You want to know a cheap way of building a world that requires very few complicated assets, while also being really easy to implement?

There are a lot of pages and notes scattered around the Abandoned Factory; pages and notes written by workers, engineers, scholars, and more, that offer insight into the world of Zakumba: Astraia, its inhabitants, and the Abandoned Factory itself.

Do you want in on all this cool information too? Then I’ll direct your attention to THESE!

This here is the scrap that’ll satiate your curiosity. There are 16 of these bad boys littered around the factory, pining for company. At least, 16 is what I counted. Hopefully it’s not 15 or something and this blog post becomes fuel for a mysterious “THE HORRIFYING 16TH NOTE OF ZAKUMBA: ASTRAIA!!!” conspiracy.

The planning process for writing these began when Kwesi, our creative director, split each of our note types into four arbitrary categories: Daily Life, Worker/Factory Notes, Informational Text, and Stories and Poems. Although these categorizations didn’t make it into the actual Vertical Slice, they were incredibly helpful in keeping us focused on what we wanted to prioritize showcasing. From there, we set our drafts and got writing.

The writing process of these notes was particularly bizarre, as, in lore, they were written very long ago. This meant we had to create and develop characters entirely from the ether for about 200 words of content. And, because they were so far divorced from the actual narrative, these characters could be whoever we needed them to be. Character changes were rapid and violent, and their goals and positions shifted kind of like jelly, or some funnier comparison I can’t think of before posting this. It’s much easier to make big, sweeping changes when there’s only 200 words you have to edit.

Because of the natures of these notes, we also didn’t have many tonal restrictions either; one note could talk about a tyrannical, oppressive leadership, while another could be a goofy adventure of a sweaty guy trapped in a boiling death trap (this is the funnier one of the two, obviously). This made them pretty refreshing to write, especially since each note had a different author, allowing us to write in a variety of different voices; a tired engineer would word something differently than a textbook, after all.

Eventually, we got a little swept up in the revelry of writing for someone other than Astraia and Belles. Thus, we ended up with a verifiable surplus of notes. We even had to cut some because there were just, like, so many of the buggers, and people don’t care that much. I was the one responsible for dictating the notes’ approximate locations around the factory, and seeing the absolute labyrinth of arrows and notes made us realize, yeah, we probably didn’t need that many.

I would show you the image, but that would spoil the fun of trying to find them all.

For funsies—and so there also isn’t a story tied to this blog post about the “MYSTIFYINGLY MYSTERIOUS MISSING NOTES OF ZAKUMBA: ASTRAIA!!!” conspiracy—the removed notes were informational and went deeper into our magic system. They definitely weren’t cut because we hadn’t yet fully realized our magic system or anything. I also refuse to elaborate further on that. We also combined some of the notes into one, significantly lowering the amount as well.

My favorite note is the story of the Watcher. See if you can find that one. I’ll be honest, I forgot where it is, so I can’t even help you.

When the demo eventually drops on Steam, I encourage—no, I IMPLORE you—to find all the notes. They should offer you some sick insight into the world we’re attempting to create.

Also, the demo WILL drop at some point. Stop writing that article about “THE TANTIFYINGLY TREMENDOUS ZAKUMBA: ASTRAIA DEMO!!!” conspiracy. I’ll be the one to do that, thank you very much.

Note This: the Note Blog