As part of our anniversary, I decided to do a little retrospective and tell you about the projects we had in development, but dropped out for various reasons. We don't include them in our list of games, because formally there was no serious development on them, everything ended up as a discussion of mechanics, some plot points, sprites, etc. And today I'm going to tell you all about it!

"Bone Guide" (2019)

This was supposed to be a full-length fan-game. Our Olds could even remember a teaser of it on our YouTube. This story was an adaptation of my old unfinished fanfic "The Bone Guide".

The plot takes place in a timeline after one genocide and over fifty neutral failures. Frisk, under the influence of Chara, tried unsuccessfully to get a pacifist until she finally broke down under the weight of guilt. This left her memory damaged and her mental shaken. In this unstable state, she reaches Snowdin, where she meets the skelebros. Seeing the deplorable state of the man, Sans, moved by Toriel's promise, decides to accompany Frisk. But he does not yet know what exactly caused her behavior. And when he does, it will be too late to take it back.

Of all our "missed opportunities", this was the most content-rich project, because we were on fire with it for the first time. At that time Devilovania was already out, and Facing Demons was not planned. Crystal Horse and I decided to try our hand at a full game, not just a character battle. He did the code and I drew the sprites in the world. In 2019 I wasn't that experienced at it yet, so you can see for yourself how bad it was. Compared to more recent works, it's just an embarrassment. The battle sprites were made by Alex Lomolom. He didn't draw them specifically for the project though, he just gave me permission to edit them and use them. One of Lom's first interactions with us, by the way! In general, we worked by this principle "to borrow, not to make" for lack of authority and finances. For example, the only theme we had, Mettaton's theme, was made by the future composer of Facing Demons for the sake of experimentation and was not planned exclusively for the project. We only got permission from her to use it.

What were the features of this game?

The player could play as 2 characters, Friska and Sans. Each of them had their own features. For example, Frisk could jump over obstacles. And Sans had his own special battle system. Since he is not human, his battles took place in real time. Later on we saw such mechanics in Bonetale, but this concept was not limited to fighting games. These were battles in full-fledged arenas in a world where the player would have to use his skills wisely in order not to use up all his magic and still survive. The story had ideas that were unusual for the time, such as separating the ghost inside Mettaton from his robotic body, a chase segment in the True Lab, partners helping Frisk during combat, spatial puzzles in the world, and more.

I've attached all of our developments to the post so that you can also cry about the potential we missed. But at that time IGB couldn't pull off such a large-scale project. What's more, we can barely handle UT:TnT even now, and BG could have been even more ambitious if we hadn't stopped at what we had already invented.

💬 What do you think? After reading this did you want a game like this or would it be another community cringe? Share your opinion in the comments.