Syma

I've been working on the new mission type so that it can be the main focus of Episode IX's release. Have gone through countless test runs of the whole dungeon now and am convinced that the twenty-odd switches and variables are working smoothly and as intended. The biggest problem is that the map is slightly laggy visually (over 400 events, and a number of par.procs) but it's only very slight and not persistant. And my laptop hasn't been turned off in about three weeks. Maybe that's relevant too.

Anyhoo; Bridge Mission, you ask? Well this mission is a special mission given to you on the Bridge of the Baseship by the captain himself; that much should hint that it's bigger and bitchin'er than all those regular mission's that stack up on the briefing nodes!

Either way, as this screeny shows, the mission type is an old gimmick, but one I feel fits fairly well into this style of game. Supplies conservation is one thing, but having a lot of it and a big team really does a lot to take the strain off; forcing the squad to separate and rely on a lot fewer supplies and tighter class combinations really puts an emphasis on the concept of planning your squad's decisions!

The mission separates your entire squad of eight into teams of two and sends you in all at once, at different locations. You will have to make sure that every character can hold their own or they won't survive being in a small team and without any chance of switching them to the back crew for safety.

And that's before we even reach the boss fights!

This entire mission is quite large; probably the largest of all missions yet, but contains plenty of treasure and the vast majority of content hasn't been recycled from earlier missions; it's all fresh, and I even made custom art for the boss just to make the whole experience stand out a bit more.

Was fun to build the dungeon, if absolutely exhausting. Planning it out took more effort than I expected, considering I wasn't really aiming for a "Puzzle" vibe; I wanted to make this mission simpler, ease into it developmentally... I've never been great at conceiving puzzles to be perfectly honest!