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game-meak · 5 years

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A Proper Postmortem

Maybe?! Heck if I know how to actually format a good post but let’s try. As game development went on for almost four years, this is probably gonna be long... and also give away basically the whole game oops! Read on with caution.

Sometime around July 2014, a month after the initial release of my first game, my room was being remodeled and I was stuck with nothing for free time but a garbage laptop I could do anything on, an old flip phone, my sketchbook, and my 3DS. So beyond playing an obscene amount of Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life, I at some point went “hey, what if I made a second game starring the kids.” So I started trying to plan it out! And it went

absolutely nowhere that I intended it to go!!!

For instance, this is the very first page of sketches. This squirrel was supposed to be really important. It’s not. I don’t even KNOW what’s up with that duck.

A thing I like to think about before I set off making any of the story, assets, or scripts for my games tend to be themes and motifs. And I kept circling back to a very important, very personal “theme.” Without using the internet at large as my therapy couch, I was emotionally abused and taken advantage of multiple times in my life and it greatly impacts how I interact with people to this very day, as you’d expect events of such a degree would. Particularly, I kept thinking that the RPG Maker fan crowd tends to skew young and be in the teenage range and at ages 14-16, I could’ve used something to help.

Of course, my entire thought process isn’t necessarily one of charity and selflessness. It was also a way of me expressing what I’d dealt with in ways I’ve only ever communicated with my friends who were also victims of the same circumstances, the closest I would let myself come to personal stories and retellings with a cover of plastic children and wild adventures. It was also in some ways a way of me verifying to myself that something ongoing was, in fact, bananas and should not have been happening, but that might be another story for another time.

As you can probably guess, Haze and Seal came into the picture since I needed to make two characters who would have this struggle. A lot of decisions came about because of my personal experience. They’re 15/16 because I was at the time of the incidents that primarily inspired me to make this game. They’re both nonbinary because I am. They love anime because I did (and do...?!) One of their friends is even directly modeled off how one of my friends looked in high school. To that degree, I guess someone, somewhere can call them self inserts. But they’re also not, since I didn’t want to just do a personal retelling with fictional characters. I’d just write a memoir or something at that point.

Haze’s design came first, and then Seal’s was sort of made as a foil to them. Haze’s “colors” are pink, black, grey, and red. Seal’s are teal and light purple... and also black. Haze had a rabbit motif (which got toned down as I went on), Seal had an owl motif (which is now just a single mention in their list of likes...), etc.

Though in the beginning, the story was entirely different. Initially, everything took place in the neon-ish areas with black sky and reflective, celestial water (that I, very eloquently, call “spacewater”). The idea was that Haze and Seal were beings from another dimension and that their “fighting” was causing a rip in the universe that the kids stumbled into and therefore got wrapped up in this mess. I had an entire script written and started making assets and when I went to sum up the game’s plot in a neat paragraph, I realized... I hated it!!!

So I chucked all I had done by that point writing-wise and started again.

In fact, I rewrote a lot. After the first it was mostly small tweaks and adjustments, but the biggest ones (and the ones that still present a challenge to me!) usually involved trying to make Seal feel like a believable character. I had shown an early draft to someone who said that Seal felt too much like trying to get back at someone, so I scrapped a ton of their lines and tried again. I still worry whether or not they come across too Strawman-y, but I’ve done the best I can and whatever criticism people have can apply to my next writing attempts. It’s very hard to separate yourself from subject matter you feel really personally attached to. I don’t want to write them in a way that you immediately hate them, or hate me for writing such a blatant “villain” character, but in a way that you can formulate your own thoughts. That said, though, I am violently allergic to people who call Seal a “tsundere,” even in jest. So I guess I want people to have their own thoughts as long as it’s not that specific one...! (;;;;)

You may be thinking “heck, this is a lot of paragraphs in and you haven’t even brought up gameplay thoughts” and yes... that’s very true. Shamefully, for a game where I thought “I should definitely, absolutely focus more on making it a Fun Game than a walking visual novel” I might’ve actually dropped the ball in that area. I’d like to think I was more adventurous than I had been with my first game. Some parts do kind of fall into the “walk to the next cutscene, find a key to unlock the next cutscene” pit, but I did put effort into figuring out what I could do with RMXP. My obligatory “please don’t use this engine here, people thinking of using RPG Maker” statements here. In the final product, though they’re very simple, I’m most proud of the chalkboard puzzle and the paint sorting puzzle.

Even if, y’know... I somehow neglected to include the letter “k”

Speaking of, I’m not sure if this is a general RPG Maker thing, a “man I hate RMXP” thing, or a “meaka cannot gamemake” thing, but I had several event/puzzles just up and quit on me a few times. Like they would work fine for months and months, but one day I’d go to them and just nope, suddenly they’re not working, sorry. Copy+pasting the event to a new map wouldn’t work, so I’d have to manually redo the event. One of them was the chalkboard puzzle. The other was the sliding puzzle when Tony is by herself. Which I’m also aware slows the game down a ton, but I have legitimately no idea how to fix that... I tried and I could never get to to not lag like crazy.

Like I said, I started in July 2014. I’d shipped the game off to my beta testers in March 2018. A vast majority of that time was spent creating the visual assets since everything you see in the game is custom. All the sprites, all the tilesets, every little pixel of it. All me! Needless to say... it was very exhausting and very time consuming. I grossly underestimated how much time I thought it’d take. I never accounted for the very real possibility of burnout, which is incredibly silly considering I was making something entirely by myself that was also an occasionally difficult subject matter...! There were quite a few weeks where I touched nothing because I couldn’t bring myself to and even a few times where I just considered deleting everything and cancelling the project. I knew I’d be mad at myself if I quit, especially as I got later into production, so I just tried my best to make sure I didn’t turn it into a huge chore. Obviously, there were parts that were more tedious than others, but this game really is a very large labor of love that I put a lot of my heart into.

Part of that time is also a little bit of indecision. Did you know I went through 3 possible title screens? I sure did! I’ve also publicly posted about redoing both Haze and Seal’s bust sprites before. I almost redid all of the kids’, too, but I didn’t wanna get caught in the loop of remaking everything, so I opted to just leave them as they are. Most of them don’t bug me as much. M...most of them!

I’m hopping back on the Story train since obviously that was my main focus, but the decision to have Seal sort of “reveal” their true nature (or at least have a jealousy-related anger burst) to Octavio as an animated cutscene was one I’d decided pretty early. Which is also why, unsurprisingly, I was debating getting voice actors for a hot minute. But I wouldn’t have used it anywhere else in the game, so I opted not to. I also wanted to keep the file size low, but that wound up not happening so much, h-haha... For someone who uses the only engine without native support for videos, I sure do like making animated cutscenes, huh.

Anyway. This scene originally bridged Octavio’s section of the game to Pablo’s, which would’ve been (for some reason) in an abandoned hospital. But that didn’t pan out because it didn’t fit what I wanted the game to be and also by switching the order of the two, it builds up more tension(?) on the kind of character you expect Seal to be. I hope their very first “fuck off, maybe” took someone out there by surprise!

This also was the point when I decided I wanted to commission an original soundtrack, since nothing quite got across what I wanted at the time. Which is when I put out my silly ad post and somehow managed to get the amazing ProjectTrinity to compose for me...! I’m still amazed by the sheer quality of music he made for my little RPGMaker game.

Having the teen characters curse was also something I waffled on for a bit. Clearly, I dwell on the important things as a writer. I wanted it to contrast the cutesy, kidlike way the siblings talk and also the sort of squeaky-clean image the witches (particularly Seal) present to the kids by contrasting how they talk to each other, most importantly how Seal talks to Haze and their other friends. I did have the same issue with the Mother in my first game, but I opted to not have her curse at all either since she’s childish in her own way, too. But that’s not for THIS game’s postmortem, get otta here!!!

I also very much was set on a “battle” with words being the final event of the game. Though I had a hard time imagining what that would be initially, but eventually arrived at a sort of fake battle system that was introduced in the mine. The setting for this battle changed with time (everywhere from the park to the academy and in between) was considered...! The dirty secret is that while I did like the decision to make it take place in the voids between worlds, I also sort of did not want to draw the staircase in the witch academy. Originally, the kids would’ve also helped Haze “reach” Seal (who was putting actual obstacles in the way), but I guess in my own way, I wanted to give Haze the ability to confront Seal on their own, one-on-one. Or something like that...! I also didn’t want to add too much needless backtracking.

I’m... unsure what other point I really want to make, so I guess I’ll end this here unless anyone has anything in particular that interests them they’d want me to answer!

All in all, this game means a lot to me and took a chunk of my life to make and I really hope it’s able to reach at least one person who might need it, even if it’s only a little.

To all of you who gave it a try, thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.

A shameless link to the game: [itch.io] & [RMN]

#living playground #the witch's puppets #rpg maker #postmortem

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spacedimentio · 5 years

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Save the Light Impressions

I recently became interested in what Hessonite’s deal was and since it’ll be a long time before I’ll be able to get the game, I decided to just watch a cutscene compilation (this one, if it matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy5tOb3gzLY). Dunno why I’m taking down all my reactions, just cause it’s fun I guess. Enjoy

RIP Car Wash

What even is the prism? It's not a gem, right? But it's clearly got conscious thought, even Hessonite talks to it like a person

haha Greg called her a glittery space lady, accurate

it's a little OOC that Greg wanted to come along. at least he's having fun tho. aww, steven's so proud of him :D

actually, what's Hessonite even doing. Why didn't she fuck off back to space once she found the prism

yeah that's totally not a triforce with six arms or anything. it's not the diamond authority symbol either i don't think, the triangles in that all meet in the middle

Mayor of Bummertown

I would have named the boss Dave, zero hesitation

"Our prism is in another castle!" i love you steb

oh no, bad memory time at Bismuth's forge :( I hope she'll be playable in the next one (i would scream forever if there was a playable diamond)

did Steven really just answer the phone with Myello? Oh IT'S PERI. Aaaand we're learning about RPG mechanics. Meta.

frozen donuts are a thing?! :o

it's her. the square. she seems to be almost identical to how our peridot used to be, so i wonder what the difference in personality is. Aside from her favorite insult being pebble instead of clod

ah yes, ye old tennis match

man i love that you can form fusions in this game

oh lord, i don't wanna imagine what chaos would happen with two peridots. also Greg is taking ice damage during the cutscene, help him

oh no, they're meeting. of course the first thing Squaridot says is "WHY ARE YOU NAKED" (and they obvs flipped her sprite cause the gem's her other eye now)

hey look, new insults for my list of gem related curse words

weird, angry mirror indeed. imagine what they could do if they were friends!

oh RIP. why do you get to choose who murders Squaridot. I hope for more multi-peridot action in the future

wait, what machine did you rip that off of and when

i already knew Peri was playable but it's still cool. i love how she flutters her feet when she jumps! i wonder who the DLC character is going to be (lapis, probably. Bismuth would be metal, though)

"Clod-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named" oh my god i love you

"Whatchu talkin' bout Peri" the best, they're the best

Oh so wow, Hessonite is THE Hessonite, huh. Real famous. If she came out as a Crystal Gem, it would sure cause a stir

Yeah I was also wondering why she's sticking around instead of just leaving? and she is kind of leaving her troops scattered all over the place with no rhyme or reason

these are great names. The Great and Terrible Spikey McSpikeball! of course the guy playing picked the most boring one

i love how Peridot just fucking yeets her tablet to attack

sugilite tiny!

you know, i was gonna get this game anyway at some point, but it's nice to know that it's the kind of rpg i like, one where you can participate in the attacking and blocking process.

how dare you switch out peridot for pearl. you know what, next game i hope you can be everyone all the time cause there's too many good characters to pick from

whatchu doing up here pizza lady

yeah they just...all ran right in front of her directly in her line of vision and she didn't see them somehow

oh the prism is resisting. it really took Steven's words to heart last game

Hess my dear, is this prism your only friend (oh my god that's totally it isn't it)

is the wiki sure she can't teleport cause holy fuck is she fast

"Gugh, Peridot, this is just like when we tried to hunt you down. But worse...cause, y'know, she's actually threatening." rude

huh. i don't remember the pyramid temple blowing up and leaving debris, i thought the whole thing disintegrated cause it was a construct of the gem it was housing. looking at screenshots of Serious Steven it definitely did explode

are they really trying to tell me there was a pyramid under the pyramid and no one noticed

call it the Spooky Basement! call it the Spooky Basement! you disappoint me, player, although Secret Temple of Secrets isn't so bad

*steven rolls cheerfully through a skeleton and then everyone jumps down a big hole* um

yo there's a mural of Rose fighting some light warriors! that's rad as shit!

*gets to the hallway with the torches that turn on as you go by* gee i sure wish i could watch this with sound, but alas i am recovering from ear fatigue and it would be a bad idea.

oh my god he reset her preferences no wonder she's pissed XD

HOLY FUCKING CHRIST RIP AMETHYST AND PERIDOT GODDAMN AND GARNET TOO PIZZA LADY STRONK

wow she really is a genuine threat, she forced Rose and Pearl to give ground back in the day

oh no you did not just say that Pearl should come with you. fuck her up, P!

also i just realized that she is really tall. like 10 feet tall at least

aw no fair you can't just flashbang them all you dink

oh it's sapphire. wait has connie even met ruby and sapphire in the show? did we not get to see it?!

where the fuck even are you guys, i could swear that connie and greg fell off the platform into the abyss

wait, they don't have new forms, did they even regenerate? i don't think connie was out cold for that long. did they even poof? i saw colored clouds of dust but no gemstones. i mean, i know this is a game and all but it's also canon so ???

and peridot is breaking the fourth wall by commenting how you can't force her to sit at home at the moment

ancient thingamajig. wow is thingamajig a real word, my spellcheck is not yelling at me about it

yeah connie! kick her ass for me!

since when are gems into riddles. i wonder if anyone has made much headway into translating the written gem language yet, last i heard they hadn't made much progress. apparently only Steven Sugar knows what all the symbols mean

wait steven was watching connie and greg's parties running around that whole time? i guess even the game never leaves steven's POV. where even is he, in the prism realm? oh, the place was turning pink for a minute until he went towards the sparkly thing

steven is always accessing memories isn't he. at least these aren't his mom's this time

you might be getting sick of her steve but i'm sure not!

from far away it really looks like she's chillin' with a martini glass and i was about to scream

corruption beam :(

was he just like passed out on the floor somewhere hallucinating

aww, he picks up the light steven exp by hugging it :o

"Just feeling a little...light headed." i...puns?

the Light Warrior is the final boss of the first game right? ...i should have probably watched a video about that one first

oh i just had a thought! if they make a third one then we get to have Rainbow 2.0 and Sunstone and Obsidian in it! :D

woah, trippy. tbh steven's connection to the prism is kind of strange. i wanna know exactly where that thing came from and why it's so deeply connected to him now. did Hessonite have visions like this when it was hers?

yeah that's... if a place is connected by warp pad, wouldn't it be easy to find by just warping randomly? unless separate warp networks are a thing but still, you'd just have to sneak onto a CG warp pad and go. ....how do warps even work, they can go through roofs and stuff and there's like this whole other dimension with all the warps like stars in the background and ???

how does the forge even do an upgrade with no Bismuth. maybe i should stop trying to fit this into canon details

what makes you think Hessonite could see you? is this some Voldemort Harry Potter connection shit. is that actually how she found the forge, this game ain't explain much

oh that's...that's a big oof. bismuth was working on a huge-ass statue of Rose before they got into their argument

"i saw her again" what no you didn't, that was just a white screen with a text box

"Beats me how any of this whacky prism stuff works!" ...i feel called out

why does that bigger spaceship look like a funky piece of headwear to me

well, at least it's closer than the moon

oh what, Lion didn't come with you? didn't you need multiple roar warps to get to space last time, just above the earth still seems kind of far, also how did he know the coordinates of the ship, he could have easily sent them all into the void

?! and then he's there?!? already asleep? how???????

aww what you're going to tease me with a citrine guard but not let me see her?

freaky. strangely organic looking technology is nothing new but i don't think i've seen stuff oozing through it before

"Look at you, acting as though you have the moral high ground!" *shakes fist angrily* She's like Emerald, but better! I can't

i guess he did kind of steal it, but it was more like finders keepers really

whuh has the prism always been able to talk?

"a Prism" oh no are there more? probably

woah that's a big boy. What the heck does Spectral Conclusion mean. and the prism is inside it instead of it being a separate creation, interesting

aww, it's looking at itself in confusion. Steven reaches out to it with his words, as he does

the prism isn't really...doing a lot of attacking (cause the player is picking the right choices probably). oh nevermind, it has a hugely damaging rainbow cannon

/r/murderedbywords, except in a good way

"Destroy Steven!" huh since when does she know his name? she could have gotten it from several places, really

oh oh oh! it's pizza time! standing in the middle of them is probably not the best idea, but look at her, she's exuding confidence!

wait wait wait, when the player used a healing move, did i just see an option to heal the prism? or at least, it's health bar showed up. is it gonna help later?

can i have like, a full sprite sheet for Hessonite please and thanks

if this was in the show, steven would be dead from that hit

aaand Steven did two points of damage with his shield bash, she ain't even flinch

pearl what are you doing

wow, she also only did a few points of damage

is Hess like, super tough. i love how much of a threat she is, cause most Homeworld gems we've seen aren't all that scary

oh! oh! you can heal the prism! that's probably how you damage her cause you'd be here forever chipping away otherwise

HOLY FUCK, SHE JUST DID 270 POINTS OF DAMAGE, THAT'S LITERALLY ALL OF SUGILITE'S HEALTH. I know the wiki says that attack does massive damage but jeezus!

so far the prism hasn't done anything, they're just chipping away at her slowly

oh, so gems do poof in this game. i guess we're just ignoring new forms because it wouldn't make sense in the timeline if we didn't

huh, does pearl inflict burns in this game? oh and she shoots fireballs, guess that answers my question.

it's kind of sad that the status is doing more damage than everyone else combined

whuh, she just attacked the prism! RUDE.

stop beating up the prism you degenerate! i guess i shouldn't be shocked

hey, Garnet and Amethyst are alive again. ah finally, some damage now that Garnet's lowered her defense

A-Amethyst, you're facing the wrong way. i wish Hess had targeted her with her big attack, then i could have made an "oh no she has airpods in" joke

oh, but the player formed Smoky, so she's not even aiming at anyone in particular anymore lol. she went for Pearl tho, fuckin' eviscerated

is this battle normally this long, it's been almost 10 minutes

this battle would probably be much harder if she didn't waste her turn being a bitch and attacking the prism. gee, and you wonder why it doesn't want to listen to you after encountering steven's kindness. i wonder...what would happen if you let the prism's HP get to zero? it would take a long ass time but...now i really wanna know but i doubt there’s any videos about it!

garnet's rocket fist did damage to the prism cause Hess is standing next to it. c-can you attack the prism, is that how you get the bad ending??

man, they haven't even had to heal because she's just beaten up on that poor thing for the past 10 turns. i mean, really, she could easily murder all of them in a heartbeat if she wanted

ok finally, she is defeato. I'd feel more sad for you if you didn't abuse your subordinates (definitely has detracted from my liking of her, i won't be too hard on her for it though because Homeworld is bad like that and she doesn't know better). at least you’re good at eating your humble pie without complaint

oh, i guess you get to choose your ending? it's kind of weird that it's not like, influenced by your game choices. cause technically like this it's your choice, not the prism's choice. so what was with the prism having health then. was it just to show how awful Hessonite is to it?

also, i can't look at light Steven without thinking of Pink!Steven and hhhhh

"You're a wise creature, aren't you?" Yes, yes he is *nods sagely* I hope you come back someday to learn more from him

You're pretty adaptive, huh Hess? of course, if you've been having these thoughts and feelings for thousands of years you're probably not too shaken up by the realization that they're true. That’s actually pretty great of you to want to figure yourself out.

ha, so Garnet didn't let her leave like the wiki made it sound like, she just yeeted away, and good luck catching anyone who can move at 5 million miles per hour

the gems are running in place in the next scene and Amethyst is backwards again. connie is also facing the wrong way. ...this game's a bit jank, isn't it :P not that i mind, a little jank is fun!

Peridot breaking the fourth wall with her Are Pee Gee again. I wonder which one it is. Golf Quest Mini?

do you get anything for 100 percenting this? oh, i guess there's achievements. no bonus content tho?

Lapis: I think I could use a break.

i for one would like to know what book the prism was reading. also, it's back to not talking again.

AWW YIS! We goin' out for pizza tonight bois!

The gems finally get to stop running in place in the corner

aaww, it's a beach scene reminiscent of the opening. kind of weird that greg is the only one animated but still cute

also someone's last name is Gooch and i feel bad for them

alright now to google Hessonite's VO... Christine Baranski. Are-Are we just hiring broadway singers for everyone now? not only would I die if Hessonite made an appearance in season 6, my soul would reach the farthest realms of space if she sang a song on top of that.

well, that's a wrap! time to jot down all of Hess's dialogue for later reference! It’s a crime that there’s so few fanfics about her, she actually has a lot of potential!

#steven universe #save the light #hessonite #su #reaction #liveblog

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rhythmantics · 7 years

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a collection of doodles; stuff for a 3rd Orre game idea I bounce around sometimes and a couple of OCs

the dream is to one day make a fangame for the orre series

tbh with the way pokemon currently is i don’t trust them at all to handle orre

xd was already Lighter and Softer than colo, and i can only shudder to imagine how much lighter they’ll crank that dial. we might even see shit like...routes...and wild pokemon on them...like??

the orre games had this wonderful moral ambiguity and urban decay that i don’t think pokemon is capable of catering to right now, since they’re trying so hard to have this image these days of this sprawling, kid-focused series. and yeah, s/m’s story got dark and shit, but the game wasn’t marketed that way, and it’s more of a juicy tidbit than the core of the experience.

If a third orre game isn’t unnecessarily gritty and edgy then, like, what’s even the point lol

So i do have rpg maker xp and I do have pokemon essentials and i think i’ve more or less worked out the mechanics i need to have implemented, but i dont think i ahve the time to spare to actually finish it in any capacity because the amount of new assets i’d have to create - tiles, character models, etc - is so massive it would realistically take me several, several months even if i was doing it as a full-time job

so in any case here are some ideas to titillate your interest:

GAMEPLAY:

level scaling across the entire game, across every trainer (possible to turn off for a more traditional pokemon experience). Regular trainers would be set ~3 levels below your team, “strong” trainers (ie cail, rider willie) would be set at your team, and bosses would always be a few levels above. The only place this wouldn’t apply would be Mount Battle, which is, after all, a side challenge. This mechanic would pretty much do away with the need for level grinding except to balance out team levels. reasoning: the orre games are known for their higher difficulty curve, and this plays off it. Double battles also make for very interesting avenues of strategy exploration; with bosses always a little tougher than you are the hope is you might wipe out a couple times before figuring out a winning strategy.

Lucky egg given early but no exp. share.

higher catch rate on shadow pokemon - since the game would start you out at lvl 25 and honestly this is just an anti-frustration feature

Again, level scaling can be turned off for a more traditional experience, but the idea would be that the levels would get pretty high pretty fast, and by midgame you’d be going up against lvl 55s and stuff (just enough to start encountering some salamences and flygons), hopefully ending the game in the 80′s.

Pokedex -> strategy memo, and seen = obtained. Strategy memo actually contains opinions from the player character rather than just standard “animal facts” type stuff.

No routes! Just cities! Pokespots still in effect to limit the player’s pool of usable pokemon.

Missed pokemon integrated with pokespots or maybe made un-faintable so you have to catch them because i’m really not that good at programming guys

SETTINGS:

Orre is a cold desert. I know technically it’s based on the Arizona desert, and I’ve been there, but friggin look at the fashion, these people would all get heatstrokes in a matter of seconds.

So to that end, my orre is actually based on the Atacama Desert, whose topography not only resembles Orre’s (volcanic mountains on one side, ocean on the other), but is a cold desert (with daytime temperatures peaking around 60 degrees F) and is considered the driest desert in the world, with some places having not seen rain in centuries, having been compared to Mars in regards to how uninhabitable it is.

you know, like how apparently wild pokemon can’t survive in orre except at the pokespots.

also the orre colosseum looks just like the atacama hand and i dont think that’s a coincidence

canyons, oases, underground rivers and deep underground cave systems, forests to the northeast and a coast that’s actually somewhat habitable via fog collection

THE UNDER IS BACK

gateon renamed Io Port (the japanese name) to go with the gem/mineral naming scheme of the rest of the game. Plaque added outside lighthouse reading “Io Lighthouse” (GEDDIT)

cipher key lair being torn down by reformed eldes, working with lovrina and gorigan, in order to create an amusement park, hopefully to be an international tourist attraction of the more innocent variety than realgam

Areas given a name. Desert is orre desert, northwest forest is Tempor Forest, mountain range is Kabla Mountains, keeping in line with Eclo Canyon

A new town named Appoak, one of those aforementioned fog-collection coastal villages, which has the distinct honor of being the place you buy your wildflower seeds, which are often scattered in the desert as funerary rites because it’s kind of hard to build a grave out there and this is a tradition that natives of orre held long before the settlers/miners came in and which has overtaken the settlers/miners’ traditions, especially during and after the starvation riots that happened after the majority of the mines ran dry and the companies stopped sending their support to the workers that were now effectively stranded in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

Dead were littered on the streets, no one had the ability to bury them all, and so the tradition of scattering flower seeds instead of erecting graves that would simply be wiped out in the next sandstorm (and have you ever tried to dig a hole in dry sand) became popular since it felt like more closure

Anyways Appoak cultivates desert flowers year-round and sells the seeds and performs funerary rites, as a result it’s considered something of a sacred locale in that no one wants to mess with it because you have no idea who you might be pissing off whose loved one was buried with Appoak rites

CHARACTERS:

Michael, 5 years later, now 18 (in xd he’s called an “unknown teen” by ONBS and honestly he’s so short that i’d feel bad if he was older than 13 at the time of the game) is your player character! Trainer class Lab Kid, with a cool hover-scooter, who is now officially a staff member at the Lab HQ as a result of reaching adulthood (though he’s been helping out with field research long before that.)

Your starter is a sylveon, level 25, because this Michael is not a blank-slate character, and sylveon is both in character and doesn’t conflict with any choice of eeveelution from the first game. In fact, this michael made it through the entirety of the first game without evolving his Eevee, like an absolute madman.

Lily and Jovi start the game off overseas giving lectures on shadowfication and purification, mostly so that i don’t have to create their sprites. But also because them leaving is an excuse for them to take all your pokemon from the first game with them, for “demonstration purposes,” leaving you with just your eeveelution and maybe some second pokemon-i-don’t-know-what-yet-probably-your-choice-of-any-starter so you can hurry up and get to the double battles without sacrificing an ability to make a choice on your starter.

Wes is in the game and he is an asshole and you will love him

Cail actually serves a plot purpose

Cameos from all your favorite admins and named characters from Colo/XD, most of which remain unfought until either late or post-game (because the focus is on the new story, you know?)

Miror B and flunkies at Io Port, the proud owners of a popular and, more importantly, lucrative new ludicolo dance act.

Eldes, trying to make up for his past, sponsoring an amusement park being worked on by Lovrina and her brother, with Gorigan overseeing the construction. Snattle offhandedly mentioned as having been elected governer by default (no one else was running) and helping with greenlighting these projects since he and eldes are, apparently, sand-golf buddies and eldes has been twisting his ear for the greater good

also eldes wears a dress shirt with hawaiian print on it

Dakim lives on mt battle now

not as, like, part of the mt battle challenge. he just . sorta. lives there.

Venus is now the onbs weather girl and onbs can’t decide whether they like her or hate her

the jail squad: greevil, nascour, and evice. They’re poker buddies. orre jail for the rich is basically a retirement home because orre is ridiculously corrupt.

ardos? ein? well...

PLOT

So, your field assignment is to collect samples of M18 - also known in Almia by the name of “Dark Crystal” and sometimes colloquially referred to as “shadow crystal” in Orre - for research.

As you probably already assumed, this stuff works as a catalyst for shadowfication and Orre happens to be supernaturally abundant, though it having been strip-mined out by cipher during the last two cipher events has made it much rarer (and it’s theorized by NPCs that the return of wild pokemon may have something to do with the lessened M18 presence).

touching it initiates a small flashback cutscene, as it’s apparently transformed from normal quartz into M18 by the abundance of negative feelings somehow (again, you’re collecting it for study) so that’s how we get some nice backstory about michael’s dead dad (who isn’t eldes, sorry guys, he’s a guy named Prof. Taiga because - haha - Taiga Lily) and other characters

Somehow this investigation leads you to the first rumblings of a resurgence of cipher, who is also collecting M18, though for much more nefarious purposes

So, anyways, in XD, when you beat ardos in the orre colosseum, he sent you a creepy-ass email declaring that he’s basically gonna stalk you forever and kill you during cipher’s - what, third? - third coming, which he’s totally gonna do. Sequel hook! which comes true! because HELLO, your opponent is Ardos, who’s been working in secret this whole time, plotting your demise.

Also ein is there, which is important because...

QUICK HEADCANON BREAK

In colosseum, Cipher specifically targets Celebi because they know celebi’s power is directly tied with undoing shadowfication. (Material in-game suggests that celebi has been responsible for purification for generations of rui’s family, which means cipher didn’t INVENT shadowfication, but they did create a method for doing it ARTIFICIALLY)

However, in XD, cipher doesn’t target agate at ALL. they never even step foot in it. In fact, they’re so woefully underinformed about purification that they feel the need to kidnap Prof. Krane over it.

How does that happen?

Well, we know cipher in game 2 is the main branch, and cipher in game 1 is actually just an orre side branch. Whose only real plan with shadow pokemon was just to rig up really exciting and morally inexcusable colosseum matches for rich people to bet on. No world domination in game one!

So my theory is this: Cipher orre branch created shadowfication basically on a whim and tried to make money off it, which you stopped. When you stopping it attracted attention, cipher main branch had to take notice, and realized that, hey - fucking shadow pokemon ,fuckin world domination, right??? so they promptly took over all of cipher orre branch’s operations and replaced the old personnel with new ones from main branch, while forcing them to hand over their research.

Ein did not take being fired well.

In fact, he took it so poorly that he made sure to destroy all his information on purification before handing over his research.

Cipher in game 2 has no idea the connection between Celebi and purification.

BACK TO THE PLOT

Because Ein has been re-hired by Cipher, he brought with him his knowledge of purification.

They know about celebi.

Also wes is there? He plays a major role, mostly after it’s revealed he’s actually a cipher admin.

...His eevee and espeon are missing.

time travel shenanigans idk

it rains at the climax for the first time in 10 years!

this is a wip

if this is interesting to you guys lmk! im always open to talking about it more in-depth or hearing ideas. hahah...

#pokemon xd #pokemon colosseum #prowler i think is the name for that trainer class #stalker or tracker maybe

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