hello everybody. i wanted to write this post detailing all the scrapped content from the june season. there's so much to talk about that i'm sure i will forget something, but i'll try my best. let's get into it.

original concept

the june season was originally a sequel to cure for apathy. it followed on the story of ribby and scars, the gay couple from CFA. the game was about ribby (who later became daniel after the game stopped being a CFA sequel) having nightmares after getting jumped by a homophobic shooter on the street. the game was ultimately about homophobia, and a gay couple's difficulty to simply exist on the world because of it.

in fact, that's where the ''the june season'' title comes from. i find this a little unsensitive nowadays, but the title is a memorial of the orlando pulse shootings, which happened on june 2016.

many of these early ideas can be seen in the original, unlisted trailer for the game, called ''cure for apathy: the june season''.

however, not all the concepts of the original game were scrapped. various gameplay and graphics remnants remained and many would actually show up in the final, june 14th version of the june season.

early version #1

the development truly started around january 2018. back then, the game looked absolutely awful.

it played really similar to cure for apathy, it also went for that dark, industrial aesthetic. it seemed to take place in a facility of sorts. the main seller of the game was an orange dude with a colorful top-hat. by the way, i don't know why ribby (beta daniel) is white in the screenshots. he's supposed to be pink for god's sake!

opening cutscene

i created an ominous opening cutscene for this early version of the game. it has a black and white rabbit going through a nightmareish yet colorful scenery. i even toyed with the idea of making the whole game like this.

you could walk freely though this scenery, and you would find several hazards scattered around the map, like these weird moving snake-monsters.

at the end of this little cutscene, you would find a weird hole in the ground, and upon touching it... nothing would happen. i don't remember what it was meant to do. but it's damn creepy.

early version #2

this one is where you can start seeing various concepts that show up in the final game. yet, the game still looks awful.

this version plays somewhat similarly to the final version. you see those borders in there? you can walk through them, but they drown out your happiness. and they also contain hidden money and coins inside of them. also yeah, the seller is also different and ugly as hell.

and what's this? oh! yeah, i added the little hand fella. you have to hide in the borders to make her stop annoying you. in this version, when the hand appears, you can hear an unedited snippet of the jazz song ''i want a girl''. in the final version of the game, you'll hear the same song, but with a lot of glitches and noise sprinkled in, by yours truly.

early menu screen

this is what the original menu screen looked like. at the time, i hadn't contacted rosepuff, the insanely talented artist who brought daniel the bunny to life in the final version of the menu. so i just sticked to drawing ribby and scars myself, in the rough yet simple style of cure for apathy.

oh, and by the way, the menu music was the song ''help me i'm in hell'' by nine inch nails. great song, but copyrighted. so i ended up making an original song for the menu later on.

early version #3

the last ''early'' version of the game was actually uploaded on late 2018 through a mysterious tweet i posted on my twitter account. the tweet was simply a mediafire link that led to a file named ''huh.exe''. this is, in fact, a brief one-level demo of the june season. it's very rough around the edges, many of the sounds and music have been changed in the final version. the graphics look less sharp, it's specially noticeable in the black outlines.

one of the biggest changes was the non-appearence of need. that charismatic, flamboyant demon was not present in the game, in his place there was a weird character that i can't even begin to describe.

despite a few differences, this is the closest and most finalized ''early'' version of the june season. but now it's time for a history lesson:

in mid-2018, the computer i was using to make this game with, got infected with a deadly ransomware virus. and my ass didn't back up any of the files. so i lost many of the things i had saved of the june season proyect.

thankfully, after suspending the game's development for months, i contacted a mutual by the name of @thatdoggocalledray . he was insanely helpful in getting this game finished, and i am forever grateful. he helped me get the files for huh.exe again, which i used to complete the game.

scrapped content

rinse gang concept A - i had no idea what to make the rinse gang look like at first. i started with this ugly donut monster style, but i didn't like it much, so i cropped it... and it looked even worse.

rinse gang concept B - a weird, bloodier version of rinse gang. it looks like a mutant of sorts. my partner liked this design better, but i just thought it looked ugly after a while.

scrapped enemies - i was running low on ideas for the level 6, so i was thinking maybe daniel could see a horrible version of himself, following the ''eyes'' theme from the rinse gang concept art. i have no idea what the enemy on the left is supposed to be, but i guess it's a subtle reference to the guppycruncher from insaniquarium deluxe (my favourite game, and a big inspiration for the gameplay)

reverse world - this is a scrapped mechanic for levels 6-8, where the world and controls would turn around. this concept came from a series of experimental detours in the development, where i was trying to make the game feel as weird as possible.

that's all!

as far as i know, that's all the scrapped / early content from the june season. this whole post took me quite a lot of time to write down, but it's also been really fun.

just wanted to say, thank you. yeah, again! but really, i'm forever grateful. making this game has been an insane experience and i have grown as a person and a developer a lot. it took me about two years, but this came out really well.

the june season's hidden content goes really deep believe it or not. there's still a lot of easter eggs, and i don't think anybody has found the secret ending as of now, i might have to make that video on how to get it later on!

and... as far as the new ''don't wake her up'' teaser is concerned, i'll let you guys guess. not gonna give any hints just yet. byeeee ❤