March 7, 2018
Best Fiends Now Has 2,000 Levels!
The Fiends and Slugs are celebrating because Best Fiends has reached a huge milestone: 2,000 levels! That’s 2,000 fiendtastic adventures for you to embark on! With all of the different worlds on the main map, quests, and challenges, Best Fiends is a game you can play and enjoy forever…well almost.
To celebrate, Seriously’s Game Design team is sharing their insights on creating the World of Minutia and even giving you some tips on how to beat some of those more difficult levels.
Q: What is the significance of reaching 2,000 levels?
A: Reaching 2,000 levels was in no way an easy task. Reaching this milestone is a testament to the creativity and hard work from the Best Fiends team over the past five years of development. It also speaks to the excitement and engagement of our fans, who eagerly await more levels to play!
Q: As a creator, what are the challenges that come with producing so many unique levels? Do you find it difficult to think of new ideas to differentiate each level?
A: Differentiating all the levels can be a challenge, especially after creating thousands of them. Eventually some of them will start to share certain similarities. On the other hand it can also be a positive experience for Best Fiends players. As people learn to play certain level shapes and find success with their techniques, adding only slight variations can give them a nice feeling of “familiar, but new.” The fact that new gameplay mechanics are introduced throughout the game does help with variation, but sometimes it’s also fun to return to an old mechanic that hasn’t been used in a while, and figure out some exciting new gameplay with it!
Q: What is your favorite part of designing and adding features to Best Fiends?
A: One of our favorite aspects of level design is when the mechanics inspire us to combine gameplay elements in a way that produce a kind of “Rube Goldberg machine”-style of domino-effects. Dynamite, for example, is great for those! Sometimes testing and balancing levels can occasionally be a bit repetitive. We often need to play our levels dozens of times to get the difficulty and the elements just right. However, when we nail one of these “Rube Goldberg” levels, it makes it all worth it!
Q: What is the process behind creating each new level? How long does it take?
A: We usually start designing a level by first looking at the gameplay elements we want to use in that level. These elements then help us design the overall shape and “gameplay flow” of the level. For example, a level with dynamite needs to have a detonator somewhere. Positioning the detonators so that you can only trigger them with bombs can then help formulate the rest of the level. The time required to create a single level varies greatly, sometimes it takes a full day to get a single level done, while occasionally we have succeed in creating five good levels within the same timeframe.
Q: Will there ever be a final level of Best Fiends? Why or why not?
A: Let’s just say that we are building up the game with a long-term vision and you will have to keep playing to find out.
Q: Do you have any tips for how to advance in the game or secret advantages to beating levels?
A: The best way to advance in the game is to keep upgrading your Fiends. We balance each level for a specific Fiend level so that the game is consistently challenging. Other than that, it’s important to take note of the different ways to win certain levels and the strategy behind that — for example, some levels might require a different kind of bomb than another, so it’s key to keep an eye out for those variations!
Q: How long do you think it would it take to beat all 2,000 levels? Has anyone beat all of them?
A: It greatly depends on the dedication level and the skill of the player, but if advancing quickly, the current levels can be completed within a few months, despite it typically taking a bit longer than that for most players. However, there are many engaged fans who have finished all the currently existing levels — currently, about 17,000 amazing individuals have finished all available Story + Hero levels of Best Fiends.
Q: Is there a particular level that stands out to you either as your favorite level, least favorite, the most difficult, etc.? Which types of levels are your favorite to produce?
A: We really like the General Slug levels because the levels consist of dynamite and explosions, and it makes for really exciting gameplay and graphics. Those have been a lot of fun to create and are undoubtedly some of our favorites.