When we announced last October that we were gonna set Rotund Rebound aside to make Rotund Takeoff first, we apologized for the delay and hoped it wouldn't be too terrible a wait. Well, it was. RT development took longer than anticipated, which forced us from a 2020 to 2021 release window, and then porting to Nintendo Switch was a long struggle of unforeseen technical issues. Anyway, though it's taken waaay longer than expected, Rebound is once again our prime focus. So let's talk about where the project stands. First off, RR wasn't entirely dormant throughout the RT period. However, the full process of creating, launching, and watching people play RT, taught us a lot and inspired us to reevaluate RR. As a result, whatever bits of forward progress we'd made in those months were offset by the many tweaks and new additions that resulted.
We've talked about some of these changes on our Discord already. The biggest is the addition of a new support character, Meghan the bat. You'll find her near the beginning of each level, ready to assist. Call on her, and she'll turn the level's leaves into a set of Stars, which can be used to trigger her floating ability, or to take hits just like an energy bar. Stopped a moment too late and touched a spike? The spike pops instead of you, and you can keep going, as long as Meghan has Stars remaining. It's a whole new way to play, and will be a huge help for people who struggle with the precision movement, opening the game to a much wider audience.
If you're wondering about this new mechanic spoiling the gameplay for everyone else, worry not. We've completely reworked the system so that each level has three distinct types of Medals to earn. Clearing the level with Meghan's assistance earns you a Star Medal, but if you want the Clock or Leaf Medals, you'll have to play through again without her or while collecting all the leaves, respectively. Earning each Medal will require a different approach to the level (especially for speed-inclined players), and you'll have to snag all three to consider the level truly beaten.
These big changes had a cascade effect that trickled down through the entire game. One example is the tower keeper, Marvin, who now has various goals that give you options on how you proceed. As the images show, these changes are already up and running, and Rotund Rebound is so much stronger for them! The project is moving forward again, and--even with the ever-building realization that we're making a game the current market has little-to-no interest in--we're excited to be making something epic! And a good thing too, because the many facets of releasing Rotund Takeoff have given us a more realistic sense of how long this is still going to take. We're now looking at a probable Rotund Rebound release date of January-March of 2022. Sorry if that feels like forever away! It's possible we may get there sooner, but this feels like a realistic estimate given that we want the rest of the game's content to be as strong as what's already done, and that we're gonna want more extensive testplaying, and we'll hopefully be launching simultaneously across all intended platforms, and will still be promoting and updating Takeoff in the meantime. TL;DR Rebound is back on track, probably won't release until early 2022, but it's gonna be more worth the wait than ever! As always, thanks for sticking with us!