Hey everyone!
Today I’m going to be sharing some interesting (hopefully) facts about the My Beautiful Paper Smile world, and its development. These are just five somewhat random things that don’t really fit well into posts of their own, so I’m compiling them all into one post here. Also, here’s a very heavy spoiler warning, because this post is full of spoilery stuff. For those of you who have played the first three chapters already, or for those who dare to venture onward anyway, enjoy!
1. Part of the first chapter was accidentally deleted early in development.
At the very beginning of the game, after you exit your daily chambers, I had built a whole other area of the facility that players were going to need to navigate through to get back to their cell. Unfortunately, at some point, I was optimizing levels and deleting unnecessary objects, and during this process, I deleted this whole section of the facility. About a month later, it came time to program that part of the game, and I realized that it was completely gone. I didn’t have any backups of that level, and after some contemplating, I decided not to rebuild it. That whole part of the game was meant to be about 3-5 minutes of walking back to the player's cell, and during that time the Lost Child would talk with the Joyous as a way to get players up to speed on the story of the game. I figured that it would be best to just tell the story in a more organic way, rather than shoving it in people's faces for 3 minutes, so I left the whole section out. I actually have a video that shows this part of the facility before it met its demise, and you can take a look at it here.
2. Chapters 2 and 3 were originally swapped
The earliest version of the MBPS timeline would have Vincit escape the facility in the first chapter, then escape the village which was going to surround the facility in the second chapter, then cross a large haunted forest in the third chapter, and finally reach the castle and explore it in the fourth chapter. This was the plan for the timeline until the first chapter was almost entirely completed. Once I got close to finishing it, I thought it would be a lot more fun to make a forest, as opposed to a village for the next chapter… So I just swapped them! I feel like this decision makes more sense anyway. Having the village surrounding the king's castle, as opposed to a random facility just seems more logical right?
3. There were almost two forest bosses
In the second chapter, you find a cave that is the home of the spider king and his son. These guys are the boss fight at the end of the second chapter, but I had an idea for another boss that I ultimately scrapped. The boss would have been a large, angry, sentient tree… Yes indeed. This evil wood monster would have been placed in Eden, the area full of mystic fountains that you find right before entering the spider cave. That was about all I had planned for this guy, but since the idea of evil spider people seemed so much more frightening, I threw out my Ent friend in an effort to keep things a bit more simple and focused.
4. There are many different islands in the MBPS world
In writing the game's lore, I had the intention that there were many islands all in relatively close proximity to one another. I wanted to make this apparent in the game itself, but I never found a natural way of mentioning it, so I decided not to put any focus on it at all. Each island would be largely inhabited by one prevailing species, like goats, spiders, or whatever the heck the Authorities are (I’m still not sure about them). Some islands are at peace, but some are definitely not.
5. Vincit’s friend almost had his own spinoff game
Some people might be sad to hear that this could have happened, so I’m a little hesitant to add this, but I thought it was interesting. When the decision was made to make a free spinoff game that took place in the MBPS universe but focused on a character other than Vincit, I had a few different ideas in mind. The first idea was to make a game about what happened to the Hunter before he met Vincit (which I did make, and you can play it here!), but I also thought it could be interesting to follow the story of Vincit’s friend, and show what happened when he was captured by the Authorities in the first chapter. It would cover his capture, interrogation, and brief escape before being apprehended once again by the Authorities. I’m sure it could have been an interesting little side game, but ultimately I’m happy I decided to make a spinoff centered on the Hunter instead (he’s one of my favorite characters, so I just had to).
Well, there you have it, folks. A little peek into some of the things that almost were, could have been, and that just went unspoken. Hopefully, you found that interesting.
Until next time! Keep smiling :)
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