Over the past few months after the games ultimate cancellation, I've been bugged or jokingly asked by several friends to revive the doomed AU's alternate timeline, and have constantly said no, only to fail and be pestered again.
We are NOT bringing Rigged Votes back. Ever. People don't even recognize the damage caused by creating the damn thing in the first place. It was a plan that was doomed to fail, a tower built just to collapse, an illustration on a sheet of paper just to be ultimately scrapped and thrown away.
For the sake of informing you on the harm the game caused to me, I'll tell the story from my exact perspective. This post will not be deleted, as it relates to the game negatively and also serves as a self-reminder never to make the same mistake again.
Part 1: The spark to a flame. (Legacy)
On March of 2020, Rigged Votes was spawned into creation, dubbed Slicebelief. The premise of the game was simple. It was merely to pose as a tribute to Firey Jr. and how long he'd stayed in the game before his inevitable elimination. Progress had gone well... until my sister had come into play.
She was going through her "tattletale" phase, meaning if I did the slightest thing that ticked her off, she'd rat me out to my dad and I'd pay the harsh price for an unjust crime.
In the midst of all this, Rigged Votes received its first ever crisis. Somewhere around the end of April, I got an indefinite grounding because I wanted to finish the game at any cost. When my dad would hide my laptop, I would always get it back on my own... that is, until he caught me red-handed.
Defeated, I cancelled Rigged Votes for the first time. Eventually, the grounding ended earlier than anticipated and I tried to finish Rigged Votes again.
Despite the odds, the game had the entire Phase 1 completed. Immensely disappointing, but it was the beginning after all. Somewhere down the line, you have to look at yourself and improve.
After a few scrapped concepts and a bunch of lagging Scratch blocks, Rigged Votes had its first demo published on September of 2020, and it provided the foundation for what would later become the disaster it is today.
Part 2: The flame burns brighter. (Geo Era)
Around December of that same year, I rebooted Rigged Votes and fixed the story to improve the game. In the middle of my revamping, I met Error-Cezar, who would later teach me about how to use Clickteam. As a slow learner, a bunch of leftover assets in the Geo Eras demo went back as far as the beginning of 2021.
Development from December to February was slow and steady, as Error was busy helping me take my baby-steps into making the demo. As that was happening, I took the time to repair my compositional skills and remaster some tracks from the Scratch demo, providing the basis for the tracks you hear (if not deleted) for the game.
On January, I brought Dust Mode to life with the intent to pay as a tribute for Dusttrust after its cancellation, only to be met with backlash and hate. This started the end of Rigged Votes, as it made its first haters, people that wanted to see this game fall.
I wasn't gonna be stopped, and that showed. As Error had taught me just enough to make content on my own, I had piloted the Rigged Votes programming... into the ground. 2021 me had thought I was a superstar at this, and I knew I was destined for success.
Then I released the rebooted demo after months of work, to be met with a bunch of positive criticism, people celebrating the stepping stone taken to send this game to the GameJolt shelves.
However, I was displeased with how the game turned out, so I went ahead and did another reboot. As a result, I invited some new team members. Huge mistake on my part.
Part 3: A flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. (Reverb Era I)
Yes, one of the team members invited was ReverbCat, who was immediately given whiplash by the amount of hate he had received from his co-workers. Despite his huge help on the new era, team members still beat him down for what he did outside of the team.
In the middle of all of this chaos, I had hired JafiMew, who made alternate sprites alongside ReverbCat... and also hated him at the time.
In terms of game progress, the game was flowing smoothly. Since Reverb was a programmer, he helped in making the engine by supplying the box and soul engine... actually, that was all he supplied. I just kinda built off of it. Regardless, Phase 1 was en route to completion, the intro was finished, the menu, the options, all seeming as if it would come together perfectly.
Now, contrary to what the team members think, I had good intentions for having Reverb in the team. My plan was for everyone to settle their differences with him and be friends. Back then, my vision for the world was all sunshine and rainbows. I was sure my plan would work...
...Then I was proven wrong. I had one critical flaw in my plan; my team members patience. Given that I had hired the most insensitive people, I was unaware that my pick in members would lead to what would become the "Team Origin Bandits."
On February 13th, 2022, the first major leak towards Rigged Votes was done, taking nearly every bit of progress with it. Since the MFA, sprites, FLP files, and more were caught in the crossfire, Rigged Votes was inevitably forced to restart, and the bandits were kicked off for good... or so I thought.
Part 4: Burning out. (J.S. Era)
After the leak, I did a team purge and was on the lookout for people who would help rebuild the game, perhaps improve it in the process. In the middle of my search, I looked back on one piece of fanart I found over SoundCloud. The fanart was on someones profile banner, and I was curious to figure out who made it. One conversation later, I learned that they made the art themselves.
Impressed, I asked if they were interested in helping repair Rigged Votes, and be credited for giving an extra hand to get the game back up on its knees. This specific someone was a person named J.S, whose name is to be abbreviated as initials to avoid trouble.
After they joined the team, I was excited to finally get the game running again! I found an old MFA for an engine concept I had back in January and decided it was my sole duty to breathe life back into it and Rigged Votes in the process. There was one small problem though.
Rigged Votes was already 2 years old at that point, and I was getting impatient to finish the game, so... I may or may not have let my lack of impulse control do the work for me in hopes of speeding things up. While that did speed things up a tad, it made several surviving members unpleased with how I was acting, and they threatened to rebel.
On top of that, I had made the god awful mistake to reinvite a few bandits to the team. Now we had a dangerously high chance for a rebellion and a ticking timebomb on our hands for the time, and to defuse that bomb would be to act like a servant, and some time later, on May 1st, 2022, that bandit pulled a "prank" and made me think Rigged Votes was yet again leaked.
The "leak" was so convincing that it got me to break down in tears and nearly close up shop, but something happened that nearly astonished me.
Do you remember in 2021 when Dusttrust was revived...? I had written a strange copypasta complaining about the new changes with the plot and writing, and the owner of the time, Kasssm, turned it into a joke for all of the UTC to laugh at.
...and that very same Kasssm helped me get back up after I fell down, and it brought me the motivation and hope I needed to keep pushing.
But... somewhere under the pressure, my impulses slipped, and between June and July of 2022, I had yet again slipped into an indefinite grounding... and my hopes and spirit to finish the game were fading.
When I was ungrounded, I awoke to a "nice" surprise. Rigged Votes had been leaked for a 3rd time, counting the fake leak that nearly killed the game.
All the sprites, the music, and stuff that wasn't even related to Rigged Votes were uploaded to a DeviantArt account, along with the gamepage itself being vandalized to display a MediaFire link revealing the most recent MFA files the bandits had, among other things.
Obviously, Rigged Votes couldn't continue with the current progress as it had been freely available via. MFA to copy code from, so it restarted yet again.
Part 5: Lit back up... for a little bit. (Reverb Era II)
Now, here's the part no one talks about... mainly because Reverb was the director for the new reboot of Rigged Votes after the whole leak fiasco. This meant most of the writing, the programming, and the plot was ultimately decided by ReverbCat.
Now, since I moved Discord accounts, I am unable to provide much info on the era itself, but I do have a spare screenshot from the game.
Does the UI look familiar? It should if you've downloaded the last ever public build of the game. This was the foundation for the demo era, which is right after this era!
Sad thing is: This era never really survived that far beyond this being the only complete encounter. There is a Phase 1, but it is lost to time.
Part 6: Doom. (Demo Era)
After Reverb forgot he was in the team, Rigged Votes went into dark silence for a while. We had no idea what we were going to do with our game. We've gone through several eras already, yet nothing was getting done. Perhaps it was time to close up shop... until I finished PlainEngine V.3.
After that was finished, I got to work on reinventing Rigged Votes, making it better than it could ever be, making it shame all of its former stages in development! I was destined to finish this game the right way, and nothing could stop me!!!
That is, until... well, you remember, right? I blacked out from Discord for... over a year... because of her.
Do you remember Legacy era, when my sister had done nothing but taunt and belittle my work? Well, let's just say that evil spirit had rised from her once again... and it took 30 grams of ketamine in the midst of its reawakening.
Now, do you remember the J.S. era? During my "indefinite" grounding, my sister was appointed as a messenger on my behalf so I could get things done while mentally behind bars.
Now, let's snap back to reality, where shit went the fuck down. A.K.A, The final nail (Nailed it!) in the coffin for the game. My sister had been friended to the bandits, who were in the team while I was grounded... and she used that advantage for all the wrong purposes.
The day had started as normal, and it was directly after my birthday. I was chilling on my bed with my laptop in my lap, (to account for my lack of desk at the time) and my sister was on her tablet, laying stomach-down, dangling her legs above the bed.
The day felt as if it was gonna like no other. I would get progress done, Rigged Votes would grow, and life would be ideal... well, as ideal as it gets for a teenager of the time.
Suddenly, I heard a very unwanted familiar voice. I look up, and what do you know? My sister is in a voice call with the bandits of all people. I tried convincing my sister to stop, even trying to steal the tablet from her, and she was blindly following their orders as if she were possessed.
No matter what I tried, they had a full grip on her, bad enough to almost actually pour a full bottle of water on my computer... and I acted rashly.
From outside the room, you'd hear a voice echoing "I'm gonna beat the shit out of you," and conveniently enough... my dad was directly at the door, and heard those very words.
As you may have infamously known, this was the day I lost Discord for what seemed like forever. Everything from then on was total hell, as it enabled my parents to enforce their rules at 6 times their normal limit, sucking both my patience and motivation dry.
Throughout development, my spirit for the game and Firey Jr. as a character was fading away as my parents and the bandits were both preying on me like a decaying corpse, and I kept denying the truth of this game. I kept holding out my hope that this game would be seen through to the end... and that progressively became more impossible.
As I tried to hop from alternative to alternative for Discord, I kept losing one after another through unfair means, and I had to use Steam, then GameJolt, and briefly use the Roblox chat system. All to finish this god damn game... and on May of this year, the "demo" was released, only to be immediately met with views and hate given only by the bandits.
Eventually, I realized that no matter what, if I kept this game going, they'd always find me, they'd always hurt me, and they'd always manipulate me, my family, or even my IRL friends... so I cancelled the game to preserve my safety.
As far as I knew, Rigged Votes was dead... and for good reason. Being attacked over and over made me realize the truth about the game--it's nothing more than a cheap ripoff that tried to be unique.
Part 7: Jafi walks to the grave of Rigged Votes... with a lighter. (Jafi Era / Reboot Era)
And somehow, that game had life breathed back into it. I gave Jafi ownership of Under Dream Island and Rigged Votes in hopes of fixing everything that was wrong with the game, and in turn, Jafi wanted to revive Rigged Votes.
There's a huge lack of progress that was found, but we can safely say that there was a very small bit of progress, a single song made for the game, called Flaming Retribution, a re-imagining of Flaming Vengeance.
Things were getting back on track... that is, until I remembered one critical problem that persisted. My parents were still being control freaks, and every time I had the opportunity to work on the game... they'd always find a way to mess it all up.
Eventually, 2 weeks after revival, me and Jafi finally agreed to put Rigged Votes to rest, and all the trauma from Rigged Votes led to me despising Firey Jr.
3 years of development, met with a severe amount of controversy, negative feedback, and harassment over a small flame. Literally zero team members want this sack of shit for a game to be remembered, and I'd like it to stay that way.
Please understand our team members wishes and do not let this game be remembered. Take down any videos you may have uploaded on the game. <3
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