Good day fellow precision platform junkies! I’m Juhana, the Inventive Director of Bionic Bay – my most formidable mission but. Bionic Bay is a precision-puzzle platformer set in an historic bio-mechanical world, hand-crafted pixel by pixel to create a high-fidelity, atmospheric atmosphere.
Bionic Bay began as an opportunity assembly between me (Mureena) and Psychoflow studio, on a Reddit put up showcasing their swap mechanic. We quickly started to collaborate, merging their technical experience with my expertise in stage design and artwork path from earlier titles corresponding to Badland 1 and a couple of.
Creating Bionic Bay: One pixel at a time
The common-or-garden swap mechanic stays a central gameplay mechanic, however Bionic Bay has seen unbelievable development since we began. We knew early on that the most important hurdle could be to create environments which supplied a problem with out changing into irritating. As well as, this balanced problem could be hosted inside intricately detailed and hand-crafted pixel-art environments, taking important time to create.
We approached these growth challenges with a easy two-part answer. Firstly, I might deal with stage design and artwork, and Psychoflow would work on the technical answer to ensure our mechanics seemed nice and labored properly.
Maybe extra necessary, we agreed that we might all commonly leap in and play every stage, experiencing it simply as a participant would. We now have carried this on all the way in which to launch, and this has helped us to make sure nice stability, and that we perceive the participant journey via Bionic Bay.
All of us love a precision platformer, however we additionally wished to make it possible for Bionic Bay gives a novel and worthwhile expertise, and that comes right down to the sport’s core mechanics.
This started with the swap characteristic which first introduced Mureena and Psychoflow collectively – permitting gamers to change locations with objects inside every stage. This was quickly joined by extra instruments, with every present process common playthrough testing:
- ChronoLag, our time dilation know-how which permits gamers to decelerate time for a brief interval. In addition to permitting gamers to navigate via fast-moving areas, it’s additionally an effective way of getting pace boosts that can assist you get quicker occasions in our ghost information racing mode.
- Energy Fist, offering the chance to launch objects throughout the atmosphere. In addition to clearing house within the solo story, used at the side of ChronoLag has led to some imaginative puzzle fixing to hurry up your journey
- Gravity Manipulation, permitting gamers to bend the very forces of actuality. This will help to clear paths, or assist discover new paths. It’s necessary to watch out, nonetheless, as this new gravitational path will even have an effect on free objects on the extent which may result in… unintended cessation of all life indicators.
In fact, gamers might be launched to those mechanics as you progress via Bionic Bay’s historic bio-mechanical world. Some you’ll have the ability to use collectively, and gamers will typically want to mix these instruments (in addition to fast considering and exact controls) with a view to overcome the challenges you’ll face.
In addition to utilizing these inside our narrative single-player journey, gamers can even discover our devoted on-line problem mode with Bionic Bay On-line. Bionic Bay On-line permits gamers to compete for the quickest time on a course, racing towards different gamers’ information ghosts – one thing which ought to communicate to these of us racing on PlayStation within the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
To compete in Bionic Bay On-line, gamers might want to use the entire instruments at your disposal, and discover artistic options to take the highest spot on the leaderboard. We will even be including particular post-launch content material for Bionic Bay, together with devoted time problem ranges to can help you showcase your abilities to the world.
A legendary PlayStation collaboration
We’re ecstatic to announce that Bionic Bay additionally has a collaboration with certainly one of our largest followers – PlayStation legend Shuhei Yoshida. We’ll be implementing a particular stage only for Shu inside the on-line problem mode following Bionic Bay’s launch on April 17. If you happen to participate and beat Shu’s rating, you may even unlock our Shu pores and skin, permitting you to customise the look of your scientist for our on-line leaderboards.
In addition to Shu’s personal participant pores and skin, we’re additionally bringing you a Deluxe version of Bionic Bay – with our Traditional Monster pores and skin pack. This contains eight costumes impressed by classic horror (a private favorite style of mine), with an alien, a werewolf and extra. The Traditional Monster pack permits gamers to unleash a bit of frightful allure and actually sink your fangs into the net leaderboards.
The bio-mechanical world of Bionic Bay opens up on PlayStation 5 this Thursday – April 17, and is on the market to wishlist now!
