We live in a world where we see finished products. Mostly finished products. Early Access has changed the moment in a game’s development where we’re invited in to play, but usually, we’re still on a road to release. There’s a linear progression: a developer begins a project and then works on it through to launch; an idea begins and develops and ends. That’s how we think about games, about what the process of making them is. But what about the game ideas that don’t make it, what about the ideas that never get that far, the creative cul-de-sacs and dead ends? Think about how many ideas you’ve had in your life and how far each of those ideas got. How many went the distance? How many resulted in a fully formed thing? Because I believe we’re just as shaped by the ideas that don’t make it, as we are the ones that do.
Here’s a glimpse into game development we don’t normally get: A Short Hike developer Adam Robinson-Yu has released a demo for an unfinished game. A game he was making before he took a break to make A Short Hike, which unexpectedly did very well, and which he always intended to return to. And he was as good as his word: he did return to it, to Untitled Paper RPG as it’s called. But he discovered when he did that he didn’t like it any more. “The development for the RPG had become difficult,” he wrote in a development update on Itchi.io, “which was why I took a break from it in the first place.”
Immediately upon playing the demo of Untitled Paper RPG, it’s hard to see why he feels this way. The vibes of the game are, according to a new saying I’m desperate to shoehorn in somewhere, immaculate. You are a cute crocodile person in a scarf, who lives in a village of other crocodile people, and you need to collect signatures for a birthday card for your best friend (who’s a bird by the way, not a crocodile). This pushes you to meet people in the village, who are an eccentric bunch.