The Next Part Of The Retrospective Is Taking Some Time To Write, So I Think I`ll Only Release It Tomorrow.In

The next part of the retrospective is taking some time to write, so i think i`ll only release it tomorrow. In the meantime, why not play/finish Irredeamable? The next part is getting pretty close to the actual game story, so its going to contain quite a few spoilers. Download the game now on gamejolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/irredeamable/879931 ...Or Ichio (no copyrighted music) https://blackblooms.itch.io/irredeamable

Going live on Twitch soon! We're giving ourselves more psychic damage with Disco Elysium! Yyyyaaayyyy!

Twitch

Twitch

Guys, i found a leak of mh wild flagship!

Irredeamable Developpement Retrospective Part 5: Project watchmaker

So before we begin this part, i will reiterate the previous warning that this part will contain some spoilers for the actual game, so this is your last chance to go download and play it. For everyone who already have played Irredeamable or dont care about spoilers, lets begin. ----------

Project Watchmaker was another attempt at creating a global setting for my stories, but unlike The Fountain which was all about about a wide fantasy world, full of strange lands, stranger races, and reality-altering magic, this one takes a more vertical sci-fi form where the focus was instead on an extensive timeline. Early ideas involved a time-traveling story, where one would take control of Excalibur, a superweapon with control over time. The character would travel through a series of timelines in a Metroidvania structure, using time gates and timewarp keys to reach different locations at different times. These timelines included a medieval/cyberpunk utopia, a post-apocalyptic snow wasteland, an ancient jungle, a cyber-totalitarian future, the end of times, and a forgotten prehistoric age. This story also included a bunch of characters based on Arthurian mythology. Such as a post-apocalyptic Lancelot (riding a motorcycle), an artificial intelligence lady of the lake, an evil totalitarian king Arthur, and Merlin as a deathless troll sage that can be encountered in all timelines.

I used to have more details about this one, but then i realized that i dont really have any pictures of it. Still, i wanted to talk about it since a lot of this story did make it into the game themes and characters and it makes a nice buffer for the actual spoilers. So we`ll leave things here as we move onto some transitional maps that took place in the transition between this form of the project and the next.

What eventually cemented the setting current form is the namesake watchmakers. It's based on the old flawed argument from Christian fundamentalist apologetics that posits that in the same way we can determine that a pocket watch on a beach is man-made because of its complexity, we can do the same with the universe. What ended up inspiring me through, is the rebuke to this argument. The idea that if the universe was indeed designed, how did you manage to distinguish the pocket watch from every single grain of sand in the first place? I wont really linger on these debates as i never was fond of arguing, especially about religion, but while i havent believed in gods for a very long time, i always have been fascinated by the concept and all the ethical questions they bring forth. In this very specific case, what is it like to live in an entirely artificial world? What would that world even look like? What kind of creature would even do it in the first place?

...and that brings us back to fairies, the little gods hiding in plain sight. Back in the fountain, they represented infinite potential, and here it`s much of the same, except rather than beings of pure magic, they are simply creatures that have access to technology and knowledge beyond understanding. They are not literal god, they would say so themselves, but they have evolved past a point where neither time, death, or even reality has any grasp upon them. They are only limited by their own mortal flaws and incomplete understanding.

They are all meant to be equal, a group of disparate individuals united by a common goal of figuring out how it all went wrong and use their power to fix it. But Morgan, the purple fairy, was always the focal point of the story, the antagonist hiding as the support character. (back in the Excalibur story, they would be revealed to have been leading you into defeating Merlin and the trolls so Fairies could take over the timeline and establish their utopia)

As the fairies were fleshed out, pocket worlds were designed in their image, connected through a central realm and some other junctions, kind of like an ant-farm. Much of the idea behind the world was that it was both a place of research and a prison. A cosmic-sized panopticon that the watchmakers could use to study some of the most dangerous sapiens species and learn how to tame them.

The realm came through many other iterations, and ultimately some of the stuff had to be dropped to reduce scope. Most notable here was the removal of the elves and suhagins, their roles being merged into the Uris and trolls respectively (trolls even took the name)

There was also a brief attempt at having the entire game take place in the city of new eden. Both the Uther and Ursula boss fights were conceived in this version of the story and new eden remained a central figure of the game story and world. Aniway, we`re almost at the end of this part. We only got some progress shematics left. These includes areas and boss concept. Some made it in the game in some forms, other have been scrapped or pushed for later projects.

Anyway, thanks for following this retrospective so far. The next and final part of this retrospective will be about the project as it was during the 2 years i officially developed it on Tumblr. A little game known as Irredeamable.

Irredeamable developpement retrospective Part 3: The fountain So just as presented in the last part, this was my attempt at creating a single complex and interconnected setting for all of my games. I even had a bunch of games planned for this, including one some of you may have seen before.

This game was made on a whole other engine, so i won`t linger too much on it, but the planned story was about a small elf huntress, ascending the great titan (giant tree) to find increasingly imposing preys to hunt, such as troglodytes (giant frog people), drakes, wyrms, other sentient bugs and concluding on a battle with the nevermore, a black crow/dragon that served as the god of the tree.

Anyway, back to our actual game. The fountain took place in a nexus between several worlds, where several species from all over the multiverse lived, including humans, lizardfolk, goblins, elves, trolls, and several races of fae. At the heart of this world, was the coveted fountain, a well of pure magic that was the source of all reality and could remake it to the whims of any who were bold enough to find and use it.

From this premise, a main game was planned, an epic journey through the crossroads of lands, where a group from different races would meet and unite in their common quest to find the fountain and achieve their deepest wishes.

So the journey starts on human lands, a continent consisting of mostly deserts. The fountain is where i finally settled on an aesthetic for humans, making them mechanical, and fire-themed. They usually wield guns and use the metal, oil, and coal of their land to build fiery machines and factories. Other stories also give them the ability to nearly fully mechanize their bodies, turning themselves into metal demons. the second area would have been the lizardfolks/mermaid archipelago (don't ask why they are the second to last area in the plans, i dont know either) These would be themed around water and serve as an artificial/life amphibious force, working under the centaurians from the last few settings. The mermaids specifically were centaurians-humans hybrid, hence why they have features of both. Then the group arrives upon the mainland, where they are met with an overgrown swamp, infested with demi-fae, a group of several races mixed with fae blood, giving them the ability to use magic. This is followed by a series of urbanized forests controlled by the tiny, but industrious elves who are able to build dozens of man-sized war machines. The last obstacle on the journey is the shadowlands, a dark, cold, and desolated region, guarded by a race of ancient stone creatures. These old traditionalists and users of mystical shadow arts despise change and will do anything to prevent the fountain from being tampered with. ( i remember hearing the line "dwarves are incorruptible as stone" in shadow of mordor and it stuck in my head ever since, becoming a defining aspect of the trolls in my own stories.") And finally, the fountain, a place of infinite potential and home of the Fae, creatures that have been encountered during the whole journey, avatars of magic, nature and change. The fountain is a fantastical realm, a city of candy, floating over an ever-flowing lake of golden honey. The purest of faes reside in this realm, but they are far from the nature-loving beings met in the outside world. These Faes are cruel and ravenous, eager to consume the world and make a new one that will one day also be ruthlessly consumed.

Anyway, as you can tell from all the lore, i ended up putting a whole lot of effort into that setting. There was even supposed to be a whole second half of the game where the characters made their wish and the world would be twisted by the Fae magic into nightmares that would have to be fought and repelled before they replaced the region. We are slowly, but surely getting close to the end of this retrospective. Next we will go into the game that ended up giving irredeamable much of its mechanics. A small, self-contained story that ended up bridging the gap between the fountain and the current setting i have been building. See you in part 4: The city of dolls.

Irredeamable developpement retrospective Final part: Irredeamable Well, thats it. The one game in this series that you actually get to play, but even this project encountered quite a few changes as it went. So lets get into some of it.

Early in development, irredeamable was meant to be more of a metroidvania, where you'd explore interconnected levels with several routes, including some that would bring you back to the hub or allow you to visit later levels early.

This is especially visible with grimwood breach which was originally intended as the first level. Part of why it ended up feeling much more twisted and disjointed than other areas was that its rooms were constantly moved around in development as i tried to make a linear level out of them.

What eventually cemented the current form of the game was a change of approach as i began working on the shaded coast and focused on making a linear sequence of rooms rather than a complex maze. (you may also notice that the two levels ended up switching position in the hub)

From that point onward, i worked under the philosophy "focus on the game you have, not the one you want" I continued to make slow but steady progress, occasionally having to make concessions about my plans to make the project more achievable.

During the project, i worked with this hand little thing, a chart of all the areas i had planned (their state of progress being indicated by the saturation of the color)

Here you can see an older version of the chart, and all the side paths that were planned and ended up being cut. Originally, the postgame was meant to be much bigger than it ended up being. Each level had an extra-side route within the world's bowels, ending with a boss rematch. These included an underwater ship graveyard, a forbidden grove, A scrapyard full of undead machines leading to an abandoned factory, rotten tunnels and roots under the forest, an ancient tomb where you`d find the spirits of fallen heroes, and a secret vault where old secrets were preserved. These would all eventually lead to the watchmaker citadel/eye of the watchmaker, a final gauntlet inside of the space station that the "gods" of this land operated from. From all of this, only the foundations remain a single expensive postgame level that ends with a dedicated boss rematch zone. (there is a bit of a secret to anyone who visits this area before finishing the game, but i won't spoil what you`ll find)

Aniway, don`t mind this picture, just needed something to make a cut for this next section about miscellaneous locations and characters that were cut.

First was the original backstory of lady, where she was a giant crystal bird monster and mount evermore was what remained of her body after being slain. The final level back then would have been "house of glass" a journey through lady`s old body where she would ultimately be confronted by the lady of the lake who was once planned as the game final boss

meanwhile the original boss of Mount Evermore (known back then as worlds edge) was the silent sage. An ancient suhagins that had managed to survive all the resets by hiding from the watchmakers within the world`s foundation. He was also completely optional and would just give you lady soul piece without a fight. Much of his role in the story was given to the pilgrim, leaving him as a mere lost memory. If threathened, he would have fought by hiding and launching attacks from the shadows of the background. (there was a vague theme that each boss represented a moral flaw and he was cowardice)

This one won't be too complicated. Violet used to be from New Eden Upper District but was made into a witch to fit better into the areas she is found in.

Krogues/Uris used to fly like the forgotten due to being based on the fairies from the fountain. Their design had to be changed as they became more grounded.

There used to be an arch-witch enemy planned, but she was ultimately scrapped and her grenade-slinging moveset and general aesthetic were instead given to the Uri Chieftain.

The Steam Knight got through a lot of story changes in development. First, he was meant to be Ironwood's son, then it was made into merely a robot that the old man controlled during the first fight. There was plan that the knight would free itself and grow sentient to justify the later fight, but i eventually opted to give control of the robot to another character instead.

Originally, Kingsly was supposed to be donkeyskin father, but while his story was about accepting that his actions had irreparably destroyed his daughter's life and that he would never be forgiven, it ended up feeling a bit wrong to give him a redemption arc when his daughter got a more mixed and ambiguous conclusion. That storyline ended up being used for Faith's father instead and Kingsly was replaced by his aloof son, a much more sympathetic character. Speaking of the boy, there were originally plans for him to become a witch at the end of the questline, but those were dropped as there wast really any justification for it. I also pondered on wether to make him a transwoman since the area story has a big focus on gender and some of the witches, especially his sister and megan, do end up coming off as kind of terfy, but i eventually decided that these were not really the circumstances to explore it. I wouldn't mind if some headcanon that he did go through that character growth after the story through. Anyway, that should be all for now. It was really nice to share all the discarded ideas that couldn`t make their way into the game. So to finish thing off, here some pictures of all the enemies and areas that did end up making it into the game.

Well, i hope you all enjoyed this retrospective. Now i`ll get back to procrastinating. To be continued: whenever i actually get done with the next game.