After nearly two years in early access, Rogue Legacy 2 has a release date for its full 1.0 release: April 28. This roguelike action platformer improves upon the original in many ways, with the original having a huge impact on the genre. Excitement for the sequel's full release, as a result, is pretty high.
Game Rant was able to speak with Cellar Door Games' Teddy Lee, lead designer and co-creator of Rogue Legacy 2, ahead of launch. We spoke on a variety of topics, including big changes in the 1.0 release, the new classes and class changes, if the game would be ported to other platforms, and more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: First off, congrats on the upcoming 1.0 release. How is the team feeling as it prepares for this leap from early access to full release?
Pretty good, pretty good. It's super stable. It's like the most stable we've ever been. And a lot of it has to do with early access and everything. But yeah, we're pretty excited. We're actually on schedule, which is pretty amazing.
It's definitely not something too common in the gaming industry, is it?
Yeah, especially not for us. We are always down to the wire when it comes to things.
Q: How does the 1.0 update compare, in size, to the last update?
The Christmas one was actually what we call a mini update. I guess a better comparison would be Dragon's Vow, which was like a biome update. So this one, I would say is bigger, it's definitely bigger, it's a lot bigger, but it's different. It's just like the ending and all that entails, which is a ton of stuff, right? Like we want to finish it. I'm not sure if you've gone into multiple NGs, but like we had added in custom biomes and bosses every single time. So those still missing like modifiers and a lot of Final Boss prime versions, so we had to add all of those things in. So it's a lot. It's multiple NGs worth of new content.
Q: In the latest roadmap update, the ending sequence was described as a “full content update’s worth of work.” Obviously, no spoilers, but I was curious if you could expand on how much work was put into this area of the game?
A ton. It's a huge ending. I mean, we're making the game, we had a lot of people playing, and we also knew how many people were going into NG+, right? So like, we knew we wanted a true ending, which would require multiple NGs to go through, and just seeing the amount of time, from data, shows how long people were playing. We were like, 'okay, we really gotta make it worth your while.'
So, I mean, the ending is really, really big. It actually got bigger, because like, we were working with the animated video from Half Giant. They were like, 'oh, you know, you guys should try to get bigger.' But yeah, we're super proud of it. It's definitely our biggest ending.
And doing all of that and managing to stay on schedule.
Right? Yeah. Well, "on schedule." I mean, we were internally delayed where we didn't hit a certain milestone, but now we're on schedule after the delays.
Q: That update also mentions some side stories would be changed. Could you give any examples as to why these decisions were made?
It's just like we really wanted to tell a condensed story in the game. So like, we have these memories and just off-branch characters who seemed like they were superficial, but they were always going to tie in. That was always our goal. Some of it makes sense now, some of it makes sense once we know something, but it was getting too complicated. We wanted to go kind of vague enough, but as we were writing it, we discovered it would be simpler like this. All we'd have to do is a retcon just a few details here and there, a few minor details. So that's what we're doing when we say that, very minor stuff.
Q: What changes/new content should veteran players expect on day one of the Rogue Legacy 2 1.0 release?
Okay, so I guess for the veterans who've been playing for like multiple NGs, there's a huge, absolutely massive economy update that's coming in, which is purely aimed at reducing the grind, especially for the beginning. It also fixes a bunch of issues because we have a bunch of internal playtesters, the Vanguard team, that we got out of early access. They're like, you know, 30-40 NGs in, and they're like, 'Oh, the economy breaks at 30.' So, we fixed it which required a huge amount of work.
There are also new classes, which are coming in. I mean, everyone is expecting that I guess. A billion new effects, I'm super happy. So think you were me finishing the game, and our team was getting lighter and lighter right? We can't add more stuff because we have to you know, make it bug-free. So then, they're just like playing the game, and they're like, 'oh, let's update all the graphics.' There are so many graphical updates and a million sound effects. It's pretty crazy how much stuff has gotten added. I'm super, super happy with it, and then stuff I don't even know about. It's all very cool.
Q: Since you mentioned it, what can you say about the new classes?
Um, so one of the new classes is a mage. Well, it's like when we make classes, they are on a spectrum, like the meaty Ronin and the light Assassin. And then for the mage class, we didn't have anything super far to the right. That's going to be the Astromancer class, which I think we already talked about. And then we have another class, which is just this super weird class. It's super weird. I think people will like him. You actually do see him, he's the dude on the pirate boat at the very end of the trailer, right? He's a really fun guy.
Yeah, their talents are pretty crazy too, the Astromancer especially. It adds a ridiculous amount of mobility, which you're not expecting from this class, right, but we really wanted to separate it from the standard Mage. We also retooled two of the other classes to make them a lot more fun.
Q: Could you expand on those class changes?
It's hard to remember because we've posted like six patch notes as we try to keep the Discord team in the know. But the biggest change is the Gunslinger. He went through a bunch of updates. The biggest one is that we retooled his bomb to make it way more usable. It's way too high skilled, so we just kind of eased it in, and we gave him a dynamic reload. So before, he took like half a second to reload every time. Now if you've only shot like two bullets, he'll reload in like a tenth of a second. It's good. Everybody wants to reload to the max. It just makes him play way better, so that was a big change for him.
Then we changed the Assassin. So he was light, but he was not as super light as we thought he should be. Now if you break your cloak with an attack, he applies vulnerable which makes all of your attacks crit for like the next three seconds. He's like a lot of fun to be ultra-aggressive with now.
Q: What is Cellar Door Games’ current plans for post-release support for 1.0?
So that's a little bit in flux, because we're literally working on [the game] right now. Yeah, we got to get absolutely stable, but we do have one pretty big update that we have planned. We really, really wanted it in for 1.0, but there was just no way, like a 0% chance that we could get it in. So that's our goal. It also kind of just depends, right? Like, if the game does amazing, right, then we can devote the whole team to just keep working on it. We'll just have to kind of see how things go. But that one update is 100% coming in. I think people will like it a lot. Well, I shouldn't say 100%...90%....anything can happen, but it's 90% it'll be in, and I'm super excited for it.
Q: In a recent press release, it was stated that the goal was to make Rogue Legacy 2 be “Rogue Legacy 3.” Do you think you’ve accomplished this, and how did this idea come about exactly?
The big reason is because when a lot of sequels come out, it's like an update or level pack. Today, they're very safe. And usually, the new stuff and the big changes come in with the third version, right? So when we were talking about it way back two years ago, we knew we didn't want it to be just a level update, like just an expansion.
So that's why we implemented the Resolve system with the Relics and the Resolve, which is this huge, huge system. We made all the classes like completely unique. And that also pushed us to do things way crazier. So like, for example, this wasn't planned, right? But we had criticals in the game. And we just copied Rogue Legacy 1's, which is, you know, 10% chance to crit and so on.
The problem is when you reach endgame, it's always crits 100%. It's like crits are the build, that's the only thing that works, right? We had done that crit initially, and this is actually due to our Discord team because we wrote to them like our pillars of what we wanted to achieve. One of them was like every build should be viable all the way down to NG whatever. And they're like, well, Crit is the only viable build. Nothing else works.
So then we're like, we wanted that idea to work. If we want to keep with the motive, which is that it doesn't matter if it wasn't broken in Rogue Legacy 1, we want to just keep pushing it to what it should be and be better, right? So then, we just rebuilt it from scratch and did the skill crit system during Early Access, which was a ridiculous amount of work. It was so much work. The lead programmer was not happy. We had to scrap everything we did to get it in, but having that kind of mentality pushed us to go all out.
Q: Where do you think Rogue Legacy 2 improves the most over the first game?
On platforming combat...it's a little bit hard to explain. If you're really like just jumping onto platforms and then fighting people on a 2D plane...then, you know, just go to the next floor, and then you fight the same guys, that's not really platforming. It's more combat and there's some platforming in-between. So with Rogue Legacy, because we played a bunch of games like that before, we knew that we wanted you to be jumping and attacking, and you're always in the air. But it was still a quasi-binary thing in the sense that you're doing air attacks, or you're doing ground attacks, and nothing was complementing, right?
We were like, well, we want the game to be way more mobile, but we didn't want to add a million buttons. Super early on, the very first thing we designed and it took a few iterations was the spin kick. That whole system, which lets you stay in the air for, like, minutes at a time.
One boss, Estuary Irad, is just like a bunch of eyes. He was actually the first boss we designed. He was in the game in like month six, and it was just to make sure we could get it so that you are constantly in the air, constantly making decisions that you really couldn't in other kinds of platform games. Just to make it all really kind of improvisational. And I'm super happy with how the combat came out. The later bosses are really demanding.
Q: The first Rogue Legacy is/was free on Epic Games Store through April 14. What would you say to someone checking it out for the first time and planning to pick up the second one?
Um, they're very different games. They're very different games, but I think we did a good job of keeping the essence of Rogue Legacy alive. So a lot of the core fundamentals that people liked in Rogue Legacy 1 are going to be in Rogue Legacy 2. They've just been iterated upon, like, a million times, right? We've had a ton of time to think about this game. And our team is bigger. I think it's a better game. I don't play Rogue Legacy 1 anymore, I only play the sequel.
Q: The first game is also available on other platforms. Are there any plans for other platform ports, like PlayStation or Switch, after launch?
Well, one of the big reasons we did Xbox is because we have two programmers on the team. We are very small. Most companies have like a guy who does the porting. That's their whole thing. They're just doing the port. We have two people, so they were doing porting while doing development at the same time. Even doing the Xbox version was so difficult. We've only been thinking about that so far, so we'll see. We don't like to make any promises or say anything if nothing’s set in stone, right?
Q: Anything you’d like to add?
I hope people check out the house rules. I am super proud of that. It was just a thing we added. We wanted that for everybody. It took a lot of work. So it only came in on like the last major update, the Dragon's Vow update. It lets people tweak the game, however they want. Rogue Legacy is a super hard game, I like games like that. If it's easy, you don't get to engage with all the systems, but we also know a lot of people may not want or be able to play at that level. The house settings let you change everything, like enemy damage, enemy health, but it also lets you just fly because the platforming can get pretty ridiculous. We also added no contact damage because there are a lot of people who can't get used to that type of thing, or they just don't like it.
So all that house rule does is it lets you turn off all these things. And then we just add comments like, 'Oh, if you turn this off like if you turn off contact damage, we recommend you raise enemy damage by like 20% in order to keep the essence of the difficulty alive.' Or do whatever you want. Yeah, we don't disable achievements or anything. I don't like that.
We actually give you an achievement. Because we know nobody wants to do it. When we added it, so many people asked if this disables achievements, so we were like, we'll just give you an achievement. Now people will know like to just use it. Like, please just use it! We don't want people to feel bad, but it's such a stigma, right?
And oh, man, a cool, small thing is the amount of people in the discord testing group that do use them. So many of them use these house rules. One person sets all enemies' HP to 200, and I know another guy who just set everything to 50% because he just enjoys it more, right?
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Rogue Legacy 2 releases on April 28 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.