Dear Insane Children,
Welcome to another session of “Let’s finalize a weapon design!” brought to you by “American got up at 4:30 AM for a phone call that doesn’t actually happen until tomorrow morning.” A product of Doh! Co. (TM)
In our last episode, we saw how Alice will acquire two weapons from the Boss Encounter with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. And we reviewed Alex’s redesign work on the Jack Bomb.
Today we’re taking a look at the second weapon Alice will acquire from that encounter: The Whipping Top
The main image (above) is from Joey and shows a ranged weapon / whip / grapple device featuring a red-eyed frog. The thought behind a redesign is to make the final version feel more like something that might come from The Tweedles and The Circus.
But there were a couple of other re-designs already suggested for this weapon which includes:
A Jabberwocky Grappler from Jennifer and…
A Spring Chick weapon from Joey.
These don’t exactly align with the design goals we have for the weapon Alice acquires from The Circus Realm but they are in the same family so I thought it might be interested to share them for comparison.
So Alex spent a bit of time thinking about design and art and came up with the following:
American, when we spoke about this, I feel the focus was more on the “mechanic of environmental traversing and obstacle navigation” for Alice.
For the Tweedle fight, given their larger size and strength compared to Child Alice, the Tweedle Bros can use this more like a whip, in one hand.
I’m sure one of them could latch around to a limited extent, but I think the mechanism would REALLY propel a young, small girl using the same device.
See the scale comparison in the spec breakdown.
I’ve also designed this to be shaped like a Treble Clef, to tie in with the musical theme.
The Flamingo Motif is an early exploration for a grapple / whip head, given A) their tongues are *gnarly* (see reference) and B) I personally feel the Hobby Horse is a much more iconic clobbering melee weapon, and I’d be disappointed to not see it in Asylum. (Compared to the Flamingo Melee Weapon). Actual animal usage could be easily changed for skins or upgrades, (Lion, Frog, whatever) but the mechanic stays the same.
And this weapon could talk / have objections about constantly getting buried in walls and enemies.
I’ve explored stationary Aiming Down Sights (ADS First Person Option) as well as aiming, grappling, and swinging on the fly using lock ons.
I imagine it could be used for direct line of sight traversal, and also releasing the chain tension to “swing” Alice and use her momentum.
In-Game Examples are:
1. Link using a Hookshot like Ocarina of Time for direct line shots.
2. And Spiderman (PS4) Swinging from place to place using multiple shots and in-air momentum.
Mixing this up could allow for some crazy spacial navigation puzzles, as well as combat application, which I’ve not fully explored yet.
To which Omri replied:
@Alex Crowley I LOVE THIS @American McGee i think this is perfect.
And with which I 100% agree.
This is is a beautiful design with some excellent thinking behind it in terms of use and function.
But we’re not here to listen to what I think! Let’s hear what YOU think!
Let the team know in the comments below YOUR thoughts on this new design and most importantly…
What do you CALL THIS THING?
A Flamingo Flinger? Ha.
From Shanghai where Lucky is Awake Now,
-American