Hi again, both of you!

For this devlog, let’s rap a little about The Lost Cave of the Ozarks’ main theme and inspiration. As you could probably guess after reading the last blog, TLCotO (rolls right off the tongue!) is heavily, heavily, inspired by Marvel Cave in Silver Dollar City. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Believe it or not, the metaphorical light bulb exploded in my brain back around 2011 or 2012-ish, during a weekend vacation with my wife to Branson and Silver Dollar City. While towards the end of the tour through Marvel Cave, I casually listened to the tour guide tell the quick story of “blondie,” the young boy back in the 1800s or early 1900s who accidentally got lost in the cave for two days until he was found by the rescue team. As the story goes, they found him sleeping on a huge, fantastic rock formation that resembles a throne. Thereafter, this formation was called “Blondie’s Throne.”

Having taken this tour several times throughout my life, I had heard this same cool story several times as well. This time, however, I thought I heard the story told differently… did the tour guide just say Blondie was found by his friends? Or was it family? It was supposed to be a rescue party that found him sleeping there… I probably just misheard it.

And THAT is what got me thinking: If stories from just hours ago frequently get changed and sensationalized everyday, how much of the original story of “Blondie” has been altered, boosted, or lost to time? How do we know so many details of this event, but we don’t even know “Blondie’s” real name? Is the story even true, or was it made up by the tour guides to bring a little mythos to their attraction?

My mind then took a sharp, dark left turn.

What if most of the story is true, but they had to make a light-hearted amendment in order to appeal to the family-friendly crowd it attracts. What if the boy really did get lost in that cave several decades ago, and a search party really was organized and located him. But what if he wasn’t exactly sleeping on the huge rock formation when they found him… what if the ending was actually much more tragic. Why else would they memorialize the formation after him?

I mean, this was a young, soft boy in the harsh Ozark wilderness. In a cavern that gets dozens of degrees cooler if you go down deep enough. In the pitch black before lights were installed.

And here, you can see that I became enthralled with the concept of how stories change. How there is bias EVERY TIME a story is told, to some degree. I also love books that are told from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator, so mind went racing with ideas about making a game that took place as an event unfolds, as well as several decades later when the story was being told. And I thought there was no better setting than in a cave, where the idea was first inspired.

Now, really quickly, I was further inspired by Marvel Cave to set my game inside a cave for one big reason — the imaginative names that have been given to each “room” of the cave and to special landmarks and formations. In Marvel Cave, for example, you have the Shoe Room because the ceiling is literally shaped like a foot print. The Cloud Room because the porous rocks overhead look like clouds. It is a great setting to let a young boy’s imagination go wild!

Each level in The Lost Cave of the Ozarks features the imaginative features as the boy sees it, and then as they appear in the “real world” through the eyes of the tour guide later on.

And that’s it for this devlog, thanks for reading!

Next time will probably be an update on the game’s progress and hopefully some new screens!