Hello there,
Today, we want to present our next playable hero to you, though you may already know her: Viggie. She's been key to your success in the Station, but she's had enough of sitting around in the saloon and wants to finally join the action!
We want to thank you for being involved these past months in the co-creation of the character with a series of votes that have shaped the hero, voting things as the personality, gameplay style, animation, etc.
When Viggie will be playable? She will be part of our next update that will release this Thursday 20th of June! (All Platforms) 🔜
Meet Viggie
Presenting a new hero is always exciting, but not sure if we should call it an actual presentation as you already know the character >.<
Yep that’s right, our beloved Viggie (locksmith in case you are curious of the “Dev Name”) will join the roster of heroes in the next update for free and accessible to everyone (new players will need to visit Hive Mind)! During the past months, we have been doing a series of votes with the community to decide several aspects of the character, such as the lore, the gameplay archetype, etc. This is why we wanted to Thank You! for co-creating the hero with us.
This is our special tribute to you, the community 💖
But well let’s begin:
Who is Viggie? Background and lore
We involved the community with 2 separate votes that heavily influenced the backstory of the character and her personality. Here the community decided:
- [📬 Community Vote] Origin > Unnaturally inquisitive: After doing extensive research, Viggie came to the Station on purpose to discover (and infiltrate) whatever systems might still be running. As far as she believes, the Station has the best-preserved Endless IT center in the galaxy, and she expects to find many answers to many questions...
- [📬 Community Vote] Personality > Crazy Grandma: We are sure that with some of her sentences might remind you some of your experience with your grandma or well perhaps some “tales of other grandmas”.
Gameplay
For the gameplay, as it is one of the key elements and most anticipated aspect from players, we decided to have 3 separate votes to define the gameplay style (what is the overall intention of the hero), the Active skill and the Ultimate
Before the vote started the team had a clear vision for Viggie: it should be a support (wasn’t sure at the time if “full support”) class. As we think it will add more interesting synergies when interacting with other characters or bringing refreshing gameplay options for the players. After the initial vote, the community decided that Viggie should be played as a “Strategist” [📬 Community Vote].
When referring to “strategy” we have the initial idea that she should be able to place some sort of traps to monsters, which will bring a strategic aspect when using her.
Passive > Flying Grandma
There were several ideas for a passive, but someone threw the nice idea of “Hey, she has a nice floating chair, why not make her fly?”, and well, we couldn’t resist the temptation to try it. After some testing, we saw that the feeling was really nice, as it brings a lot of mobility (super satisfying when flying in the middle of big spaces in Procedural Factory).
Also, this aspect was working really well with the idea of the character being a “support” (going back and forth helping the teammates).
- Description: Allows Viggie to fly above holes and small obstacles
Active > Linked Lamps
There were plenty of ideas when we were thinking of a nice active for Viggie, but we decided to submit our top 3 on a vote. I have to say that the vote was pretty close, but you, the players, decided to go with the Linked Lamps 🪔
[📬 Community Vote] Description: Viggie can place 2 lamps that create an energy barrier slowing down and dealing Light damage to monsters crossing it. Linkers can be repositioned at will.
How do you place and activate the turrets? They work like the turret you can place from Comrade. Once you place the first one, you will notice the max range in which you can locate the second one. Once you place the second one you will notice how the barrier (visual effect) will emerge between the 2 turrets.
We have made a couple of adjustments to make it a bit more interesting and balanced. The lamps do not do “Light” damage and just regular damage (to avoid the “this character is only good when playing against Blurs). Also, we have decided to implement 2 things:
Veggie can use a total of 4 lamps, meaning 2 barriers. This will give her more mobility and a bit more presence in the entire zone.
When any character traverses the barriers, it will get a boost of movement!
Ultimate > Holokitties
Regarding the ultimate, it was quite funny because we wanted one of the options to be “somehow” related to the second most voted option by the community when deciding the Active. Which was some sort of a decoy. Then when doing the brainstorming one of us said? Why not just spawn kitties (as it was tied to her personality in general), and we all say, “OH YES!” 😻
And well, here we are. Let’s present the Holokitties
[📬 Community Vote] Description: Generates static virtual cats in the room that attract monsters. They deal damage if attacked, but disappear if they take damage.
Fun fact: The cats/kitties are real representations of some of our cats 😛
The orange cat is my little one, his name is Flash (🙀)
ART
It has been a while since we started the design of Viggie, as it was part of the Station. Here are some nice designs from some of the early sketches, to some variance of the colors to the ending design we have today.
Design Evolution
Apart from the global design of the character, there are a couple of elements that I think are worth sharing.
Skills and Skins
Animation
We can talk a lot about all the aspects of the animation of the character but to keep it short, we wanted to thank the community for choosing the Idle animation of the character during the run.
Yes, more cats. Some of our colleagues already expressed their concerns when having any future votes to avoid having cats as options, as they always win (sorry not sorry)
[📬 Community Vote] > Catisfaction
In order for the character to display this idle you need to be in the run and not moving at all (after some waiting you will discover the animation + the amazing sound) In any case a nice quote from the animators:
"It was really nice to work on her little ship hovering feeling (fly instead of walk = animator happy ahah !). We also decided to make her arm linked to the ship's arm, like she's a telepath!"
Sound
Sharing audio is a bit trickier here but we want to share the beautiful picture/video of one of the “voice actors” that you will be hearing with the ultimate.
Meet Nayru, the voice behind the holokitties and well any “cat voice”
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This is already quite a long blog, so I should wrap up. If you have read everything, thank you!
Hope you find the new character interesting, as we have created with you, the community. And on “When is available”, well.... See you in 2 days!
Have a nice day ^-^
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