Heyo! It's me again! That one cube guy nobody's heard about!

To be honest, I have never done status updates. I don't even have a single idea how to start this off lol.

Basically, I've just been having fun being on break, and doing the usual Clickteam experimentation. It has gotten to the point where some even told me to just move to Gamemaker or Godot at this point. Maybe... in another 500 years :p

Okay, enough rambling:

LIFE STUFF

The two-week midterms period is starting at my university very soon. This means that for that small chunk, I won't be available as much. Granted, from most subjects I've seen, they seem to not be all too difficult... but I won't jinx it.

Expect there to be slightly less 'me' from time to time during those two weeks.

CDH2 RESHINED OLD STUFF

This entire section will be put inside a spoiler mark. If you haven't completed the game yet, I recommend skipping this part (or feel free to read if you're indifferent about spoilers).

SCRAPPED ENDINGS

In the full release, you know that the game's true ending is somewhat straightforward: collect the five shards in Dayshift, complete the shift, then interact with The Shadow, he screams, newspaper, credits.

Originally, however, this was completely different. There were never any shards to collect, there were never any “illusions”, there was never going to be Revenant, and there was nothing beyond what was originally planned in the core structure of the game. In fact, The Shadow was never even meant to properly show up at the end; he would’ve stayed more in the background. Dayshift itself was also planned much later into development, which probably explains why it ended up feeling a bit underwhelming in comparison to what it could’ve been.

Anyways, the endings. Note that I never made concept images for any of these, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

• Ending 1

  (This was back when Night 6 was still on the drawing board, and before Darth had an official name or design as “The Sentinel”.)

  “The fake alias night guard survives the night. Suddenly, The Shadow pops into view, his grin growing wider. He lunges, and is suddenly stopped by The Sentinel with a clean left hook. The Sentinel then draws his katana, piercing it straight through Shadow’s chest, as Shadow lets out a roar. The Shadow is later seen falling apart, and the screen fades to white.

  This is where The Sentinel tells the fake alias night guard to burn the building down. The night guard nods, and credits roll as we see him walking toward the kitchen, setting the place on fire, and running away from the pizza place. There is no trace of the final newspaper.”

  This was basically a placeholder ending. Basically just a slightly altered and expanded version of what CDH2 originally had, reshuffled into something that looked more final than it really was.

• Ending 2

  (This is when I first came up with the idea of Dayshift properly, but still before Darth had a finalized name and design. Also, slight trigger warning for tone.)

  "The prologue stays the same as in the final release: fake alias guard falls asleep, gets woken up by The Sentinel, is told to burn the building down, and does so. The Shadow appears, knocks the guard out, and we transition into Dayshift.

  (And yeah, notice the lack of shards here? At this point there were no collectibles planned at all. The game also wasn’t originally designed with two endings; it was meant to just have one “true” ending. That changed later because I thought it would be more interesting to give the finale an objective.)

  Dayshift itself plays mostly the same, but now Phantoms can appear from any direction. You’d have to look away or raise the cameras to get rid of them, and the mask would delay their jumpscare. If they did catch you, it would only apply a temporary blinding effect. (Fun fact: that blinding effect you see when pausing was originally going to be reused for those jumpscares.)

  After completing the shift, The Shadow appears, The Sentinel intervenes, and the fight plays out as previously described. However, this time Shadow doesn’t fully collapse—he looks visibly injured instead. He lunges at The Sentinel, and the two vanish into the background as they continue fighting elsewhere.

  This is where things shift heavily.

  The fake alias guard is left alone, and immediately breaks into a panic attack. Illusions intensify, and Revenant begins to manifest more aggressively, growing in size and charging at the player. This leads into a scrapped platformer minigame where the player tries to escape.

  After completing it, the final cutscene plays: the guard sits on grass, watching the burning building, slowly regaining awareness. Revenant appears again and places a skeletal hand on his head. The camera cuts to Revenant’s face, an eyeball dangling in its socket, locking onto the viewer as it slowly says:
  “I… FOR… GI… VE… YOU…”

  Revenant gives a thumbs up, fades into a glowing orb, and circles the guard’s head before shooting into the sky.

  It’s here that the guard realizes Revenant was the soul of someone innocent he had killed. Understanding that the soul has found peace, he removes the hat (which never belonged to him), throws it down, looks at the sky, and runs before anyone arrives.

  The camera then pans to a police car in the distance outside the burning pizza place. Inside, we see the Chief... the same figure from the New Game cutscene. A sudden yellow flash occurs.

  The camera cuts inside the car, revealing a photo of the Chief and his son (much younger in the image, suggesting it was taken years ago). Faint bloodstains are visible, and the tool responsible for the flash is just out of frame.

  Fade to black. Credits roll. No newspaper."

  This ending… yeah. I still have mixed feelings about it.

  A part of me regrets scrapping it, because it had a lot of strong ideas in it. But at the same time, it also had a lot of implied sensitive content... especially in that final scene. Even if it was stylized, it still creates a very real-world kind of implication, and that alone turns it into a bit of a “question mark” situation for ratings.

  Many would’ve probably raised eyebrows at it, because it sits in that awkward space where it’s not explicitly shown, but also not really safe enough to comfortably stay within a Teen rating either. That kind of uncertainty is exactly the sort of thing that can cause issues with moderation or even takedowns if it’s deemed mismatched with the rating.

  Looking back, I probably should’ve kept some parts of it, but as a full ending, it just didn’t fit where the series was going.

  Also, the scrapped minigame was considered for a comeback at one point… but I dropped it again because the physics were terrible.

• Ending 3

  "This is basically a slightly altered and toned-down version of Ending 2.

  The minigame is gone entirely, and the structure is simplified. The Shadow gets stabbed, screams, and the screen fades to white. Then the cutscene continues as normal.

  When we reach the police car scene, The Shadow slowly fades into view, almost like he’s replaying or reconstructing the Chief’s story. The camera then shifts to reveal the Chief… now missing a face.

  Cut to black. Credits."

  This one is less heavy than Ending 2, but it’s still uncomfortable; just in a more stylized way. It removes the more grounded implications, but it still sits in that uneasy middle space where it could still raise questions about tone and rating if taken at face value.

  So even if it was safer than Ending 2, it still ended up being scrapped for the same general reason: it didn’t fully fit the story direction, and it still risked creating that same “is this really Teen-rated?” question.

• Ending 4

  This would’ve been the final planned ending before I actually started working on Dayshift.

  It begins with a boss fight against Revenant, where the player relies on audio cues and vision-based survival in a burnt-out environment with very limited tools. Revenant gradually becomes faster and more aggressive until The Shadow appears and knocks it away.

  Then Shadow lunges at the player.

  If you collected enough shards; The Sentinel appears, katana strike, Shadow screams “YEOUCH”, fade to white, newspaper appears, credits. If not; you get the bad ending.

  Oh hey, the newspaper and shards finally show up :p

  ---

  Anyway, this was the final ending plan before development shifted fully into Dayshift.

  And I’ll be honest... I was exhausted by that point. I just wanted to finish Dayshift and move on. That’s also the part I kind of regret, because I think the game could’ve been more than what it ended up being.

  If the final release disappointed anyone, I’m genuinely sorry. I got overwhelmed with ideas and ended up burning myself out trying to juggle all of them at once, which led to the final climax being underdeveloped compared to what it was originally meant to be.

...Actually, while we are on topic of development:

NEW ACHIEVEMENTS ROADMAP

For the past week (and after getting some comments about the player experience in Reshined), I’ve been thinking about how Achievements are structured across the games.

Up until now, starting from its first ever introduction in CDH1 Reopened, the system has basically followed the same pattern:

• Progression achievements;

• Custom Night challenge achievements;

• A handful of random side achievements;

• Completionist achievements;

This structure has carried over into CDH4 and Reshined as well.

However, after reading feedback and looking back at Reshined (and a few earlier entries), I realized something: the Achievement system has started to feel a bit grindy, especially anything tied to Custom Nights.

And more specifically, completing every single Custom Night challenge is… probably a bit too much. A lot of those challenges don’t really introduce anything new at that point, so it ends up feeling more like repetition than meaningful progression.

So I’ve decided to adjust the structure going forward.

Starting with Pricklz Reboot (yes, I’ve decided that’s also getting a reboot), the Achievement system will be reworked into the following direction:

• Night progression achievements will stay as they are;

• Only Custom Night Max Modes will have dedicated achievements;

• Completing every Custom Night challenge will no longer be required for achievements; instead, they’ll function more like optional rewards (similar to POINTs stars in Arcade Mode);

• Other reward-based achievements (plushies, skins, etc.) will... uh... I may need some time to think about that;

• There will be more focus on interactive and side-based achievements rather than pure repetition;

• The “all achievements” completion reward will still remain;

The goal with this change is to reduce the grindy feeling of the older structure and shift achievements more toward things that feel interesting to interact with, rather than just completing content for completion’s sake.

Hopefully this helps make things feel more rewarding and less like a checklist. If you have any suggestions or recommendations on this new roadmap, feel free to comment.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENT STATUS

Nothing.

Yeah, kind of on a break.

If you were expecting something, sorry to burst that bubble.

I think that’s everything I wanted to cover for now. This ended up a bit longer than I expected, but it felt good to finally write some of this stuff down properly.

I’ll get back to work now before I overthink anything else again.