thank u dude!!! yea, Double came up with the idea of a blood rain in a forest, so i wanted to use red/green complementary colors for the setting, and make it so that your weapon selection was cleanly delineated from when you go back to the forest. Cello also threw something together really quick because our original composer didn't feel well, so the music that got in still ended up being really good. can't speak to his inspirations though, maybe he could chime in on that.
i wanted to tune the difficulty more, especially since i designed the character combat such that hits don't waste your time or punish you too badly with your jumping ability, but that was really really late in development. :'3 same with the boar AI, that it stands still and lets you destroy it if you're close enough was an oversight we just ran out of time on. the "staff" you mentioned is actually just a really long fucking sword with a constant hitbox at the end, the hit registration sounds were something that also slipped through the cracks. Cello had the foresight to give them damage sounds when we were really struggling at the end. i was looking into it near the end, but i wanted to make the sword, the "Burning Splinter," make a sizzling sound when in contact with an enemy to make it clear that it's a damage zone. but i counted on it being a favorite considering it just looks really cool. and then yea, "Carnot's Claw," the hook sword, was meant to have you spinning to win, but more with an emphasis on bouncing on the top of the boar. that the forest king's AI is busted kinda messed up some of those design decisions LOL.
thank you for playing, i'm glad you enjoyed it. :]