Funny that he cites materia as the inspiration for the shards, since the resulting system morphed into something so different. I'd bet most differences are more apparent in actually playing it; I had a sudden feeling I'd seen the "spirit shards" screen before, which probably makes less sense if you compare the actual systems (not that Hollow Knight's version is particularly novel here).
It seems like goo puzzles aren't just "fill this shape" but "replicate this shape" - goo outside of the shape is penalized. That's why they spent so much time with the meter right near the boundary, their attempts to fill the last traces of empty space were meaningless compared to the huge globs on the bottom and top.
@haliaeetus: I'm really confused what the process was for planning the Go game. If you look closely, all the moves they play while we watch are going in the squares in between points (the "winning" move looks like he is attempting a much more literal "wedge", pushing existing stones out of the way). Some of the moves also disappear between cuts. Was it actually easier to make up a nonsensical position/moves than to just look up a game? I thought it might have been a capture race type learning exercise, kill me before I make life, but it seems more like they just decided they wanted to have the aesthetics of it without any substance. Hopefully not an omen for the game as a whole.
I really enjoyed the article, @jeff. The "working on actual hardware" part is actually a bit of a sticky point - they are currently running tests to figure out the causes of some working-in-emulator-but-not-on-console crashes when using "parallel universe" techniques.
The narrator in that video is also responsible for the $1000 sm64 bug bounty, which led me to join his group of merry hackers - a really interesting, dedicated bunch.
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