The Final Problem
End of the line.
Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project
!!! SPOILER WARNING: This dev blog covers the final parts of The Future Project, including details on the final boss, the game's story and ending, and how to unlock the final world. If you don't want to be spoiled, play through The Future Project and then return here !!!
We've talked about every other world in The Future Project, so I suppose it's only fair that we take the time to look at the last world in the game, False Heaven. To reach this hidden world, the player must first acquire the Aether and Time Warp abilities found in Alien Remnant and Hand of the Water respectively, then make one last trip to Tempest and explore Floor -1. It's a gauntlet of platforming challenges that require Aether and Time Warp, along with the other gear you've acquired thus far, to successfully navigate. At the end of this path is a strange object called Override, which the Saboteur swiftly takes from you. They don't say much about it right away, but they do state that it's “all the evidence they need” to shut down The Future Project forever. As someone involved in its creation (even if only slightly), this is bad news for the player. But, the Saboteur is still rummaging around inside the data of The Future Project. It might be possible to stop them before they can finish stealing this Override and deleting The Future Project forever.
And that's where False Heaven comes in. Leave Tempest and go back to SIM_SELECT() and a brief cutscene will play showing a new portal appearing. You'll be going through there to start the finale. Now, what will you find in there? It's a linear sequence of platforming challenges calling for every ability in the game, broken up periodically by a special enemy simply called SOLDIER exclusive to False Heaven that's themed around one of the four elemental powers. You'll have to do all this in one stretch, but fortunately there's restoration stations placed in the area to keep you healthy as you do so. An interesting lore detail about this place is that it was created by the Saboteur to experiment with the Override software they just discovered, and they allowed you in so you could see what Override does to the robots that run the Future Project AI software. As you'll observe, they get rather aggressive and start doing things that the robot shouldn't normally be able to do. And all those special actions are rather destructive too. Even though they're trying to destroy the Future Project, they seem to at least want people on their side, and you're the first person they've really engaged with. Maybe that's why they were kind enough to drop some restoration stations for you. Once you make it to the end of False Heaven, you're given the chance to save and return to previous worlds to collect any remaining items you want. You do have all the powers now, so everything upgrade will be available to you.
So, there's the context leading up to your arrival in this world. Now, onto the first question. It's clear that this world is a distorted, dark version of Heaven, the game's tutorial world seen at the beginning of the game. But I could have done anything, especially in a game where the player goes through unrealistic digital worlds. So, why a dark Heaven? Well, if we go back to some of the Comments found within the Heaven world, you'll see that the in-universe creators crafted Heaven as a kind of pitch. It does a lot of things for on-lookers – showcases a (relatively) safe space for all the robot's abilities, while also depicting the project as a whole as almost a holy, important act that humanity needs to do. A big part of its creation in-universe is to subtly plant the idea into the heads of the people who could shut this down that seeing the Future Project's creation through to the end will elevate humanity to a great heights. False Heaven then is the Saboteur flipping that message on its head, stating that the Future Project is actually the door to a new dark age where rampaging robots can do as they please without limits, all in the name of some “King” with an unknown goal. The Saboteur was always among those who had their suspicions about the project's integrity, but this Override code proves it. But, in fairness, there are also suggestions that this isn't really supposed to be part of the project. Either way, the Saboteur now knows the project is compromised, and so they create False Heaven to showcase the dangers and begin the process of deleting the project.
The level design of False Heaven is meant to be a final test of your knowledge of all the game's powers, which also means I was allowed to go pretty hard with the kinds of obstacles placed here. I pulled elements from several different worlds to create False Heaven, both for resource reasons and because I thought that giving it this stitched together look would be to the benefit of the world's aesthetic. Primarily, there are these floating, bobbing platforms that connect the various rooms of False Heaven, broken up occasionally by bodies of water, electric arcs, and lasers to encourage usage of other abilities. In general, when going from one platform to the next, you'll be using a combination of earth, double jump, air dash, and potentially Aether abilities. Meanwhile, water bodies of course call for ice, while many electrical obstacles ask for Time Warp, with everything else usually calling for Aether. As you can see, there's a lot of calls for Aether use here, and that's simply because the player gets it so late in the game that I wanted to pack in many opportunities to use it. There's plenty of places in other parts of the game that call for Aether to get through, but those are optional areas that you can't expect all players to participate in. Looked at from the perspective of someone who focuses on the main objective, there's not a lot of moments forcing Aether and Time Warp usage. So I try to cram these in for the finale so that all players, whether they be completionists or those who are heading straight for the end, hopefully feel like they got to really explore the whole moveset of the playable character.
Enemies are where all other power usage occurs. There are a total of four enemies called SOLDIER in False Heaven, each one using their missiles and one of the main four element powers against you (some may read this and think the electric enemy at the end does not use missiles, but it can if you use earth on it). I'm calling them enemies, but it might be more appropriate to call them mini-bosses. Mini-bosses aren't something The Future Project did much, with only the lava-rock-tentacle-arm things from Hand of the Water (I never did give them a name) being the only other true mini-boss. One could maybe argue the Ice Clads from Jeweled Tundra are a bit mini-boss like, but that would be it. As for the attacks of SOLDIER, the idea was to use some kind of remixed elemental power against the player, and encourage using the opposing elemental power. So, for fire we created a ring of fire that the player would jump over, while earth calls for a quick dodge to the left or right, and electricity calls for double jumping. Ice is the odd one out in that it's literally just the player's Ice Shield ability given to an enemy. Fortunately, ice has a pretty intuitive counter in the form of fire. Throw a fire projectile at it and the enemy will be briefly stunned. But truthfully, almost all the enemies can be pretty directly countered by their elemental counterpart. Fire will be slowed down with ice, electricity will be nulled with earth, and so on. It was fun putting this together as a sort of combat warm up before reaching the final boss at the end. Most enemies in The Future Project call for some amount of generic-ness to make it work at multiple stages in the game, but here I felt free to make enemies employ very deliberate attacks that require specific counter plays to take down.
Once you make it through the platforming and the four SOLDIERS of False Heaven, you'll have the option to save and then either go back and scoop up any items you wish to find or take on the final boss. There's certainly plenty to be said about designing multiple optional areas that take advantage of late game abilities, but for today let's just focus on the final battle. It starts out with the third and final Saboteur fight. You've fought them once in Distant Sibling and again in Tempest, so this will feel pretty familiar by now. This time, the Saboteur will have all the abilities available to them, same as you, so you'll still need to be prepared for a couple new tricks. I did all the coding for this as far back as the first encounter in Distant Sibling, so all I needed to do to make this last fight happen was update Saboteur's health and create the cutscene that plays before the fight. But of course, this is the end of the game. You can't just beat the Saboteur for a third time and roll credits. That would be boring! There's one final trick up the Saboteur's sleeve, and it involves activating Override on the themselves, thus losing control of the robot they were controlling and watching it let loose on the player. It's just as well for the Saboteur though, as it lets them focus on deleting the Future Project while you fight off its now unhinged robot.
The Overridden Saboteur fight, for all intents and purposes, is the beginning of the end. It shares a few similarities with the regular Saboteur battles but for the most part I gave Overridden Saboteur a whole new moveset. And like Saboteur, there are so many moves that instead of it being a linear sequence, the attacks are randomized. It's also worth noting that this is the first boss to force the player into using Aether to avoid an attack (regular Saboteur likely called for Time Warp earlier), making this the first time Aether is being forced into a combat situation. I even gave Overridden Saboteur a whole new ability that neither the player or Saboteur has, that being the All Element Beam. Overridden Saboteur will fire it into the ground and quickly spin in a circle. If you're hit by the beam, you get burned, frozen, and stunned all at once. If my memory is correct, it's the only attack in the game that does this. Not even All's Eye has a single attack that inflicts every status the player can get. With the new suite of attacks, I do a couple things to balance it all out. It's hard to notice, but Overridden Saboteur actually takes a couple points of damage every second. This debuff on the Overridden Saboteur isn't going to swing the battle, it's really just there for lore reasons. When in Override, the robots use very destructive versions of their abilities which wears them down. They might be okay for a moment, but in a longer battle they'll eventually be drained. On top of this, the Overridden Saboteur also doesn't have quite as much health as Saboteur or the boss fight right after this. Unless you have very few upgrades, this boss battle will probably be over quicker than most. And that's probably for the best. As the second part of a three part boss rush, I suspect most players are going to want to get the truly final battle quickly. I can see some people getting caught off guard by all these new attacks the first time, but I've tried designing this so that it shouldn't take more than a couple attempts to get past Overridden Saboteur assuming we aren't doing any special runs like a minimum percent run.
On to the final part then, the fight against Corrupted Database. Loosely inspired by the Parasite Queen from Metroid Prime, Corrupted Database is a program created by the Saboteur to aid in the destruction of the Future Project. Basically, it fends off any attempts to stop the deletion process. By hijacking the Saboteur's connection to the Future Project, the player is able to find this program and begin to dismantle it. But, as the player will quickly see, there is a time limit! The only moment of the game to employ a countdown timer, the player is given fifteen minutes to defeat Corrupted Database. That may seem like a lot of time...and that's because it is. While the player absolutely does fail if the countdown timer hits zero, it's not really there to impose additional challenge. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time to defeat the boss on any difficulty. Ultimately, the timer exists to do two things. First, countdown timers are a great way to add tension to a scene, even if deep down we all know it's not going to reach zero. As the project is being actively destroyed during this fight, I wanted the player to feel a sense of urgency. Second, the timer does act as something of an attack from the boss. Starting at 13:00, every minute the boss will delete one the player's abilities, starting with the ability least relevant to the fight and gradually working its way down the list until only the player and their basic gun is left. As the battle goes on, this can end up having some serious consequences. No electricity means no additional damage opportunities, and no Time Warp means you can't really do much about those spinning shields protecting the boss when they decide to speed up and deflect everything, and so on. I personally haven't seen any other metroidvania do something like this, so until I'm proven wrong I will say that I'm the first to do this ability deletion gimmick in a boss fight.
Beyond its unique gimmick, the Corrupted Database has many attacks that are similar to Overridden Saboteur's, just coming at you in slightly different ways. For instance, Corrupted Database also summons three rings that the player must jump over, minus the burn status it inflicts. Similarly, it also creates objects that then fly to the player after a short time, and an attack that calls for Aether to dodge, although Time Warp can also be used in this instance. It is, however, one of the few bosses to summon minions during the battle, which in this instance was something I did to help keep the player's resources up to a reasonable level. This admittedly helps the player a lot (except on Master Mode), but during testing I was finding that it wasn't uncommon to completely run out of ammo and just be stuck chipping away at the boss' health with your basic gun for several minutes. Alongside health reductions to the boss, the pickups dropped by these minions help make sure that the boss is still exciting to battle. Losing to Corrupted Database can sting pretty hard, so while I don't want to remove all the challenge, I also don't want the battle to be frustrating. As with many things in game development, you have to strike a good balance. Personally, I think the minions do a great job at applying pressure to the player, and then rewarding the player for removing the threat.
There's nothing else gameplay-wise after Corrupted Database. Well, okay, there is an interesting little tease lying at the end of this wireframe world if you move fast enough, but otherwise that's it. You get the ending, the Saboteur says their final words, a brief news article in the style of the News Screen from Impressions is shown (the two games do exist in the same universe, after all), and then credits roll. And that's False Heaven...and the game! As I briefly mentioned before, there are other optional areas throughout The Future Project that also call for late game powers in order to access. Plus, with the release of the All's Eye update back in November of last year, there's even a whole new boss fight that can further challenge the player. But for the main adventure, this was the last thing to do to say you've beaten the game. And with that, we've covered every world in the game! Distant Sibling got shown off a lot in video footage, so we've since gone through Jeweled Tundra way back in 2021 and gradually worked through the design of various worlds in the time since. I'm gonna have to figure out something else to write about!
Until next time!
-Lance T.