The image above was taken from the BBC's website.
Videogame development is a volatile process. Games don't evolve over time, they perpetually mutate like the climax of a chemical reaction. Some games gets rebranded, some games absorb parts of other past games, and sometimes they look nothing like the original plan. Ever game I ever worked on was like this.
Starting today, Snakepit is among the two latest victims of this process. Very recently, it went from being one game to two planned, and starting now the second game is cancelled, and the first is going to revert to being just a game inside Meat Quest. As part of the original plan, Snakepit was going to have no story and the player would only get to play tiny segments of the game at any one time, as part of a side quest to obtain bug spray.
When thinking about Snakepit Zero today, I realized that the game has literally nothing new to add to the platformer table, which means I see no reason in selling a full version. The colors came from Meat Quest, the RPG elements (and sorta also setting) came from Gargoyles Quest, the jump mechanics came from Yoshi's Island, the collect-to-win level design came from Yoshi's Story, the planned immortality was going to be from Wario Land 3, the planned dive attack was to be from Ristar, and the planned hydration bar would have come from Demon Returns. You would think that with such a wide palette of games to draw from, I'd result in a platformer game that would be unique enough, yet it all adds up to just a humble platformer/ rpg that is 7 years too late. If given the choice, I would probably just recommend one or two of those inspirations for someone to play over my own future videogame, which is really telling. The degree to which I struggled to assign Snakepit a story should have been a red flag weeks ago, but I'm at least glad to have figured this out so soon.
I was wrong about Meat Quest. I was worried that people would be turned off by my intensely-surreal, meta humor poking fun at videogames, developing them, and their relationship with the player, combined with the intentionally obtuse/ antagonistic design. Even if I can only bet on a cult appeal from Meat Quest, I think Meat Quest has a hell of lot more going for it. First person adventure games are getting rare these days, and even rarer are ones that ask the player to explode the generic NPC they hate the most in a psychedelic landscape. While most of the mechanics are nothing new, this is such a story-lead game that having such an outlandish experience (paired with good graphics) is all I really need, and there is still a lot of wiggle room to come up with new ideas.
The other game to mutate isn't Paper Soul Theater, but a new game called Inkko (which in hindsight should have been named "Inko" since that is how I pronounce it). Inkko was going to be a 72 hour competition game, but I then realized I was really on to something with the concept and don't have time to finish it by Monday 7 am. Though conceptualizing Inkko, I was able to combine two of my past games that were never finished. Both of them had some of my most clever ideas so I felt like I was knocking out two birds with one stone in making this. Here's the kicker: Inkko is being absorbed into Peanut Caravan, making Peanut Caravan now an amalgamation of Hippie Business Balloon, Acid Dough, a once-planned game named Sneaking Around the Outer Reaches, and another once-planned game called Pikmin: the Survival (a fan game). This means the games later to be in production by us has been reduced to just Friends of the Void, The Road Goes 601, and Peanut Caravan, as well as the interactive fiction.
All side games will continue to take a back seat to Paper Soul Theater, and Meat Quest will now be worked on in place of Snakepit zero. Thank you for taking time to read up on what is currently in production.
Starting today, Snakepit is among the two latest victims of this process. Very recently, it went from being one game to two planned, and starting now the second game is cancelled, and the first is going to revert to being just a game inside Meat Quest. As part of the original plan, Snakepit was going to have no story and the player would only get to play tiny segments of the game at any one time, as part of a side quest to obtain bug spray.
When thinking about Snakepit Zero today, I realized that the game has literally nothing new to add to the platformer table, which means I see no reason in selling a full version. The colors came from Meat Quest, the RPG elements (and sorta also setting) came from Gargoyles Quest, the jump mechanics came from Yoshi's Island, the collect-to-win level design came from Yoshi's Story, the planned immortality was going to be from Wario Land 3, the planned dive attack was to be from Ristar, and the planned hydration bar would have come from Demon Returns. You would think that with such a wide palette of games to draw from, I'd result in a platformer game that would be unique enough, yet it all adds up to just a humble platformer/ rpg that is 7 years too late. If given the choice, I would probably just recommend one or two of those inspirations for someone to play over my own future videogame, which is really telling. The degree to which I struggled to assign Snakepit a story should have been a red flag weeks ago, but I'm at least glad to have figured this out so soon.
I was wrong about Meat Quest. I was worried that people would be turned off by my intensely-surreal, meta humor poking fun at videogames, developing them, and their relationship with the player, combined with the intentionally obtuse/ antagonistic design. Even if I can only bet on a cult appeal from Meat Quest, I think Meat Quest has a hell of lot more going for it. First person adventure games are getting rare these days, and even rarer are ones that ask the player to explode the generic NPC they hate the most in a psychedelic landscape. While most of the mechanics are nothing new, this is such a story-lead game that having such an outlandish experience (paired with good graphics) is all I really need, and there is still a lot of wiggle room to come up with new ideas.
The other game to mutate isn't Paper Soul Theater, but a new game called Inkko (which in hindsight should have been named "Inko" since that is how I pronounce it). Inkko was going to be a 72 hour competition game, but I then realized I was really on to something with the concept and don't have time to finish it by Monday 7 am. Though conceptualizing Inkko, I was able to combine two of my past games that were never finished. Both of them had some of my most clever ideas so I felt like I was knocking out two birds with one stone in making this. Here's the kicker: Inkko is being absorbed into Peanut Caravan, making Peanut Caravan now an amalgamation of Hippie Business Balloon, Acid Dough, a once-planned game named Sneaking Around the Outer Reaches, and another once-planned game called Pikmin: the Survival (a fan game). This means the games later to be in production by us has been reduced to just Friends of the Void, The Road Goes 601, and Peanut Caravan, as well as the interactive fiction.
All side games will continue to take a back seat to Paper Soul Theater, and Meat Quest will now be worked on in place of Snakepit zero. Thank you for taking time to read up on what is currently in production.