Today’s update is about one of the things that players will be spending the most time with: Enemies

Part of what makes Mother special is the sheer number of unique enemies in the game. Discovering the enemies when you enter a new place is half the fun, and something we focus a lot of time on getting right. (We wrote about how we create enemies a couple months ago.)

If you look back at previous mother games, we can see how the number of enemies has grown and how the style has changed:

Mother 1 / Earthbound Zero has 109 total enemies in the game. (source)

A lot of animals and day to day things came to life with just four colors per sprite.

Mother 2 / Earthbound has 171 total enemies in the game. (source)

Even more people and abstract ideas came with Earthbound in a really charming style.

Mother 3 has 190 enemies in the game. (source)

Despite the smallest screen size in the series, Mother 3’s sprites are really large and colorful.

Currently, Mother 4 has 125 enemies completed.

In Mother 4, we try for vivid expressions and gestures, and because of that, the more humanoid enemies got taller.

We have 125 enemies done, and about half that to go.

About the Holidays

Because the holidays are quickly approaching, we’re going to pause our regularly scheduled updates so that we can spend more time with friends and family. That doesn’t mean we’re releasing the game during that. We’ll be right back in 2016.

Happy Halloween!