Battle Princess Madelyn, the sidescroller co-created by a 7-year-old, flaunts new gameplay

Last year, I met Christopher Obritsch, the indie developer whose boss is his 7-year-old daughter Maddie. Under the banner of Causal Bit Games, the pair's debut venture Battle Princess Madelyn is a Ghosts' N Ghouls-inspired retro sidescroller. It's got a new trailer, and a new Kickstarter backer update.

First, here's the former:

The latter explains Battle Princess Madelyn is "nearing the final month of testing and corrections", and that its final boss has gone through five complete overhauls. A different boss has been wiped completely, says Chris, and while Maddie has drawn all of the game's bosses to date, this one took a different approach.

"The two bosses that changed were pretty heavy—the last boss in particular," explains Chris. "Instead of having Maddi draw them, I had her sit with me to speed up the process and tell me what needed to be done. The boss for Germany, which I don’t think we’ve ever shown, ended up getting trashed completely.

"This was because I felt that it just wasn’t epic enough, it felt smaller than a mid-boss. So, the writer and I dug out an older idea and rewrote the dialog for that part of the script. The boss ended up being a humorous take on the original idea, but also Maddi meeting a younger, hard-headed version of herself in a way."

Chris continues: "The final boss was redrawn and redesigned a few times. Nothing was feeling epic enough. Following the story too close wasn’t cutting it, it started as a rival sorceress girl the same age and size as Maddi, but the first half of the fight felt too plain and samey. I worked with Maddi a few times on how the last boss should look overall. There was a giant zombie woman head [and] dragon snake things."

Elsewhere, Chris explains how the game's inventory system and blacksmith tie into its story—more on which can be read here.