As I mentioned yesterday, we had many limitations when designing Toki Tori for Game Boy Color. One of them was that there could only be one creature type per world and a maximum of two - yes, two - could roam a level. This limitation has dictated many of the inherent rules of the early Toki Tori levels, which carried on to the reboot and ports we did later on.

When we started discussing Toki Tori 2 a couple of months ago, it quickly became apparent that we wanted to do a lot more with the game world and more specifically its inhabitants. Not only in adding more of it, but also having more interaction with and between creatures. The eureka moment came when we asked ourselves if we could fore-go the items and weapons and add that functionality into the game’s creatures.

I’ve got an example I use when trying to explain the concept to players, here goes:

We’ve got a bubble-frog character that likes to eat the berry-bugs that roam about the levels freely. When he succeeds and eats one of them, he bloats and becomes immobile, forming a bubble inside his body. When Toki Tori scares the bubble-frog in this state, he’ll belch out the bubble, which is then basically a handy portable bubble suit. By allowing Toki Tori’s presence to influence the behavior of both the berry-bugs and the bubble-frogs, the bubble becomes a reward for the player’s understanding and mastery of the game world.

I believe this is a much more rewarding structure than simply telling players to press a button to make something happen and look forward to seeing what our designers can cook up with it!