Binary Haze Interactive's CEO & Creative Director chats with us on Ender Magnolia, the sequel to Ender Lilies
RPG Site got the chance to check out Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist at PAX West 2024. This upcoming title is the sequel to Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights, a sidescrolling action RPG that Adam was very fond of in his review of the game when it fully launched in 2021. Ender Lilies also resonated with players as it currently has an Overwhelmingly Positive review rating on Steam and has nearly 32,000 Steam player reviews at time of writing.
The current demo build of Ender Magnolia at PAX West 2024 had a test map filled with enemies. It was set in a thorny jungle-like environment with a vibrant, yet oppressive, red background that eventually turned into a cool blue in certain sections of the map. Just like Ender Lilies and other Metroidvanias, Ender Magnolia has people travel from room-to-room as they navigate their way around an overall map.
Liliac, the new protagonist in Ender Magnolia, relies on various different Homunculi beings for her offense. Four different Homunculi were mapped to my X, Y, B, and RB buttons on the Xbox controller. My "standard attack" Homunculus on X had a big scythe-wielding creature unleash a combo on foes that healed me if that Homunculus killed them; a handy quirk, since I was only limited to three healing charges normally.
The Homunculus on my B button summoned one behind me that fired off a few pistol shots to reach more distant foes, while the Homunculus mapped to my RB button called upon a tiny bat-like familiar to my side that stuck around for awhile firing a few shots automatically.
Meanwhile, the Homunculus on my Y button was initially one that fired a big diagonal bullet projectile. I wasn't quite fond of it, so I swapped it out at a rest point for one that threw out a huge punch that pushed it forward.
One of the big points is that all of these buttons that call upon different Homunculi are all entirely customizable and each can wield a different weapon. As players progress through Ender Magnolia, they'll gradually collect more stuff to add onto their arsenal and it's up to them to build their offensive moveset. Enemies have stagger bars that people are encouraged to deplete as fast as possible, in order to interrupt a foe's attacks and have them enter a juggle state.
Movement and general platforming traversal felt responsive, while combat segments were thrilling and punishing whenever I got hit. Damage values on incoming enemy attacks were no joke.
Before trying out the PAX West 2024 demo build of Ender Magnolia, RPG Site got a chance to sit down with Binary Haze Interactive's CEO and Creative Director Hiroyuki Kobayashi about the current state of the game, the challenges in creating a follow-up to Ender Lilies' success, and the general timeframe in which they expect to complete development on Ender Magnolia - which has currently been in Early Access on Steam since March 25.
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is set to fully release on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC when it is fully ready to launch out of Early Access. Enjoy our interview down below!
Hiroyuki Kobayashi, CEO & Creative Director at Binary Haze Interactive: We’ve learned several things from players. First, we’ve decided that there’ll be no damage for enemies physically bumping into players whereas that was not true for Ender Lilies. In our previous game, you would take damage from their attacks, as well as just bumping into them. Meanwhile in Ender Magnolia, you only take damage if the enemies actually hit you from an attack.
For skills - in Ender Lilies, there were a lot of skills that had limited uses, so they were limited in the number of times you could use them. In Ender Magnolia, a lot of skills can be used continuously and only limited by their recast time; you can use them as many times as you want, as long as their cooldown is over.
Those are the two things we learned that people want based on feedback from the Early Access period.
In addition, that reduced the difficulty a little bit, but it’s the kind of difficulty we don’t want players to be having - like the annoying kind of difficulty. One thing people said about Ender Lilies is that there were a lot of long-distance attacks to dodge that made it really hard and that the level design was difficult to understand at times.
We worked on those two things as well, so people don’t find the game difficult for [annoying] reasons that turn them away from the game. Instead, we’ve added other ways to make the game difficult that are enjoyable to the players.
Kobayashi: For Ender Lilies, Lily was the only one left alive so her fight was a little bit more alone and on her own, so she grew on her own. In Ender Magnolia, there are other people still in the world; the Homunculi speak and so it’s a little bit more about the protagonist Lilac growing with friends.
Kobayashi: In terms of character animation, we had to create a new system to be able to do the diagonal movements. Other than that at the moment, it’s using the base engine that Ender Lilies used and customizing it significantly from there.
Kobayashi: In terms of the fighting system, the biggest difference are the Homunculi with their three customizable weapons. Each player can choose this weapon with this Homunculus, and this weapon with this Homunculus, and such. They have a lot more freedom in their ability to customize their fighting style.
Kobayashi: So at the moment, the graphic assets, basic function, and stages of the game are all in a playable state. There are just some final edits left and some final adjustments, but we expect that development will probably be finished by November - although we can’t say an exact release date yet.
Kobayashi: Ender Lilies was set in a very dark, gritty, and sad story so some people felt really bad for Lily because she was fighting all on her own. We really hope that fans will enjoy Lilac’s adventure; she’ll travel through some similar dark paths, but this time she has friends with her. We hope you’ll enjoy that.