At the same time, some older systems maybe didn’t age that well or aren’t as appreciated today. Things like limited lives, constant enemy respawns, limited options or unfair ambushes. Instead of recreating those, we focused on designing a challenge based on skill and reflexes, with fast respawns and frequent checkpoints. The goal was to keep the difficulty tough but rewarding, not punishing or frustrating.
THE NEW GUILLOTINE BOOST COUNTER MOVE AND HYPERCHARGE POWER UPS ALSO DIRECTLY COUNTER SOME OF THE SHALL WE SAY ... UNFAIRNESS OF THE NES NINJA GAIDEN TRILOGY. HOW DID THE TEAM COME UP WITH THOSE IDEAS, AND WHAT WAS THE RATIONALE BEHIND THEM?
When designing the new character controller, we used Ryu Hayabusa’s moveset from the last 2D entry in the series (1991’s Ninja Gaiden III ) as our base. It was already very sophisticated for its time and still feels fun to control today. From there, we explored how to expand it with new mechanics and, from the very beginning, we started iterating on the design as we wanted to give players more gameplay options and challenges.
The Guillotine Boost was introduced as a versatile tool that could serve multiple purposes: offensively (dealing damage), defensively (parrying hits or projectiles and repositioning for
a counterattack) and as a traversal move (using enemies to reach higher ground). Because of its flexibility, it requires precise timing to use effectively, but it opens up a lot of opportunities for both platforming and combat design. Furthermore, it expands the player’s moveset to face challenges in many ways.
On the combat side, we wanted to honor the one-hit-kill dynamic the original games were known for, which works great for keeping players moving at high speed. To add a bit more depth to that flow, we designed the Hypercharge mechanic: kill an enemy with an energy aura and your next hit will be devastating, piercing through bigger or shielded enemies. It’s a system that rewards quick thinking and execution, while maintaining the game’s pace. Players need to read each encounter on the fly, prioritize threats, and plan their movement so the power-up is used at just the right moment. Of course, all enemies can still be defeated without using Hypercharge, it’s up to each player to define their own optimal path through the chaos!
WHAT WAS THE INITIAL PITCHING AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS LIKE FOR RAGEBOUND? The project came to life thanks to Dotemu. They were already in talks with Koei Tecmo about bringing back the 2D side of Ninja Gaiden and after seeing our work on Blasphemous, they thought we’d be a good partner to bring the project to life. They reached out to us and we quickly jumped at the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We put together the best pitch we could ever make, aimed to honor the legacy of the originals while offering a fresh take. Once things were greenlit, we moved into development and began a close collaboration with both Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja. They were involved throughout the process, not just overseeing the use of the IP, but actively giving feedback on characters, mechanics, and story elements. Their guidance helped us stay faithful to the world of Ninja Gaiden, and their
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