Do You Know Something Is Done?

It's a trick question: you don't. Part of the challenge with making your own goals and making your own deadlines is that if you wanna push them, you're just going to let yourself do it. This project started out as a shitpost I was expecting to get done with in like three months; then I got too invested in the lore and decided to expand the scope a lot, and now over a year into development I'm somewhere near the 35-40% mark and still don't really know how to wrap up the story.

So in the meantime, I'm just adding stuff. More stuff contributes to the goal of making this "the biggest metroidvania ever" even if I have no real plan with it, so worst case, I could just keep doing this forever.

Remember Frozen Ocean, the short level just showing off the Lake Slushi biome? It's four times larger now. (The circled area is the currently-available zone).

The majority of the new bits are just pure gameplay with no story significance and no writing, which makes it easy enough to make that I could do it in my sleep. And because of my real life being so busy, I mostly do. (It's wild waking up to music files or levels and having no recollection of making it)

How Do You Patch a Story?

The conundrum I've been facing is whether I'm happy with the story bits that are in the game so far, and the answer is no.

The end of the Bread Ruins plot is a bit rushed, for instance - I plan to insert another scene later where everyone is gathered around Celine's hospital bed / grave so it's 1) showing everyone actually caring instead of instantly transition into the "all's well that ends well" state and 2) not making the medkit look like a COMPLETE miracle. There's some considerations to keep cutscene length down and be careful not to break anything (it's always dangerous to change something that you know is working because it could stop working at the slightest impact) but I feel like since this is the first area plot, it's really important that it's told well!

Another loose thread I wanna handle at some point is the dialogue branch where you intentionally drink the poisoned tea to avoid hurting Celine's feelings. It sets flags that CAN affect stuff; I just don't know WHAT yet. My original idea was that she'd use the poison to break free from Saltman somehow, but I realized that makes no logical sense because, y'know, you just drank it so she doesn't have it anymore. But I have some ideas like being able to give her a certain legendary sword only if she trusts you, this changes how the post-Catacombs scenes play out and ultimately means Frie never discovers her true power, gives up on witchcraft, and Celine becomes the monster hero of Bread Ruins instead.

For Nugget Mines, I'm even more worried I might have taken the dark themes too far, and currently essentially only the bad ending where everyone dies is in place (at least if you mess up any of the things that makes Carrol stop trusting you). I'm planning to add some route changes where you can make Chief Atto trust you, which stops him running away which in turn stops The Thing That Happens Right Before The Boss Fight. It's also going to be convoluted, but I kinda like the idea of having convoluted secrets that lets you do things better on a second playthrough. I feel like having a "canonical best ending" is counterproductive for player choice, because then everybody will just be going for the best ending - so ideally there should still be a choice between multiple alternatives where it's a matter of taste what's the better option.

For Rings, The Bell Tolls

That said, there's a pretty big flaw with the Nugget Mines plotline: there's no mention of the main macguffin The Seven Rings at all. Whoops! When I wrote the title lore dump, I just cared about getting the cadence to feel right (and hadn't planned out the world super well yet) so I had one major story boss too few (none from Nugget Mines), and changing the voiceover would just be unfeasible at this point. So essentially, the third ring is lost in a paradox in the spacetime continuum. And that feels really stupid, because now the entire Nugget Mines plot is essentially just a wild goose chase that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things (breaking the seal). In fact, Terse showing up to mock you for the entire thing being pointless was added as a way of lampshading this after realizing I'd written myself into a corner - so it looks planned even though it was just me lacking in foresight.

My solution for this is to just... make the ring vanishing from the spacetime continuum canonical. There's already ancient ruins, I already have a small hint of Lovecraftian horror; what if the forgotten story boss was erased from existence by being sent to the past? It would explain why the ancient civilization was so advanced, it would explain why they're not in the intro monologue, and it could even tie up a bunch of other loose ends! (There's no actual skeletons of The Ancients in their ruins but monsters turning to dust is a new occurrence). And all of this also lets me add something more cryptic, puzzle-heavy to the game as well; I feel like there's been WAY too little of that so far. Ideally there should be little puzzles and hints in every story level in Nugget Mines but I've only just started work on this so I don't really know yet.

Do you feel like puzzles would detract from going fast? Do you feel the STORY is detracting from going fast? Or conversely, is going fast detracting from the stuff you like? Why do you play Burgertale? I'm genuinely curious. Knowing what I should focus on would be a nice change of pace :P

What's Up Next?

Cosmetics.

I've already written this palette-swapping shader ages ago but not really had a chance to use it in a released project, and since Muri has a very consistent palette it felt like the perfect opportunity to add a little more player choice (and references to movies and other games). Plus, I was worried I wouldn't have enough important charms for the player to spend all their Carrot Coins on, and having a giant pile of extras would fill that need.

I also want to make all "hat" accessories (e.g. Witch's Hat, Twelve Gallon Hat etc) visually give you a hat but that one is going to be a lot more complicated to make look good so it's very low on the priority list.

Stay flippin', folks!

/Yal