Have you ever thought about the concept of the mind?

It’s a space reserved entirely to oneself, that is entirely unseen by anyone, and can conjure any image one wishes to see. You see physical objects in a metaphysical world. You can think of things that don’t even exist. It’s beyond comprehension.

This is a long way of saying that the mind can craft some truly wonderful things—wonderful things that are too complicated to include in a game. And that’s today’s topic; content we’ve cut from our Vertical Slice demo. Firstly…

What the heck is this thing? It looks way too designed to just be set dressing. Well, dear reader, that’s because there once WAS a greater purpose to this… thing! In the original narrative for our Vertical Slice demo, this machine played a central role, and was even a goal of sorts. But, because of the already too-numerous cutscenes, and the fact that the demo wouldn’t end in a place that made sense for this thing’s continued inclusion, it has gone unused.

What was its purpose? That’s for me to know, and for you to eventually find out, because we’re using it for the full game release. But maybe you could figure it out by analyzing some of the notes you can find around the factory? Hmmmmmmmmmmm?!

Also, look, man, that blog on the writing process for the full Vertical Slice demo will happen at some point. I’ve made the rule that, every time someone asks about it, it gets pushed back another week. And I know it’ll take an incredibly long time to write, so I’ve just been asking myself about it for weeks now.

But, now, our next piece of cut content:

Did you have a hankering to turn this cute little guy to nameless, indiscernible ashes with a flamethrower? Well, tough luck, because the Pyrogun didn’t get added. The Pyrogun was a craftable tool that would, as the name suggests, shoot fire. The player would need to build fire canisters to use as ammunition.

I believe the reason for its removal comes down to two things; firstly (and much more probably), the inclusion of the separate ammunition item added too many layers of unrelated programming to the project, while also necessitating more design choices/tinkering. Basically, just too much work for not enough benefit. The other is because of this:

This image here is like watching your toddler commit armed robbery: funny, but wrong. So, in this Vertical Slice demo, Astraia building and wielding a weapon of such destructive magnitude just didn’t fit the narrative and character. Thus, removed.

We definitely have some more inclusions that got “un”cluded over the course of development, so this topic will probably come back at some point. Some of these topics, though, I’m not at liberty to speak about. And also, some topics don’t have any cool visuals to go with them, and that’s boooooooooring, so I’ll have to sift through the AfroDuck vaults to find something good.

Lobotomization: The Cut Content Blog