Hello, everyone! Hope you’re all doing well. Happy first progress report, and Happy Halloween!!!

I’ve never done one of these before, so bear with me as I try to figure it out.

Very nice news to share: in the past month, I’ve gotten a lot of preliminary planning done, to the point that I have a complete first draft of the outline of Sonic’s story! Of course, there’s still quite a bit I have to do; things will definitely be changed as I get to work on Shadow and Silver’s stories, but it’s a huge chunk of planning that I didn’t expect to be done this quickly. I also made a lot of progress on planning a side story I’m developing…but I fear I’ll say too much if I elaborate. Lastly, I’m working on - you guessed it - planning what designs I might want to change, and how I want to change them.

Anyways, I wanted to answer some questions some of you might have.

Q&A

How much of the game will you be rewriting?

I’m actually rewriting a lot less than I thought I would be (but still quite a lot). I’m trying to take the base concepts/structure of what was in the original game and make sense of it. Not everything will make the cut, but I’m trying to stay as close to the original vision of the game as possible with a little bit of my headcanons sprinkled in. Think of it a bit like the Resident Evil remakes; the broad strokes are (mostly) the same, but specific details differ.

How many stories will it have?

Four: Sonic’s, Shadow’s, Silver’s, and Final, same as the original.

What inspired this?

I’ve seen a couple people rewrite Sonic ‘06 over the years (mainly Story Surgery and Garrulous64), and I’ve wanted to try to do it myself for a while. The fact that Mephiles showed up again in Sonic x Shadow Generations (and there is some SHIT to unpack there) was the final kick I needed to start. There’s also, of course, the Snapcube dub. Expect at least one reference.

Will it be playable?

Sort of. It won’t be playable like the original (I’m nowhere NEAR able to program an entire game by myself, and I don’t want the gameplay to be Sonic ‘06 Two: Electric Boogaloo), but I will be describing my vision for if this game was actually playable as it goes along. Instead of traditional Sonic gameplay, I’ll be presenting the story in the form of a visual novel.

What engine are you using?

Ren’Py! It’s a free, Python-based engine made specifically for visual novels that’s really easy to learn and use! It’s actually the engine that Doki Doki Literature Club was made in; if that doesn’t speak for how versatile Ren’Py is, I don’t know what does.

Are you doing this all by yourself?

As of now, yes. If I do end up bringing someone else on for art, voice acting, etc., it probably won’t be for a while.

Did you say voice acting?

Yep! Ideally I do want to have voice acting. Whether or not it WILL, it’s too early to say.

Which characters will be staying?

As of now, all major characters will be returning. Whether that ends up sticking is to be determined.

And Sonic Man, of course. Who could forget Sonic Man?

Will [insert plot point] still be in the final version?

That’ll have to wait at least until I have a concrete outline - and there’s some things I want to keep a secret until the final release.

Will Elise still kiss Sonic?

Nope. First, I don’t ship it (but no shame if you do!). Second, even if I did, the current plan is to at least try to leave any ships up to interpretation.

Is Rush/Rivals canon?

No. Silver and Blaze are going to have a new backstory which’ll probably get expanded on at some point. Canon is a sandbox and I am a five year old at play.

When is the finished game coming out?

No clue yet, I literally started this a month ago and have real life to juggle with this.

Where can I get the most up to date info?

These monthly progress reports are going to be the primary source for information. I also might be dropping things more frequently depending on what stage of production I’m in, but that remains to be seen. Regardless, any updates will be the same on both the official tumblr (r-2006-official) and the Game Jolt page (sorry, itch.io people).

And that’s pretty much it! Hopefully by next month I’ll have more to report on. If you have questions you’d like me to answer next month, leave a comment!

Thanks for reading, and until next time!

-Calypso