We've come quite a long way since we last spoke in June! Times were different, life was simpler, and the long-awaited Worlds Apart: Part I update had just been released for PvZ Road Trip 2! Since then, we've made loads of changes to the way the game plays, feels, listens to music, smells, tastes, etc. and it's all coming together quite nicely! Previously we had announced that Part II for that update would be coming later this year... but we've got the slightest bit of a change of plans.
OK, it's not very slight - we're going to be shipping the massive log of changes from even just Part I alone alone into a new game! This is where PvZ Wildside comes in, all the features that were incomplete will be finished and polished and refined and well-fed and ported into Wildside! We think there's enough major game changes not only from where PvZ Road Trip 2 was when we last released an update, but even just PvZ Road Trip 1 and no longer think that it belongs as part of the Road Trip series.
Soo... what's going to happen to PvZ Road Trip 2 and PvZ Road Trip 1? Well, PvZ Road Trip 1 will have the subtlest change. It will go back to just being PvZ Road Trip since there will no longer be a sequel for it - some additional changes for Road Trip are planned in 2022. PvZ Road Trip 2, on the other hand, will no longer be officially supported (all issues relating to it will not be resolved) and it will be safely escorted off of wiki grounds and into a set of cozy subpages. You will be able to access these downed subpages easily by just typing 'rt2' into the search bar and following an updated navigation template at the top of each page. This change will happen in a few weeks before Wildside's planned release.
Now with all of that out of the way, it's time to jump into some of the changes and things we're going to show off today that have made it into Wildside. Please note that this is only a snapshot of what's to come as we plow forward with development, but there's a few things we're willing to show off sooner since they're less likely to change and also less likely to make us look like a bunch of bumbling onions when they don't release with Wildside or release in a drastically different form. Today we're going to soft-reveal the brand new world roster, dive into Wildside's grand finale of a world, and talk briefly on a new system that's never been done before!
| The Bloomlands |
| We're moving away from Greensburg or Gravesburg and into a more 'wild' world, hence the new name. The general gist of the plot is you've got this super cool Sunshine Idol that you're piecing together in order to banish the Umbra (big bad darkness thing) that lurks underground. So you're going through these different worlds, picking the pieces up, and eventually make your way down to the sinister depths where the Umbra is hanging out. |
| Bluegrass Wilds |
| Rolling fields of deep blue crops matched with cloudy blue skies as far as the eye can see. |
| Lochwater Lagoon |
| Dense wetlands overlooked by towering mangrove trees and fiercly protected by the Loch tribe. |
| Nightcap Grotto |
| A mountainside clearing in an otherwise perfectly magical and definitely not-at-all-evil forest. |
| Permafrost Peaks |
| The milky white clouds floating in the howling wind match the chalky white color of the snow. |
| Stormline Plains |
| The hills are alive with the sound of crackling and the soothing buzz of electronic nothings. |
| Lavamolt Steep |
| Surrounding a beating heart of superheated magma lies an impenetrable shell of solid stone. |
| Riptide Island |
| An ancient darkness lives under the inconspicuous waves and winds of this tropical island. |
| Sinister Depths |
| Your journey ends here, brave adventurer. But beware, these caverns house a dark secret... |
When we were in the earlier stages of Wildside (back when it was still called Road Trip 2) we were super conflicted on how to finish the game. We knew that some of the other games on the site and in the real world had concluded their games with a Dr. Zomboss fight, but we thought we could do one better. Instead of having a designating final boss, we made the design choice to make our final world have the most in-depth gimmicks which would in turn allow us to treat the ENTIRE WORLD as a boss fight.
All Sinister Depths levels have a single Bellow (this is a special utility that can't be replaced or removed) somewhere towards the right of the lawn. This Bellow is hooked up to Veins that reach out all around it and cover up tiles - you can plant on Veins, but some mechanics like lava tiles won't properly function. There's also Snappers that can hide in the Veins and spread the colony when they activate. When a plant or zombie is defeated on top of the Veins, they will send a signal to the Bellow which raises something called an "alertness level" by 1. This naturally goes down after a while, but if this reaches 20 the Umbra will emerge from the Bellow.
When the Umbra is out, Bellows don't really do anything - you can't have two Umbra at once after all. The Umbra is more of an ancient spirit than any zombie you've met before, and your goal in this world is to keep it from spawning. The Umbra will lumber leftward, but will investigate the locations of any plants or zombies defeated when it is out, allowing you to bait it away somewhat although it will gradually move faster and faster as it remains out. It's immortal and wrecks through any plants or zombies it touches, consuming their souls to add 3 seconds to its 30-second patrol timer. Once the patrol timer is up, the Umbra burrows back underground.
The Umbra is the heart and soul of our new story. The plan is for the Sunshine Idol to be involved in the final level of Sinister Depths, but the details haven't quite been ironed out yet.
While we don't have a ton to share just yet, Barkeology is a huge addition coming to Wildside that will complete the game's story and flesh out its lore even further. The general idea behind Barkeology is that you'll collect these fragments of Artifacts through Events or Dungeons from long, long ago and if you collect enough of them you just might be able to hammer them together into something of value. There's currently two types of Artifacts, both with equally unfinished names: Unit Artifacts and Player Artifacts.
Unit Artifacts can be attached to plants (you can configure them around before a level if you so choose) and will give them a hearty boost for the price of a little extra sun. So for example, Spikeweed might gain the ability to damage a wider area of zombies every few attacks but that power would cost an additional, say, 25 sun or so. These are the replacement for Grow Powers - a mechanic that I've personally never been happy with and that I know a lot of the team hasn't been happy with either.
Player Artifacts function way differently. They're more like legacy Upgrades that you might be familiar with from PvZ2, such as the Mower Launch Upgrade or the Shovel Refund Whatever It's Called Upgrade. Player Artifacts are way earlier in the development cycle than Unit Artifacts, but the general idea is that you can upgrade them using additional fragments and that you can only use a handful or so at a time. We think that Player Artifacts will add another layer of depth while also adding exciting things to discover.
I don't want to promise anything too early, but there are also some floor-level plans to implement Zen Garden in some form and tie it into Barkeology, but I'm not really sure where that stands with everything else and it might not end up happening.
And that's all we have for now, folks! I'm hoping this blog cleared up some confusion and maybe gave you a bit of an explanation for why it's been so long since the last Road Trip 2 update! We'll see you at the end of the year when we're planning (not a guarantee) to release Wildside!