There was definitely some heavy adjustments on my end. I’ve been working with Clickteam tools for over 17 years (I started when I was 11) and I’ve completely gotten used to its quirks and the way it does things under the hood. I felt pretty lost when I started working with the new engine in Unity. Fortunately my experience with general code syntax from college, as well as some guidance from Christian (he even rearranged the default Unity to layout to better resemble Multimedia Fusion), I was surprised how quickly I got used to it, and I really appreciate the edge it has over MMF2 in almost every way but especially with performance and object handling, two of the biggest issues I struggled with in FP1. While there are some things in Unity that required painful workarounds when they were a snap in MMF2 (like pixel perfect rendering), I don’t regret making the switch at all.

Hub areas are something I actually wanted to do in the first game, but I quickly realized it would be too ambitious and that there wasn’t enough side content in the game to justify their existence. With the introduction of collectible items and powerups in FP2 and the increased focus on world building, I feel that hubs are now something we can work with in a meaningful way. Our current plan is to include four major hub areas in each of the four main cities. They’ll contain a lot of the optional story stuff that players are free to access or skip depending on their preference, and they also present opportunities to collect and buy new items. I would expect something like Shovel Knight or Shantae in terms of complexity. One of the things I’m most excited about is the fact that our character designer Tyson Tan has created over 100 unique NPCs for the hubs. He wanted to avoid the use of clones to expand the NPC population, and while it’s definitely going to take a while to animate every NPC, I think the results will be worth it. The few NPCs that we’ve publicly revealed have gained a surprising fan following (especially Maria Notte, a bat news reporter with realistic arm wings).

“So from the first game, you guys made the transition from Multimedia Fusion to Unity. Did you run into any difficulties with that? Has it been easier that MF or a bit of an adjustment? What exactly do you feel makes Unity better than Multimedia Fusion?”

“So from the first game, you guys made the transition from Multimedia Fusion to Unity. Did you run into any difficulties with that? Has it been easier that MF or a bit of an adjustment? What exactly do you feel makes Unity better than Multimedia Fusion?”

Going on three years now, Freedom Planet launched on Steam after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012. For the uninitiated, Freedom Planet drew heavy inspiration from Sonic the Hedgehog, while also adding a huge emphasis on combat and exploration. Fast forward to now, and we’re highly anticipating the release of the sequel, Freedom Planet 2. Sporting a fresh look, new engine, and so much more, GalaxyTrail is looking to up their game significantly. We sat down with Strife, a very active member of the Retro forums, to discuss the sequel, transitioning tools, and much more.



“Point blank, what are some criticisms of the first Freedom Planet that you and your team have taken into consideration for the sequel?”