NEW YEAR / NEW PROJECTS
It’s the start of a new year and with it I can officially say that work is underway on the next Burn Below project! Surprise, surprise - it’s the sequel to GHOST MISSION. The game doesn’t have a specific title yet but I’m playing around with three potential options.
Picking up a few years after the end of GHOST MISSION, the sequel will follow Geist as he’s pulled back into active duty for The Huntsmen and tasked with an operation pivotal to the security of the United States on the home front. Naturally, things aren’t as straightforward as they initially appear…
GM2’s gameplay will focus more on expanded player approach viability and stealth functionality. From a practical standpoint, that means while stealth is still the preferred method of progression and non-stealth mission approaches are penalized in relation to level grading and increased combat instances, the game will not be impossible to beat if you get caught. So, yes, if you want to go into a mission all guns blazing and get out safely, it’ll be a much more viable option than it was in the first game.
This stylistic change is a direct result of two things – player feedback on GHOST MISSION and my maturing dev skillset. I touched on it in a previous blog post, but in the time after GHOST MISSION’s release, one harsh reality about the game came to light – it was too hard. Levels in GHOST MISSION were tough to beat if you approach them without a heavy stealth bias and conserving ammo. This difficulty is a result of both rookie-dev work and a testing process that only involved a hardcore player base. Enemy counts were too high, ammunition availability was too low, and checkpoint frequency was…well, not frequent. On the flipside, I’m told that the satisfaction with level completion was great, but most players just get frustrated in those instances and don’t come back for more.
GHOST MISSION has had a few small patches since release – most just backend optimization or minor bug fixes, but one was a difficulty change patch that I got positive feedback from. There’s at least one more patch coming for the first game in which difficulty will be adjusted further in a few spots and I hope to finally add controller support…more to come on that.
Back to GM2 though. Players will have a visibility indicator, so the guessing game of knowing how far out you are or how hidden from the enemy’s line of sight you are won’t be as confusing. I’m playing with visual integration options for this at the moment, but I can say that the working demo already feels better having this feature in it.
G.H.O.S.T. Tech will still be in the game (duh) and will function similarly to how it did in the original, though I’m playing around with replenishment options and will have to reinvestigate certain bits of design to make best use of this.
The player will have the ability to go prone now as well. The ability’s primary function is to allow more stealth movement options and areas to hide in, but it will also open-up level navigation possibilities.
Basic enemies will function a little differently in the sequel, too. Overall enemy count will be down, but enemies present will have more involved patrol paths and alert functionality. Escape from an alerted enemy won’t automatically lead to them return to their origin point – something I coded in the original game as a means of keeping things less complicated for myself and something that helps game difficulty, but thematically doesn’t make a lot of sense. If a guard spots you in a place you aren’t supposed to be, he shouldn’t just drop pursuit and forget anything ever happened. There’s more to say here but the depth of what’s being worked on isn’t fully set yet, so I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag.
Finally, outside of the game’s starting level, GM2 will have a little more flexibility in story approach. As planned, beating the first level will unlock a set of missions to attempt in any order the player deems fit, with more unlocked as further missions are completed. It’s a minor thing, but it adds to player agency.
That’s mostly all I want to reveal for now. There are more features and ideas I’d like to implement in the sequel but until I can get a rudimentary framework going for them, they’re best left in the ether. I will say that development of GM2 doesn’t stop development on other Burn Below projects. I’ve shelved a few ideas for the time being, but there’s one idea I’m working on that has (I think) a larger audience appeal and my current plan is to develop a prologue of sorts for it to gauge player interest and reaction. I’d love to do that concurrently with GM2 development.
But, until next time…
-Kevin
Burn Below
