Ender Magnolia: Bloom in The Mist, the anticipated sequel to 2021’s hit dark fantasy metroidvania Ender Lilies, got its full official release in January 2025. In a recent interview with AUTOMATON, director Keisuke Okabe and lead game designer Yasuhiro Yokoyama explained how they incorporated feedback from Ender Lilies, as well as player comments on Ender Magnolia’s Early Access release, to enhance the sequel. This included questioning and sometimes removing common elements of the Metroidvania genre – like contact damage.
A key component of the Metroid and Castlevania titles that inspired the Metroidvania genre, contact damage adds a sense of danger to enemy encounters- making it hard to sneak past and often causing the player to attack faster to avoid touching enemies- thus speeding up the tempo of the game and adding thrill. Many metroidvanias from recent years, like Hollow Knight, make use of contact damage.
However, in the interview, Ender series’ lead designer Yokoyama reveals that one of the most common complaints that the team received about Ender Lilies was related to contact damage. Ender Lilies’ gameplay is more about understanding enemies’ movesets and responding accordingly with attacks and dodges, so players complained that contact damage felt unnecessary and annoying. This is because it was easy to lose a chunk of health simply by walking into enemies by accident.
Giving some background, Yokoyama explains that the devs originally added contact damage to Ender Lilies because they believed that it would add a good sense of speed and tempo to the gameplay. “Contact damage makes the gameplay all about timing when and in which direction to dodge. In other words, the risk of contact damage can significantly increase players’ movement speed, evasion performance and response.” Yokoyama comments. “So, we introduced contact damage thinking it would be good for the game, however in the feedback, many people found it unconvincing that you’d take damage just from bumping into enemies.” As a result, the mechanic was removed from Ender Magnolia.
Both Yokoyama and Okabe talk about how releasing Ender Magnolia in Early Access on Steam allowed them to get players’ opinions on the game’s new RPG-style elements, as well as the changes and improvements to aspects such as the map and UI. Yokoyama notes that “We were wondering how people would react to these changes, especially things like the removal of contact damage and the new map. The feedback was so positive that we went ahead and implemented them.”
Stay tuned for the full interview on the making of Ender Magnolia, coming soon on AUTOMATON WEST.
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is available for Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam).
