As Cascadia Games prepares to port its most recent title Moon Raider to consoles, the small indie developer has opened up about some of the inspirations for the gameplay during development. While the gameplay of classic Metroidvanias is clearly reflective in some of the broader strokes of how the game functions, it would seem that other indie projects also influenced development, including the notorious Mighty No. 9.
In a recent interview with Game Rant, Cascadia Games owner Chris Jorgensen talked about bringing Moon Raider from Mobile and Steam to consoles, including PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. When asked about the initial development, Jorgensen’s responses gave an interesting perspective on how some ideas had been adapted from other games, including an initial misconception.
One of the key features of Moon Raider’s combat is the speedy dash ability that allows the main character Ava to zip around enemies throughout the game’s environments. In addition to giving quick movement around the combat arena, dashing through enemies through enemies will also heal the player, similar to the mechanic in Bloodborne that emphasizes the game’s aggressive combat. However, this ability originally comes from a misinterpretation of the dash mechanic in Mighty No. 9, which Jorgensen had thought healed the player when traveling through an enemy.
"As far as gameplay goes, I ended up pulling extra inspiration from Mighty No. 9 of all things. When I first played it, I had assumed that dashing through enemies healed you. That turned out not to be the case. But I thought it was a cool idea anyway. So I added that into the main dash mechanic in Moon Raider."
As it turns out, this isn’t actually a mechanic in Mighty No. 9 in the first place, but it did still inspire the way that the dash would work in Moon Raider. Though, this isn’t the only indie title to inspire the game’s combat or art styles, as Jorgensen also made it a point to mention the influence both Eagle Island and Flynn: Son of Crimson had on the art. These games apparently even encouraged Cascadia Games to step up on the art side of the retro Metrodvania and send everything from the color palette to the design of the main character through extra rounds of revisions.
Looking at the final product that Moon Raider turned out to be, many of its inspirations become clear to those familiar with both the classic titles and the other indie titles that influenced the art. However, it is a strange twist that a game like Mighty No. 9 was able to have such an impactful influence on the gameplay more than the Metroidvanias fans attribute the style to, even if it was from a feature that wasn’t actually in the title. Still, the whole experience goes to show that the pieces that come together to build a game like Moon Raider really can come from anywhere.
Moon Raider is available now on PC, with a PS4, Switch, and Xbox One launch set for April 23rd.