About The Pit levels

This June 26th we released 3 free new extra levels to the challenge mode called “The Pit”. In the previous challenges (the 25 floor tower) we had made a lot of different fighting scenarios, so we needed to introduce new gameplay elements to make the pit distinct from the existing challenges.


Gamey reference to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.


In the pit levels falling damage is a major obstacle; falling two floors will take about 40 HP, and falling 3 floors will take 80 HP, so you always need to find the right path down to jump 1 floor distances, and make sure enemies don’t throw you into an endless fall.
There are also falling boulders and floors that can be destroyed with skullbombs. It is very alarming when enemies throw skullbombs at you, because they can destroy floors which are necessary for you to continue safely.

About the... Story?
As in the other challenge levels, there isn’t really a narrative story. The way I see it the whole tower and pit are one of Ghat’s nightmares... you know how problems you face in your life sometimes appear in your dreams, as if your subconscious is trying to solve those problems too? That explains why Ghat’s enemies appear again to him, mixed in different and improbable scenarios.
At the end of the Tower challenge you fought Father-Mother and the family, but to complete the nightmare it is only appropriate that Ghat would have to travel inwards (the pit) and at the end of the challenge fight his inner enemies; that is why the final pit has a golden and dark version of Ghat as enemies.


More Gamey reference: I realized our pit level themes match closely the look of three different worlds in Spelunky (awesome cave exploring game) by Derek Yu.

We also added a gameplay parallel to this “fighting yourself” battle with dark Ghat: In challenge mode the player needs to beat levels as quickly as possible and losing as little health as possible. The final dark Ghat will have as much health as the player has when he reaches him. This means that the player can reach the final fight with very little health and defeat dark Ghat with a single punch, (you can intentionally weaken yourself to make the final battle easier), but by doing this you are also affecting your health score, so it is not a win win situation.

Together with the release of the pit levels we had a 50% discount weekend sale for Zeno Clash, and we sold during that weekend more copies than in the entire previous month. So did the awesome new levels increase the sales? Or the price drop?