Given how crowded the Metroidvania genre has become, a game that successful delivers a fresh and unique experience is hard not to appreciate, and with its twin-stick shooting, gorgeous retro art style, and a central hookshotting mechanic, Rusted Moss was certainly unique. Since its launch last year, the game has received widespread praise from those who’ve played it, and with an upcoming content update accompanying its looming console release, Rusted Moss looks set to open the gates for a larger audience to dive in and taste its offerings.
Recently, we were able to send some of our questions about the game to its developers, asking about Rusted Moss’ development, how meaty its content update will be, how it’ll be different and consoles, and more. Below, you can read our interview with Emlise and happysquared, two-thirds of Rusted Moss’ three-person development team.
"The development of Rusted Moss was quite improvised – its core idea, the grappling hook, came about as a coding exercise and was not even intended to be added into a game."
As a sidescrolling Metroidvania twin-stick shooter where players navigate the environments with a grappling hook, Rusted Moss clearly goes out of its way to offer something very unique in the crowded Metroidvania space. What inspired the core idea behind the game?
Happysquared: I think part of what led to Rusted Moss’ uniqueness is that we did not start the game with the idea of “I want to make a metroidvania, how do I make it stand out amongst others?”.
Emlise: The development of Rusted Moss was quite improvised – its core idea, the grappling hook, came about as a coding exercise and was not even intended to be added into a game.
Happysquared: Emlise, our lead developer and originator of the concept, did not actually want the grappling hook in a game as though she was quite proficient at it, she was not sure if other players would enjoy it due to its steep learning curve. However, we convinced her to move on with the idea and she set out to make a game that resonated with her personal taste.
She’s always made games without the intention of appealing to the wider gaming audience and her game design philosophy has always been deeply personal – less about making sales – though the riskiness of such a unique grappling hook still gave her pause.
It isn’t just the grappling hook though that I think leads to the unique feeling Rusted Moss gives when compared to other metroidvanias. After all, Rusted Moss is also an amalgamation of smaller games Emlise has made “just for fun” and by extension her own unique perspective.
Emlise: Rusted Moss’ main character for example, came from a code project because I just wanted to explore procedural animation and it was not meant for any specific game. As mentioned before, the grappling hook was also made as a completely separate project that was meant to be nothing more than a training exercise; it wasn’t meant to be a playable game either. The robot enemies were part of another training project to explore leg animations. A lot of Rusted Moss’ juice and feel started from a 2019 game I made called Ecila and that I iterated on across the years.
Happysquared: All this patchwork code in Rusted Moss that had long existed in her previous projects have all led to Rusted Moss being made of what Emlise considers the highlights of her older work.
As for the setting and story, I helped develop it after the aesthetic and mechanics were established so a lot of it was inspired by artwork Emlise had already done for the game rather than on existing metroidvania tropes. I was already interested in making something based on traditional fae folklore so it became a unique blend when faced with Emlise’ artstyle of industrial post-apocalyptic ruin.
With the improvised way of development (there were many mechanics that were actually deleted from the game), Rusted Moss unintentionally ended up standing out even though we were less interested in making something unique and more focused on having fun and just being honest to our own personal tastes.
For starters, how has the post-launch period been for you, especially given the positive reception Rusted Moss has enjoyed from players since its PC release last year?
Emlise: It’s been nice. I’m economically stable now and don’t have to worry about rent and stuff. I can’t hold a 9-5 job because I don’t have the attention span for school or work. Just for indie game development when I can dictate when to work.
Happysquared: She spent at least 12 hours every day working on Rusted Moss. It was really normal to see her online at 5AM still working on the game. She’d go to sleep at like 6AM.
Emlise: I don’t know what I would have done if Rusted Moss didn’t do well because I spent more than a year on it and I wasn’t making any money in the meantime.
Happysquared: Maybe you should make games that appeal to other people so you don’t have to worry about money.
Emlise: No.
Emlise: I guess it worked out in the end. As someone struggling financially I probably shouldn’t have made the game.
Emlise: Considering my financial situation you think I should have just made a Vampire Survivors clone or something.
Happysquared: She used to support herself by doing art commissions for like ten dollars an hour.
Emlise: In 2019 I used to walk to 3 different grocery shops so I could buy the cheapest onions and potatoes. So I managed to get it to like 10 cents per dinner.
Happysquared: Ok but how do you feel about the positive reception post-launch?
Emlise: People liking the game?
Happysquared: She used to just read the negative reviews on Steam. She’d message me a minute after one was posted saying “we got another negative review”. To be honest, I think the initial post launch for all of us was rough because we had never gotten this much attention for something we made before. Emlise’s last big game, TWWWR, has 0 negative reviews even though overall it only has like 50 reviews. So even though Rusted Moss has been received very positively, it is also technically the game with the most negative reviews for us. I think we spent some time dealing with that and have felt a lot better since.
Emlise: Most of my games are published on Itch and there’s less negativity on there compared to Steam. I’m used to getting almost all 5 stars on Itch. I am glad people have enjoyed Rusted Moss though.
Happysquared: We knew it was a unique game with a steep learning curve so we are very happy it has resonated with so many people.
Was it always the plan to bring the game to additional platforms, or was that something that came about as a result of feedback from the community?
Emlise: This is more on the publisher’s side. I have no experience with bringing the game to an additional platform. I don’t even know how to get started on it. I guess we have controller support so that’s part of it?
Happysquared: I mean the vast majority of the porting is handled by PLAYISM. I think without them we would not have been able to get Rusted Moss on additional platforms so we’re very grateful. I think we didn’t have a plan to bring the game to additional platforms because we aren’t very business minded and so didn’t really think further.
Emlise: I don’t own any consoles so I didn’t think about that stuff. I own an Xbox controller though so I am aware of the Xbox’s existence.
"I mean the vast majority of the porting is handled by PLAYISM. I think without them we would not have been able to get Rusted Moss on additional platforms so we’re very grateful. I think we didn’t have a plan to bring the game to additional platforms because we aren’t very business minded and so didn’t really think further."
Rusted Moss’ console launch will be accompanied by the launch of a major new update. Can you talk to us about how the new content is going to be integrated into the base experience? Is it meant to be post-game content, or will players have the option to tackle it during the course of the main game itself?
Emlise: There’s a little bit of new main game content but it is mostly post-game. There are some new optional areas players can tackle pretty early but most is for people that have beaten most of the game.
Happysquared: A large section of it is a challenge area that was removed from the main game because we thought it might be too hard but decided to re-implement it and expand it. The major new update contains 300+ rooms.
Emlise: The other sections that aren’t the challenge area can be accessed during the course of the main game. They’re easier and a good time for those that just want more of the main game experience. As for the challenge area, it was a good chance for us to explore and further develop parts of the main game. A lot of the Rusted Moss main game has a lot of untapped potential in terms of how complex the challenges are so the challenge area was a good place to explore how far we could push it.
Happysquared: How far we could push the players up for the challenge.
Emlise: Not really for the players in mind specifically. I wanted to make the challenge area like the main game’s energy but cranked up to 11 because I thought it was fun.
Happysquared: That’s true. I guess a lot of our development philosophy was to make a game we enjoyed and then find players who also enjoy the same thing rather than adding what we think players would like. I think we were successful in that as we did reach out to our community to help playtest these challenge areas and the feedback has been positive. So lucky us that we found an audience with similar tastes!
Emlise: Odds are that if you make something you really like you’re also going to find similar people who will also really like it.
What can you tell us about the new Maya mode? What kind of an impact will playing as Maya have in terms of the mechanics and moment-to-moment gameplay?
Happysquared: It started off as a joke.
Emlise: I can’t recall what made me decide to add it to the game.
Happysquared: We kept making stupid jokes about it and you said you wouldn’t add it in unless you had a good reason.
Emlise: I don’t remember what the reason was.
Happysquared: Maya mode is accessible after you finish the main game and it goes by our speedrun mode rules – so all dialogue and text is hidden, it is just pure gameplay.
Emlise: With Rusted Moss having been so improvised, getting to create a character with the knowledge of what type of game it already is was fun. The challenge of making the player character after you’ve already designed everything after you already designed everything (every obstacle…) is a fun challenge.
Happysquared: She plays very different from Fern.
Emlise: A lot more aggressive and fast paced. We tried to give her a very high skill ceiling and she’s a glass cannon.
Happysquared: She’s really fun and best experienced after playing the game as Fern as she makes the game feel completely different.
Emlise: She’s more explosive. For the main game, you have to take your time to get acquainted with Fern and ramp up your skills slowly, but for Maya she hits the ground running and is an immediate powerhouse but very volatile.
"There’s a little bit of new main game content but it is mostly post-game. There are some new optional areas players can tackle pretty early but most is for people that have beaten most of the game."
How large are the new areas that you’re adding to Rusted Moss going to be, and how will they differ from the game’s existing areas in terms of their design and visual style?
Happysquared: There’s 300+ rooms.
Emlise: The challenge area follows a more traditional linear 2D platformer in terms of design. We reworked the visual pipeline. After the experience of making the main game, we learned a lot so we made changes in the programming and rendering to make it look good and were able to do it much faster.
Happysquared: Emlise developed the visual style more. I think it looks a lot better. She got better at making assets.
Emlise: Also we added slopes!
When porting Rusted Moss to consoles, did you have to make any kind of adjustments to things such as the controls or the UI?
Happysquared: Rusted Moss demands a lot from its players. We had an accessibility update in the past to help players that rather not engage with the game in that manner. With Rusted Moss coming to consoles, we also rethought some accessibility options with controller players in mind. For example adding in an auto-shoot ability so players who rather focus on the grapple can do so without worrying about also aiming to shoot. This helped reduce the multitasking some players have trouble with. I think with accessibility options, when we first launched they were pretty heavy handed with invincibility options so we wanted to give more of a variety so players could customise their game experience more.
Emlise: At least when we launched for PC we already had controller compatibility for Xbox and PlayStation with the ability to rebind controls.
Share Your Thoughts Below (Always follow our comments policy!)