Ender Magnolia – Interview

Fans of Metroidvania titles are likely familiar with Ender Lilies. This well-crafted Metroidvania received high praise from critics upon its release. With the recent announcement of its sequel, Ender Magnolia, and its upcoming release, I decided to interview the development team.

The 2024 Gamescom event provided the perfect opportunity to sit down with Hiroyuki Kobayashi, CEO of Binary Haze and Creative Director of Ender Magnolia. You can read the details of our conversation below.

Q: Could you please explain a bit about the game’s lore and whether this installment is considered a sequel or not?

A: Ender Magnolia happens in the same world as Ender Lilies, but several years later and in a different country. In the first game, Ender Lilies, the rain was kind of the key visual feature. And in this game, it happens in the land of fumes. And so, like [the rain in Ender Lilies] the fumes or smokes become the main feature of this game.

Q: Could you provide more details about the exact release date and whether you have specific platforms in mind for the launch? Will there be any additional showcases?

A: Unfortunately, we can’t say what the release date will be right now, but we are going to make a big announcement in the next month. The platforms will all be released at the same time. However, we’re not 100% sure if the digital and physical versions will be released at the same time. But at the very least, The Digital version [Of Ender Magnolia] for all the platforms will be released at the same time.

Q: What new features have been added to the game compared to the first installment?

A: The biggest difference is that in Ender Lilies, the spirits were characters that were already dead, and they didn’t talk. And so it’s a little bit more of a lonely experience, as it was just Lily on her own, fighting.

But in Ender Magnolia, the homunculi (artificial humanoids in Japanese) are actually not dead yet, and so they talk to you in real-time during the game. So in this game (Ender Magnolia), there’s a lot more of a sense of working together and communicating with your friends as you go about your quest.

Q: Has your team changed compared to the previous game, and how many members from that game are working on the new project?

The team members for this game are the same as the first game. They’ve added maybe two or three more people for the sequel, [bringing the total to 15 people] but it’s the same members.

And the development has been about two and a half years.

Q: Throughout my gameplay experience, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being immersed in a 2D Metroidvania world reminiscent of Nier: Automata. I’m curious to know, what titles served as your inspiration?

A:  That’s a good question! For Ender Lilies, there was definitely some inspiration from Hollow Knight and ICO. And to a certain extent, there was some game design influence from Nier Automata as well.

Q: Considering that the first game wasn’t very difficult, have you introduced new challenges for the fans? Besides new bosses, will there be different difficulty levels in the game?

A: For Ender Lilies, that’s something we really reflected on, actually is that for hardcore metroidvania fans, I thought it was a little bit too easy. And people who were really there for the vibes, the atmosphere, the characters [and] for the story, I thought it was too hard.

So in that sense it was a little bit unbalanced. That’s something we really reflected on as we were going into this game and we gonna continue [to do so]

The current version of Ender Magnolia in early access is under normal difficulty, which is just slightly easier than Ender Lilies. So the hard level difficulty, will be about the same and then eventually more difficult than Ender Lilies was.

[The translator forgets to add: I want to make it that way. I think it would be nice if both group of players could be satisfied with this.]

Q: In the first game, players couldn’t mark locations on the map, which meant they had to memorize the entire game layout. This was a significant challenge for many. Have you addressed this issue in the new installment?

The map design is also something we really reflected on after Ender Lilies, we’ve actually paid a lot of attention to the map design in this game.

So that hopefully that situation where you can’t remember where something was should not happen in this game. So you might not even need the map at all.

Q: If you have any messages for the audience in Baziname, please feel free to share.

A: We as the development team are doing our best to bring you our best work. We’re working hard to bring the game to completion, and please look forward to a full version soon.