The developer of CROSSNIQ+ talks about a cut story mode, patches and DLC plans, sequel interest

CROSSNIQ+, the "y2k aesthetic arcade puzzle game," is now available on Switch. To celebrate the launch of the game, developer Max Krieger took to Reddit for an AMA. Check out some of the juicier tidbits he shared during the AMA below.

A cut story mode

I had hashed out a pretty solid plot skeleton, character development arcs, and a pretty complete first act of the game by the time the Kickstarter finished up. The story was your basic "collectible media adventure" - kids playing puzzle battles with each other in the streets of a futuristic city - but it took a real turn in the second and third acts and would have dealt with some weighty subject matter (climate change, forgiveness, the concept of a utopia). All of the character interactions in Versus Mode make reference to the game universe and how story mode would have gone - it's a shame that only a taste of that made it in to the final game. This would have encompassed a versus mode AI as well (think Puyo Tetris story mode), so all the more reason to mourn its absence.

Patches and DLC

I've got a QoL improvement/bugfix patch in the works right now - gonna make a formal patch notes available when closer to release, but I've already drastically improved the load times across all versions. As far as post-release content... with launch being less than a week ago, there's still too much up in the air about the game's sales performance for me to comment one way or the other. Stay tuned!

Sequel interest

Of course I'd love to do a sequel. There's enough content that didn't make it into CROSSNIQ+ that I think a sequel could be just as fresh and surprising. As far as when? Who knows? I would want to have a proper full-time team to work on it with me, and that's a big barrier to entry. Rest assured, though, I won't stop thinking and dreaming about it until it happens!