Treble Thieves Devlog - The Evolution of the Grapple

By John L. 

Today’s blogpost is dedicated to one singular mechanic in Treble Thieves, the grapple and the changes it has undergone since its original implementation. 

Early on, the grapple was more like the grappling hook from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. There were nodes placed in the level the player could grapple to once they were within range. 

An example of Sekiro’s grapple system, once the player is in range, a green circle appears indicating you can grapple to a spot. 

For the most part this worked. It was set up so you retained your momentum from the initial grapple so you could launch yourself quite far if you aimed it right. But this came with the problem of having to set the points manually and integrate them into the level in a way that felt natural. In addition, if the you could not see the grapple point but was in range, you could very easily launch yourself backwards or straight into a wall. It was clear that the grapple system needed a rework. 

Reworking the grapple to function without nodes was surprisingly quick. In this second iteration, we were aiming for something similar to Titanfall 2, where you aim at a spot and get pulled towards it.  

The grappling hook from Titanfall 2 in action, letting the player sling themselves around the map at a rapid speed 

This still had issues like being unable to end the grapple before you reach the spot you are grappled to, which caused a lot of face-first collisions into the walls of the manor and resulted in a loss of momentum. In the third iteration of the grapple you could cancel the grapple early by jumping, and we also tweaked how the grapple determines where it pulls you. Now the grapple always ended a bit early to ensure there are no more grapple-related injuries within Mr. Brasso’s manor.  

Even with these refinments, players still struggled with the grapple. So I decided to rework the grapple one more time. The fourth iteration is hopefully going to be the final iteration of the grapple system, or more accurately, the air-dash system. After all the hassle that the previous iterations had caused and the fact that the player experience wasn’t meeting the goals we set for it , it was clear that grapple just wasn’t going to work. So it was changed to something like Celeste’s air-dash, where the player is launched in the direction they are facing. From the playtesting feedback we have gotten, this works great and has been a lot more smooth than the last two systems. 

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that I should have started off with this air-dash system instead of going straight for a restrictive system like the previous versions of grapple, as those restrictions caused far more problems than they could ever theoretically solve. In the future I think I will be starting with the simplest solution first before going more complex, as it would have been far simpler to restrict the air-dash as time went on rather than remaking the same system multiple times over. It has been a long journey to get the air-dash to a state where it is effective, but I think we are finally there. 

-John L.