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Sonny 3
Release date Became Sonny (2017)
Characters Sonny
Credits Producer : Jakrin Juangbhanich

Sonny 3 was to be the third installment of the Sonny series, although it would have rebooted the storyline. It, like Sonny, was being developed by Krin and would have been made with Unity instead of Flash.

Many aspects of the gameplay were converted to Sonny (2017) such as an earlier form of Evolution.

Development

On June 5th, 2013, Krin posted a blog[1] on his personal development site in which he spoke about how now that he finished Sinjid, he had been spending some time sharpening up his technical skills, things like coding patterns, math, effects, et cetera. To do this, he started a new game called Invasion (later became Star Strike, eventually released as Gemini Strike).

Invasion

He stated that the game was to be a technical exercise, giving him and David some room to experiment with new ideas, that a lot of the code used in this (item generation, effects, particles, data system, inventory system) would be carried over to new projects (like Sonny 3) and that it was also to help him learn how to export into iOS directly from Flash.

Sonny 3

Krin stated:

"I’ve started Sonny 3 production, finally! It will be a while before I have any videos or screens available – the visuals will only start to come together once the game engine is done (right now, everyone is a box – coder art FTW). But in the meantime, here’s a bit more info:

  • It will be using a completely new engined designed from the ground up.

  • It will be turn based, and you still select the target, and your skills will pop-up around.

  • It will be targeted for mobile as well.

  • Story will most likely be rebooted like Sinjid was."

A year later, on June 10th, 2014, Krin posted an update[2] where he stated:

I started Sonny 3 a long time ago with FlashDevelop and AS3, but then as mentioned in my previous post – I’ve decided to learn Unity as my main platform instead. The powerful engine and the ability to export to any device was too good to pass up. Now fast forward a year, and I’m more comfortable in Unity with C# than I ever was in Flash. I’ve learnt a ton of new tricks along the way. Now in order to learn Unity, I wanted to make a game that was easy. I didn’t want to make Sonny 3 right away, because I want to be 100% capable before starting the project. So I opted for a Shoot-Em-Up, which is in my opinion, the easiest kind of game to make.

He went on to talk about Star Strike's development process, a new puzzle-RPG game called Opal and finally spoke about Sonny 3 in detail:

Okay, since this is what everyone is always asking about – here is a small update! I have prototyped a few different ideas and have decided to go with the Mutagen design after all. I think it’s really fun to be able to pull apart the DNA of your dead enemies and absorb their abilities – but also to be able to mix them and create your own combinations. Some fundamental changes will be made to the game. First, the buffs are going to be a lot simpler. There are just too many buffs in Sonny 2, because the gameplay relied on them too strongly. Now we’ll have much more interesting mechanics, and so buffs can take a back seat. On the other hand, I found a fun way to deal with elements and ability builds. Inspired from card games, each spell will add or gain some kind of bonus based on how many spells of the same element you have in the ability grid. So maybe Toxic Spit gains +15% damage for each Green Mutagen you equip. Meaning you can get stronger power by sticking to one element, but each element will have its own strengths and weaknesses.

Cancellation

It is unknown when Krin cancelled Sonny 3, but it most likely happened somewhere between 2014 and 2015. On September 14th, 2016, Krin was interviewed[3] by Armor Games' Dora Breckinridge, where he spoke about Sonny (2017) for the first time. Seeing as how many aspects of the gameplay show up in Sonny (2017), such as the rebooting of the story, game mechanics, the switch to Unity and mobile port, it can be concluded that the game over time evolved into it.

Gameplay

Krin stated that it would be using a completely new engine designed from the ground up, it'd remain turn based, and you'd still select the target, with your skills will popping-up around and that it would've been targeted for mobile as well.


Sonny3Skeleton

An in-development screenshot of the finished skeleton rig for Sonny 3.

Skills

Krin spoke about how it'd probably the biggest change from the original, seeing how:

  • No more classes and skill trees. You will literally build your own class and customise your skills as you play. You skill have an Ability Wheel with 8 slots. Passive Skills will need to go on the wheel as well.
  • Reactive Skills are a new type of passives. You put them on to the wheel, and they will proc off the active skill(s) that they are adjacent to. They will do things like decrease cooldown, add a second ‘strike’ to the skill, cause it to stun, etc.
  • Since there is no more skill tree, you actually gain Skills by absorbing them from slain enemies. Any skill that any enemy has, can be yours. It is up to you to find the right set of skills that work well together, and hunt down the right enemies to take them for yourself.
  • Skills are levelled up separately. Each skill will sort of have it’s own mini ‘tree’ that you can use to specialise the skill further . It doesn’t take long to level up a new skill to max level – the main point of this is for very intricate customisation. It shouldn’t be a grind.
  • New Overload mechanic – Overloads are sort of like little extra skills you can cast on top of an existing skill. So your vanilla “fireball” spell could be overloaded to do more damage, or stun the enemy, or leave a damaging burn – adding more tactical choices to each skill. Of course, using an overload (rather than a vanilla cast) of a skill will incur some kind of extra cost to your character.
  • Less emphasis on stats, more on strategy. The new skill system will have a LOT of mechanics – and these mechanics are how you will win fights. Pure stats will carry much less weight in Sonny 3.

References

  1. Juangbhanich, Krin. "Invasion, Sonny, Unity!". Krin's Blog. Krin Studio. Archived from the original on 1st November, 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
  2. Juangbhanich, Krin. "Long Time No C#". Krin's Blog. Krin Studio. Archived from the original on 14 November, 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
  3. Juangbhanich, Krin. "Developer Interview: Krin". Armor Games. Armor Games. Archived from the original on 15 August, 2017. Retrieved 18 February 2021.


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