Hey all! The OST for the game is set to release in stores, now that the game has been cancelled. For now, to read along properly with the post, you can scroll up on the VillageRPG page a little bit to listen to the OST as it's going to be presented in stores. So, I thought I'd take this time to go down a couple tracks and talk about what my plans were with them. There will be story moments unveiled here... never before seen exclusives... whatever else I can say to hook you into this post!

7. Take Your Time (Shop 1). I planned on having 2 separate shop themes for the game, with Take Your Time being the shop theme that would play in the overworld segments of the game.

9. Overworld (Rain). I wanted a dynamic weather system for this game, as well as a dynamic time of day system. As you could probably guess - with this being an RPG Maker project and all - that got very convoluted very quickly. It also provided little to no gameplay benefit despite its "cool" factor. You'll notice that a lot with this game - 17 year old me really just wanted to show people what I could do in RPG Maker without actually thinking about the development process behind it...

10. Feels Like Home. This song has the Illager's Lab motif in it, though it's very, very quiet. I'm leaving a footnote here to return back to.*

14. Choices, Choices... I wanted party members to be a permanent yes or no question on if they would be in your party or not. This song would play when you were asked by a potential party member to join your party. Ultimately, my friend instead convinced me to come up with a sort of "frat house" idea where you could collect materials to build a house for your party members to return to. Similar concept to The End of Time from Chrono Trigger, where you could return to there just about any time you wanted to pick out your party.

15. Steak Cat Town Village Song. Steak Cat was planned to have this whole village to herself, with devoted village dwellers maintaining the village for her, despite the fact that she had lost her crown on the journey away from the Steve RPG island. There was planned to be a side quest where you could go into the mines and collect materials to make her a new crown, and the village would suddenly become a lot more lively and productive.

16. Calidor Village. This was going to be the song that played in the volcano village, an area you couldn't enter unless you had the proper elemental protection. This was also a theme shared with a village that was going to be in the snowy area, and a village that was going to be in the poisonous swamp area.

17. Phantom. I really, really like this song and the concept behind it, but I'll have to leave another footnote for it.**

18. Browse Around (Shop 2). This was going to be the song that played in the Server Hub's various Server shops. The melody the marimba is playing was changed from its Steve RPG counterpart. Funny how I tried to bring this song back, but it just got scrapped again...

20. A Home Without A Heart. Another extensive footnote...***

22. Wilder Wilds. I actually recorded my real guitar for this song! You can tell because I'm not on time. *finger guns*

23. Lament to an Old Friend. This actually correlates with 20's footnote, so...***

24. Creeper Den. I wanted these stealth segments in the game where you would have to avoid giant, overgrown creepers. The whole place would be very echoey, with me even having separate variations of footstep sounds that have reverb, and everything would be covered in moss and overgrown, as if mother nature were reclaiming her creation.

25. One Down. This would've been the song that played when entering a Security Tower. Only you could enter the Security Towers, as you are an outsider, not ever being officially whitelisted nor blacklisted access to any of the servers. Therefore, when you entered any of these towers, your party members would have to stay outside, and you'd have to do a puzzle and battle gauntlet alone. You would've needed to defeat 3 (maybe 4?) security towers to advance to the final CEO tower. When you destroyed a CEO tower, the tyrannical rule over the land would be stopped, and the people would live in harmony again... The accompanying song, "None To Go", - which would have played in the CEO tower, of course - never ended up getting made.

26. Old Friend. Last triple star footnote.***

27. Mines (Floor 1, Variant 1). This would've been the song that played when entering the mines for the first time. I would also have further accompanying songs, like how Stardew Valley has more than 1 song per segments of mines.

28. Depth Explorer. This would've been the area theme for the 2nd server you visited. The 2nd server was planned to be a giant underwater realm, and you could actually explorer the underwater segments of the game, inspired by Super Mario Odyssey's Lake Kingdom.

31. Victory! (Westerner). I planned for the victory theme to dynamically change in both tempo and instrumentation depending on your party loadout, even having made a victory variant for the 2nd server's party member.

Here's all the footnotes - don't worry, I didn't forget.

* Villager's backstory was planned to be thoroughly explored throughout this game - how leaving his family affected them, how life for him feels with his two parents being humans instead of villagers. The 5th area of the game - being revealed very dramatically, and near the end of the game, just when you'd think it was finally over - was going to be the final chapter to the story, being the Steve RPG island, completely covered in ruin. There would have been Illagers at Illager's Lab experimenting with all of the technology that Illager had access to in Steve RPG. Some extra floors of the laboratory would have been uncovered, showing Illager had an extensive database of villagers that he found to be easy to "rehabilitate". Our protagonist here... name drop, finally... Jeremy, was the perfect candidate for Illager. Jeremy's parents didn't much care for him when they still could care for him. He was the neglected middle child. Of course, they learned their lesson after Jeremy's disappearance. Jeremy finds this database of villagers and is able to search through them to determine who his brother and sister are. Their names are... Jason and Jessica. You can see their design in the concept art drawing I've posted below.

The predictable, yet, really ONLY ending I could do for this game, was having Villager take out his vengeance against Steve and kill Steve himself. Jeremy would spare Alex's life, however, because he knows that she didn't participate in the genocide with nearly the same intent. However, not all is forgiven. The only respect Jeremy still holds for Alex is the fact that she raised him better than Steve ever could. He gives Alex one final goodbye as he leaves the island, both of them full well knowing he never intends to speak to her again.

** This is still related to Villager's backstory - there was planned to be a rare chance that, when you slept in your own bed back at home, Villager would have a nightmare about an unknown figure. This unknown figure is actually Villager's subconscious representation of who he believes his brother to be. He has very fragmented, stripped down thoughts of his brother still in the very back of his subconscious, not being able to piece them together well enough to truly remember his brother. The nightmare consisted of this mini-boss fight against Phantom, the personification of the shattered memories of his brother. You would have been stripped down to your bare essentials - wooden tools and leather armor, stuck at level 1. When waking up, though, your gear returns back to normal, like nothing had ever happened.

*** Before I talk about Old Friend, take a look at the 2nd screenshot please. :). This explains Ol' Westerner's backstory.

Some of my knowledge on Old friend's backstory has dwindled, unfortunately... but I'll try my best to recall it all. Old friend was... well, an old friend. Specifically of Ol' Westerner's. Old friend started to help out Westerner adapt to the new server life. Old friend had his own farm just outside the center of town, flourishing and thriving despite the imperialistic nature of the servers. Old friend would let Westerner stay with them to keep Westerner out of the eyes of the server administrators. Unfortunately, one day, old friend was taken away to be used for an experiment - to upload the consciousness of players of the server to physical media to then populate their memories into a robot body. However, old friend was never told he would have to die for this experiment. And, so, that was the last anyone had ever seen of old friend. However - in one of the security towers, if you do enough digging and exploration, you can find the physical hard drive that houses all of old friend's memories. Westerner immediately knows what this is about, and informs Villager that he knows about a robot body that can take the input of a hard drive to utilize its memories. The robot body is somewhere near the mountain range that houses all of The Wild, Wild West. Whenever you do make it there, and insert the hard drive, you discover that old friend's memories had been tampered with through code. He is immediately hostile to Westerner and Villager, a single memory never coming back to the robot throughout the fight. Essentially, you have to execute a senseless killing against a robot that doesn't know any better... how tragic.

Some further things I'd like to talk about before signing off of this game permanently are the party members.

The 2nd party member in the 2nd server, Fantasia, is a delicate yet frustrated mermaid who had been outcast from her village after they had found out she wanted to become a woman. Procedures like that were taboo and frowned upon in her culture, so she decided to move away from her family permanently. That's when something very similar to Westerner's situation had happened to her - the owner of Re-topia paid her a visit to take advantage of her in her vulnerable state. She quickly, yet unknowingly, signed herself away, wanting any available chance she had to escape from her past. Fantasia's weapon of choice would have been a trident.

The 3rd party member is a much more unique case. Zantra, a very Tarzan-like boy from deep within the jungle, has poor communication skills and is quite blunt about what he wants, thinks and feels. Through having to survive in the wild, he's a talented thief, being very stealthy to get what he needs to survive in any way possible. Zantra's poor communication and a spur-of-the-moment letting down of his guard leads to him also being captured, banished to the lands of the server owners. Zantra's weapons of choice would have been dual-wielding knives.

The 4th and final party member, Reaper, is a very isolated character. Their mysterious and closed off facade shows they're not here to make friends, they're just here to do what they have to do. They typically work by themself for themself, but if they have to, they'll team up to see their goal through. They got their trust broken by the server owner, leading to them further reinforcing their idea of closing themself off and away from public eye. Reaper's weapon of choice would have been a scythe.

All of these party members would join your party for the same reason - they want vengeance, and they want the manipulation of the server owners to stop. If they have to put a stop to it with their own hands, then they will.

...Anyway! Hope you enjoyed that lore dump. I know I sure did! And didn't! Man, my fingers hurt from all this typing.