Clover Bite, Team Malignant and Akupara Games released dirt for PC in August 2021 and we’ve been fortunate to have received a ton of positive feedback and critical acclaim. IGN gave the game a nine out of ten rating, it was rated Mostly Positive on Steam, and players around the world followed suit dirt Discord to let us know how much they loved the precise combat and surreal visuals. But every ninth out of ten leaves something to improve, “mostly positive” still meant we had some negative reviews, and for all players who joined the Discord because dirt was a new favorite of theirs, we also saw players join in to explain what they didn’t like about the game.
This is the story of these players.
I’m Buddy, the Marketing Director for Akupara Games, and today I want to talk a little bit about how the developers are behind this dirt, particularly its game director Yarden Weissbrot, responded to the negative feedback they received from players. What types of complaints did the players have? How did they develop solutions to fix them? And above all, how does the new content come in? Grime: Colors of Rot address some of these concerns with today’s release?
One of the first tensions we saw upon release dirt was the desire of players to fast travel between points in the game. dirt is a 2.5D hybrid of genres that combines elements of Metroidvania gameplay, such as unlocking different movement types that open up interesting new areas as players backtrack, and elements of soul-like gameplay where players experience the close melee combat of the Dodges and parries must be mastered in order to progress through the game to the end. These two genres, Metroidvania and Soulslike, have a tension between them that it took Clover Bite to find a balance between them.
In a Metroidvania, travel is an expected part of the game. As you keep progressing and defeating bosses, you’ll unlock new ways to traverse the map. in the dirt, Abilities like Double Jump, Pull, and Air-Dash allow players to access different parts of the map in different ways. Maybe there’s a secret, hidden passage that leads to a whole new area, only accessible to players who can do a long series of double jumps. This mechanic gives players an expectation that they should return to locations they’ve already cleared to see if they can find new nooks and crannies to explore. And often that exploration means running from point A to point B and examining something when it catches your eye.
In a Soulslike, however, the expectation was raised from the best games in the genre that you’ll be able to fast travel between any points you’ve saved. Elder Ring blasted the doors to the Soulslike genre in 2022, for example, and players can teleport between any Places of Grace they’ve ever encountered. dirt has control points similar to Places of Mercy called Surrogates, a crystalline pillar where the ship players control can grow more powerful. The game also includes its own fast travel system, which is unlocked later in the game, but with far fewer nodes than something like this Elder Ring. Why is that?
For a Metroidvania player, an over-reliance on fast travel removes the sense of a sprawling world that unlocks and opens up over time. When fast travel points are sparse, it helps the player retrace places they’ve been before and discover all the little nooks and crannies they might otherwise have missed! But for a Soul-like player, being forced to run all the way back to an area you’ve already cleared to see if you can get any closer to completion is extremely frustrating. What is exciting for one type of player is frustrating for another. And the solution was more a matter of levels than a system-wide redesign of the game. Yarden doubled the number of fast travel locations throughout the game to ensure players had a good mix of backtracking exploration and convenient transportation. The system was there, the numbers just had to be adjusted.
But there was also another big complaint dirt to which no adaptable system was attached. Many players wondered why the armor in the game was purely cosmetic and didn’t give the player any skill or stat bonuses?
Yarden’s initial design anxiety dirt was that players would prefer stats to graphics. Many players, especially players in the Soulslike genre, are notorious for ignoring their character’s appearance in order to hone the smallest stat upgrades they can possibly get. Youtubers like ProZD and Dan Olson have each made videos on the subject, one a quick, irreverent sketch and the other an academic deep dive into the sociological phenomenon of min-maxing. By removing all stats from items in dirtYarden made sure players could only use armor to express themselves.
Interestingly, however, many players rejected the system because they liked the process of min-maxing their character. Without stats, picking up a piece of armor doesn’t have the same excitement, and for these players each new piece of armor was a bit of a disappointment, something to ignore because it didn’t translate into how they wanted to tweak their character. Fair enough!
The solution here was far more technical than any other change made to the game as it required the creation of a brand new solution. And borrow the term “transmogrification” from other RPGs like World of Warcraftthis system was added dirt through a breakthrough by the game’s technical director, Theodore Kovalev. By allowing players to customize their appearance independently of their item’s stats, they can choose the items that look best and combine the stats that best suit a player’s build – an elegant solution to a simple problem. in the Grime: Colors of Rot, the free DLC content coming with the game’s release on December 15th, this feedback was also taken to heart. With new locomotion abilities like sprinting and hovering, as well as brand new items to equip, the team at Clover Bite has outdone itself in trying to incorporate all of the feedback they’ve received dirt‘s community. We hope you enjoy the trip!
DIRT
Akupara Games
$24.99
Destroy… Absorb… Grow… GRIME is a methodical and unforgiving 2.5D Soul-like Metroidvania in which you crush your enemies with living weapons that alter form and function. Parry attacks to absorb loot, acquire their abilities, and strengthen your ship in a world of anatomical horrors and intrigue.
