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

Irredeamable developpement retrospective Part 2: Ascending the Godlands For this one, we leave the confines of space and return to a smaller, more fantastical world, with a small tinge of cosmic horror. It all began millions of years ago, when the great progenitor came to nest upon a barren world.

The great beast is now long dead, but life flowed from its corpse, forming the world as it is now known.

So as you can see, this next concept focuses on a layered world, with multiple biomes stacked on top of each other. I was particularly fond of how one of the biomes was a giant inverted forest of roots, located under a jungle where everything from the plants to the bugs and beasts are gigantic.

We also have the melting pot, a large steampunk city built within a lake of honey where the succubus/goblins live. They have a bit of this service worker look, fitting their role as a species that feed from the joy of other living beings. Then, above it all, a frozen wasteland occupied with the slumbering corpses of ancient metal monsters. and, at the very bottom, a sea of newborn creatures, swarming around the corpses that started it all. But, then, i kept on working and reworking the world, giving it more of a distinct shape, while preserving the layer idea.

This one being built around a couple of massive trees, expanding the forest of giants into a whole realm to explore.

This one where civilization flourished within the footprint of a giant.

These two where the world is a group of islands, pierced by a massive sword with its tip plunging into the sun.

We even got this one i call the "xenoblade ripoff" where the world is built upon the body the great titan itself. You may even notice from the very top area being water-based that our good old squid friends the centaurians made their return for this one.

With each iterations, another concept has begun to add itself to this setting, a group of highly powerful giants that ruled over the current world. The titans.

These would have served as the game bosses, each representing one of the races/areas and holding dominion over it.

Through as can be seen here, the downfall of this whole era was that i could never stick to one idea for long. I would keep making and remaking the world and mythology, without really investing into any of them. But i wouldnt consider any of this a waste as it left me with tons of concepts i would be able to use and expand in the future. You may already start to recognize how some of the races and locations may have made their way into the actual made i made in some way. Still, i maintain what i said in the first part. Do feel free to use any of the idea here if they inspire you. Just make sure to actually commit to them so you actually end up with a game instead of a couple dozen maps for worlds that were never brought to life. Aniway, that s it for today, but do be sure to tune in to the next part for the next major stage where i try to shove every single idea i had into a single setting.

See you in Part 3: The fountain

Irredeamable developpement retrospective: Bonus part: A lesson in commitment

As much as this retrospective may be a self-indulgent exercise in sharing all the project ideas that had to be shelved or discarded during development, it was also a cautionary tale on how much time and effort can go to waste when you keep starting over because a new idea just seems a tad more interesting than the old one.

This can be especially seen in how i had to completely redo the main character's sprites several times, despite the moveset remaining nearly identical. But she was not the only one.

and those are just the ones with direct parallels. A lot of development time was spent, doing and redoing the same few basic enemies and areas with a few minor alterations.

What ive learned from this is to be both more careful and more committed with what i create. Be more thorough with the design process of characters, enemies and areas, but set it in stone once its actually implemented into the game. The result won't be perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good enough, and a flawed game is always better than one that won't ever come out.

Irredeamable developpement retrospective Part 4: The city of dolls Well, took us some time, but we finally reached a project that actually got some gameplay. Not much mind you, didnt even finish the first area, but youll probably notice some stuff that did manage to make its way into irredeamable in some form. So this game was meant to be a simple, self-contained story to introduce the new setting of the fountain (aint that familiar) It was about this city whose entire economy and structure was built around hyper-inteligent android/animatronics called the dolls. Here is one with a human for comparison. Aint they cute? (the horns were meant to be some kind of stylised antennas)

Everything was going fine for the city, until one day where the dolls appeared to suddenly go mad. They became violent, unhinged, destructive, causing a terrible riot to wage through the city, forcing the local authorities to take action. (the object on the right is a doll recharge station, which would be used to save and heal)

That`s where the player character comes in. Cassy-A, a new military doll prototype is sent through the ravaged streets of the city to try and find the source of the madness that has taken over the dolls and stop the riots. Unlike most dolls, her humanoid proportions and appearance allow her to blend amongst humans and her intelligence and ability to adapt is far beyond the usual doll.

For the first few areas, Cassy fight against the maddened dolls and human rioters until she is met with a very unusual masked doll, Smile/Smiley.

Unlike the usual doll who are only capable of speaking in pre-recorded sentence, Smile can piece out speech from diverse recordings, delivering her intentions to free the dolls from their metal prison and offering for Cassy to join her. As expected, Cassy refuses and defeats Smile, only for a nuke to detonate and raze the city. Cassy consciousness is then rewinded and she is brought back to the moment she was activated. With her new understanding of what is to come, she now has to make different decisions if she wishes to stop Smile's plans and save the city from destruction.

And here come the struckture of the game, where the player must explore different paths, to gather information and find how to stop the nuke and any other threat the city might be facing. So now that we got the premises set up, here are some of the plans i had made for it.

This one shows a bunch of different dolls. They come in all kind of shapes and size but generally were tough, bulky ennemies with sur-human strength, abilities to control energy/electromagnetism and even some built-in weapons for military models like the seraph.

This one shows some notable characters, such as Reeve, the commander of the city of dolls military. Kay-C a Cassy model doll that had joined Smile. Cassy-B and Cassy-D, a second pair of dolls that serves the government and are sent to face against the player if they stray out of line and Aria Rottendale, the robotic CEO of dolls incorporated. There is also this one maid doll, which was intended to reveal the true nature of the madness where the dolls are sentient, but trapped inside a limited body and mind, unable to express their true feelings in any other way than violence. By this point the dolls are able to manufacture screams out of statics and compose cries for help out of disjointed syllables from their pre-made sentences.

These show some of the planned routes. Red being the initial riot, leading to the doomed fight with Smiley, blue being a route where Cassy turns against the government (leading to the Commander Reeve and Double Cassy fight). Purple has her hide in a shelter, allowing her to survive the nuke and investigate the aftermath. Orange has her investigate the doll mansion and discover the maddened maid doll and Yellow would be an infiltration of the Dolls Inc. building to find the origins of the dolls. Each dead end is some kind of ending where either Cassy is inevitably defeated and contained, or destroyed, forcing her to rewind to a previous point. Aniway, like usual, there are some plans that dont quite fit this story, such as those maps that included the lore of the fountain in some way.

Aniway, this is it for this part of the retrospective, but lets end on a positive note. Despite this game being abandoned pretty early, some parts of it still exist in irredeamable today. Most notably is Lady moveset which is nearly identical to how Cassy played and even the concept of a robotic superweapon being the playable character has stuck from this point.

The forced grins of the dolls was incorporated into the edenian aesthetic in the form of their metal masks. And i even added a doll enemy late in development, with a bit of an updated look and lore that reference the original game story.

Anyway, i hope you enjoyed this tour of the defunct city of dolls. We are almost at the end of this retrospective, for the next part is the project that preceded irredeamable and where i began working on the setting that would flourish into the one you get to experience. Tune in for part 5: Project Watchmakers

irredeamable development retrospective. Part 1.5: capitalism IN SPACE This one part will tackles an alternate setting for the Specter game we spoke of last time. It may even have come first in the development timeline, through it can be a bit difficult to determine exactly how and when ideas shifted so lets not worry about what actually came first. Much like shadow and light, this game was about a specter, possessing people, but just as the title says, the setting was more of a space-faring adventure where you would visit multiple planets.

It features much of the same races as shadows and light, though their exact appearance has shifted a bit, as everything would in a different setting.

Depicted here, we have Mars, a frozen desert planet with large scale mining operations and a bit of a western vibe. Humans and mitons are the main races here and were given stout figures and thick coat to fit the cold yet dry weather. Venus is now overgrown with a rich, volcanic jungle where countless comic plant are being grown and harvested. This planet is mainly occupied by goblin employees who take the place of the succubus from last game. Mercury was hollowed out and turned into a giant energy powerplant, with a massive solar panel attached to one side. Earth ...well i dont think i ever did figure out what to do with it. Its kind of just another mining planet. and finally we have the alien mothership. The home base of a group of invading alien corporations from the Alpha Centauri system. ....yes i know what it looks like, but its actually supposed to be based on their system having 3 stars (2 large and 1 small)

Aniway, the Centaurian species consists of long-lived and hyper-intelligent giant squid. Their technology is very advanced, especially in domains of communication, space travel and artificial life. Many of their servants (which i think included the goblins) are bioweapons that were specifically crafted to integrate into local populations and perform whichever jobs were needed for the growth of the company. There was never much of an actual story, so all i really got left are some blueprints of the solar system, now converted into some kind of space construct for the Centaurians to exploit.

Aniway, thats it for today, but next time we`ll be leaving all those specters behind and move into yet another setting. One that is not quite so cosmic, but instead rather....toweresque... To be continued in part 2: Ascending the Godlands

Potatostrike Progress Report - August 13th, 2024

Today's Potatostrike progress report:

1) Potatostrike is currently part of @indiequesting's Feedback Quest 7, and Gameround's latest playtest.

2) The next patch for Potatostrike will include a weapon rebalance based off the feedback gathered.