Dues Ex Machina

I have wanted to get this story down for a while, and lately, its been fresh in my head as we work on new systems for HeavenX. Its a real world example of how a tiny prototype to can spark excitement and eventually lead to something really cool.

In 2020, COVID hit. Strangest.io had grown a lot since I started it in 2018. If I’m not mistaken, around that time we had like 10 contributors, all working extremely hard on a game called Abraxas for about eight months. There are two running themes through out this story: Burnout and cancelled games. Towards the end of the year, multiple folks had burned out and needed to take a break.

One thing most people will tell you about me, is that I can never really ‘sit still’. Idle hands are the devils playground, and for me -  During the downtime I started experimenting with mechanics, themes, and visual styles. Nothing formal. Just mechanical prototypes to keep my brain moving. Over the course of a week in late September I built three small projects and tried to figure out which one deserved exploration.

One of those projects was unassumingly labeled Frizzlefry named after the Primus album. Like many Primus songs - the project was meant to tap into surreal imagery and disillusionment, which are themes I typically cling to in my personal works. It was a simple FPS kit-bashed together with ripped assets from Google Poly (now defunct of course), and the main mechanical spin was time dilation and control.

Over the course of October, Frizzlefry grew into a small experimental game I released on itch.io called Nightmare.

I will save a full postmortem on Nightmare for another time. What I can say now is that, unknown to me, I accidentally tapped into something in the air. Hyperpop energy and metal attitude. Glitchy and trippy visuals, eventually inspired by Machine Girl’s ‘…Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For’ album cover. Netpunk dystopian lore. Sprites ripped from games like ‘Duke Nukem’, ‘HacX’ and ‘Powerslave’. The project was raw and kinetic. Over the years I have met or chatted with a lot of people who found the game and really loved it for one reason or another. That made me love the project even more.

Ever since that fateful October, our team made several attempts to do Nightmare, but bigger and better. The idea of Nightmare 2 became a running meme in the Strangest.io days before Zhaoxing Heavy Industries. In 2022 we tried to pick up Nightmare 2, then got derailed by a proposition from Crunchyroll. Yes, that Crunchyroll. We had concept art in motion and some mechanics stubbed in before the derail. At that stage, Nightmare 2 was going to be a Doom total conversion WAD. We were hoping this would ease development through the benefits of a proven level editor and scripting languages. Even though we dropped it for something else, the idea of a successor to Nightmare never left the team.

History Repeats Itself

In May 2023 a lot of us were feeling burnt out on Wastebraver, an RPG we were building for Playdate. Wastebraver was very, very ambitious (unwieldly so). Unlike some of the other topics of this devlog - I have written my thoughts on Wastebravers development down here, but the short version is we needed a change of pace.

Just before Memorial Day I texted my longtime friend and intellectual other half, Matt, about jamming on an FPS over the three day weekend.



Matt is the art director on most of the games I have made, and he is the art director on HeavenX. He has always been the visual pizzazz of Strangest.io. The Adrian to my John. I can usually tell when he is either burnt out or ready to spin his wheels on something new. His recent Wastebraver UI work was excellent, but the complexity was getting to him, and I knew he was not in love with that game idea to begin with.

Shortly after my text we jumped on a Discord call to talk about what would become HeavenX. In a few hours we laid out a plan to prototype an FPS like Devil Daggers, set in the Nightmare universe, and do it in two months. Little did we know that this would become the spiritual successor to Nightmare that we always hoped for.

HeavenX Prototyping

Thinking back on this period of time is wild. Matt and I worked basically every day through late June, July, and August 2023. We usually make a strong prototyping team, even though we butt heads - we push each other, and both of us were excited to make something new.

In June we took a very literal approach to putting Nightmare inside an FPS shell. If you saw the early builds you would see a female/robot arms rig. In Nightmare those are ‘Machineangels’. After some testing we scrapped that plan in favor of simulating the experience of being a Machineangel through early 90’s VR technology. That led to a low poly, Dreamcast style, early CGI and Lawnmower Man approach to the graphics. The bonus was that it let us prototype significantly faster.

At one point we put an actual gun in the player’s hands. In hindsight it looks a little silly, but at the time it felt cool and we were just throwing stuff against the wall to see what would stick. Time mechanics were on the table from day one. Funny to think that they ended up as a submechanic inside the card/loadout system later.

The original enemies were cubes and purely placeholders. By mid July the prototype had sauce and was getting addictive. It is crazy how fun shooting cubes can be once the movement and cadence feel right.

By August the prototype was noticeably more polished and we could see the forest for the trees. Boids (spikey-ball mana cows) were always planned as the first real enemy from the very beginning, and they are mostly untouched even today, though that will likely change.



By the end of August we had a fully playable prototype of HeavenX with three distinct weapons, kinetic movement mechanics, a working arms rig, a stylized arena, and most of the bells and whistles you expect in a real game. It felt great. We were proud of how quickly it came together.

We had a team meeting coming up in Florida and decided to show it off there. Until then it stayed behind closed doors. Only Matt and I knew it existed.

Switch Chaos

Weird side tangent, in February 2023 we were given developer access to Nintendo Switch. Huge blessing but honestly - even bigger curse. The team was energized by the opportunity, but we were buried Wastebraver and Playdate game development, and could not pivot to a dedicated Switch game at the time.

After we wrapped most of the rapid prototyping for HeavenX in August, we decided to shoehorn in one last big gesture to sell the project to the team. We would port the HeavenX prototype to Switch.

Doing that with just the Matt and I was probably not going to happen. Matt was still building assets for a placeholder menu and now needed to produce box art and a cartridge label so we could present the Switch prototype properly. I was fixing bugs, building the prototype menu, and getting the game ready to take to Florida.

The good news is that we have one of the smartest programmers on earth, Jake. About two weeks prior to heading to Florida, I asked if he was up for getting the HeavenX Switch prototype to a steady 30 FPS. He said yes. He came in clutch and delivered a working build three days before our flights. I got the build, flashed it to the cart, and played it right there. It felt like an early Christmas miracle.



We now had a fully playable, polished prototype of HeavenX running on both Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck.

Three months earlier we had nothing.

Reflections

I’ll skip the full story of the fall meeting in Florida. That is, yet another post. It was a success, at least for the three of us who pushed the prototype over the line. Matt unfortunately got covid on that trip and had to fly home early, so he did not get to enjoy the win the way he should have, nor the delights of the ‘Bonky Wonkodile’.

Thinking back on all of this reminded me how much I love prototyping. It is amazing how quickly a small idea can prove or disprove itself, validate your instincts or even just feel rewarding for a brief moment.

The flip side is the boring truth. Turning a sharp prototype into a larger, expansive, durable game takes years. We passed two years of HeavenX development earlier this year, and I could not be more proud. This is the longest we have ever worked on something. It has taken a while and it will take a while longer. But everyone working on HeavenX fully believes in this project and we know it will be something unforgettable.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for the HeavenX team. We are building something wonderful and personal to all of us. I hope that comes through when the game finally lands, whenever that may be.

- Hunter