Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Imagine you're a small, parasitic organism from outer space.  You can spend literally thousands of years floating through space in suspended animation, until eventually you beat the odds and successfully survive the heat of entering a planet's atmosphere.  Once you have awakened, you immediately begin to search for the strongest source of psychic energy in a small area, then quickly begin to invade that sources.  The source is not extinguished, but you gain control, quickly assimilating the sources' knowledge, memories, and goals.  You understand that you are the designer of one type of planetary entertainment called video games.  You helped to design one under appreciated game about a monster in a castle beating up other monsters.  A sequel was formed by a different part of the same company, but for whatever reason, they have now turned to you to produce the new game, which is to be known as Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.  Despite your parasitic nature, the passive psychic gestalt of your species renders the goals of the host into your own, and you are overjoyed that your lifespan will last exactly as long as the projected development cycle.

You carefully analyze the preliminary meetings.  The previous attempt at Monster Killing Castle was not disliked, but apparently some were less than pleased that the audio overshadowed the graphics.  Some people in the room nod at this observation, and you sense the time to strike.

"Clearly, we must put everything into graphics.  My graphics in my game were good.  Use all of those."

A lesser creature, bowing, explains that if you are referring to trying to use sprites from Symphony of the Night, that would force severe cutbacks into the music.  Emulating funny American television stars, you shrug, and begin to plot the series of events that will result in the creatures body being impaled on a fence post several days later.  Despite wisely not taking responsibility for the action, subordinates begin to avoid you after meetings.  And graphics do proceed well.  Occasionally, there are fleeting attempts by others to make you care about the fact that the music sounds like recording a tone-deaf kazoo in a paper bag.  But you understand the gamers.  They will hail you, even if they could not even comprehend you.

You begin to study your game, the so-called symphony.  The gamers have begun to find it, to love it.  You understand the species well enough that putting in the same few concepts with the smallest improvement is a deeply admired characteristic of video games.  You realize the best path is just to take the symphony, and improve. 

One problem brought to your attention with the previous game was the difficulty.  Gamers could not simply stumble their way through every situation in the first try.  Unacceptable, but the symphony provides the way.  Simply give weapons that will destroy every problem regardless of situation.  But then the overlord informs you that, again, data restricts the game from incorporating all the different weapons from your symphony.  You consider slicing his throat, but then an idea takes hold.

"Not a problem.  We will simply give a whip, make it unfun to use.  The subweapons will be the key.  There will be things that you can attach to subweapons to render them literally unstoppable."

The overlord thinks you are going places.

Ideas come faster and faster.  The symphony had many bosses, so you will also include many bosses with insultingly simple attack patterns.  Create shopkeepers that allow you to buy armor to bypass any problem that might occur.  Hidden rooms hurt gameflow, remove all of them and instead just create rooms that go absolutely no where without reward for their exploration.  People liked that one boss with all the bodies attached to it, make two of them and make both of them almost as terrible as the bosses that are just bigger versions of regular enemies and almost as easy.

But these are appetizers.  The main course is being prepared, as someone with poor grammar would say.

There have been questions about how one can deal with all these bosses.  The memory limitations, always, like a monotonous drone, the same drone you hear when you have procreative relations with other members of the species.  But you know. 

"Two castles."

Uncomfortable shifting.  Someone still dares to speak.

"I guess we could do something like an inverted castle.  It might be seen as a bit of a ripoff of Symphony, but still..."

"No," you interrupt, "it will be the same castle...but different."

The same man, same insect.  "So identical in layout.  Okay, so we'll still have the first castle be where the player gets all the movement-based abilities, and the second be sort of a sandbox type area..."

"No.  Switch between castles.  Constantly."

"So is the second castle going to be harder, or...I feel like I'm missing something here."

"Some places in second castle harder than same area in first.  Others easier."

The man takes off his glasses.  He seems frustrated.  "So, just to make sure I have this right.  The character is going to be going between two huge castles that will be entirely identical in layout, with few clues about exactly where he's going and the next destination having absolutely no relation to where you just were.  Am I getting this?"

You have begun to gain an appreciation for certain artists that draw "horror comics" in this country, for they seem to preview the sorts of scenes that you create, have unfortunately created just after the man talks, his limbs and blood and still screaming head careening off the walls and your painstakingly crafted castle map.  As your body shifts back into a form that the gaping bystanders can comprehend, you add: "I think we should have like three different keys too."

You're so proud of your game.