Sentiente
Sentiente is a Cave Story-inspired story/platformer game concept I started somewhere in 2014. I had many plans for this, but for reasons that I cannot remember, it faded out from memory.
I started putting together a browser game, but I didn't get far.
Play browser test (If you immediately fall into the pit, refresh the page. It happens because the physics activate before the map loads, I didn't notice that problem when I made this because loading the map from my hard drive was instant, but it's slower when it loads from the internet.)
Story and people
The story is about a boy called Ten who recently moved into a village of Hairheads and is trying to find his place there. He has no memory of who or what he is, and the game is about chasing clues to find answers. He has strange memories that don't seem to fit into his current reality. Each time he reaches his objective, he obtains more clues and memories that can be used to chase new objectives.
There's nothing very special about Ten, he's no chosen one or particularly remarkable in any way. The story was supposed to have very dramatic turns of events that can be avoided by reaching a more difficult true ending.
It's not exactly a surprise that he's a robot of some kind, but robots aren't sentient, even in the game's world.
Hairheads are the primary people that the player interacts with. They are people who come in various colors, their hair is a big part of their identity and source of pride. The hair isn't exactly relevant to the story, that's just who they are.
Ten lives with a certain hairhead family, the parents aren't sure how to treat Ten, their son is arrogant and prideful and has made Ten into a rival (and would become a boss battle every now and then), and their daughter is the only one who's friendly and actively helps Ten out.
Hairheads are very important to the story and Ten's past.
Keys are a strange species living in the forest that have a key on their head. The keys on their heads are related to their "destiny", and the impressiveness of the key is related to how important that destiny is. Using their key is something akin to the goal of their lives; fulfilling their destiny, and completing it is their primary goal regardless of how mundane it is. They don't know exactly what their destiny is, but they are drawn towards it and recognize it when it's time. The usage can be something abstract, the key usually isn't a physical key.
A certain key that Ten meets in the forest was born with a broken key on their head, so it is seen as if he was born without purpose. The reason the key is broken is related to Ten's past.
Hell are demonic-looking people that are much more powerful and intelligent and societally developed than other species. They are not "evil", but aren't usually very friendly towards other species. 2 Hell called Zombo and Blitz immediately recognize what Ten is and end up helping him out, though it starts off as a misunderstanding.
Hell mostly play a minor role in the game, but one in particular is a major character.
Gameplay
Originally I wanted the gameplay to be just like Cave Story (maybe you can feel it from the browser test), but I changed my mind shortly afterwards. The new plan was to have much more mobility than in Cave Story, and more dynamic/weird weapons. The game was supposed to be very focused on telling a story, so simple gameplay would probably suffice, but in the end I wanted the gameplay to be fun too.
Current status
Sentiente is mostly ideas and art at this point.
The browser demo should not be taken as an indication of anything at all, I would throw 100% of it in the trash if I continued this project.
I am quite fond of the story and characters, but this project is very low on my list or priorities so I don't expect to finish it for a very long time, if ever.
Spoilers
I had made a rough plot of events and places for the game and story. Since I have no real plans to continue this project, it's probably fine to just spoil what the story was supposed to be.
One of the Hell (whom I just call "BB"), an owner of a big factory, is the main villain. He hates how "dumb and useless" robots are and has been experimenting with creating sentient robots to do his bidding for a long time. One of the early experiments involved putting souls into robots, and Ten was one of them. Most of those experiments failed so all the robots at the time were discarded, one of the later levels is filled with failed robots with corrupted souls.
Zombo & Blitz work for one of the factories and think Ten is one of BB's robots, they're afraid of messing with BB's stuff so they end up being unusually friendly and helping Ten. This leads to a factory-style level in Hell city where Zombo and Blitz help you throughout.
Ten used to be a hairhead called Sen before he was killed and his soul was inserted into an assembly line worker robot by BB. He started calling himself "Ten" partly due to mixing up his original name, and the fact that the only thing he faintly remembers is the number 10. One of the memories/clues you follow in the game is the number 11 which is etched into Ten or his hat or somewhere, Ten is assembly line robot #11 and the one next to him was #10 which he saw before his soul had fully awakened in the robot body.
Sen had a friend called Yellow who was killed by BB along with him. I never decided what her fate would be exactly, but Pink is at least somewhat implied to be Yellow's reincarnation (not confirmed to be such, it's up to player's interpretation), you'd be able to see similarities between them and their behaviors. There's no happy ending where she's alive, my goal was to depict Yellow similarly to an angel, and the past as far brighter and happier than the current time. The memory and Ten's perception of Yellow is supposed to be irresistibly nostalgic and beautiful, ethereal, but it's gone and you cannot get it back. It's also implied that a lot more time has passed between Sen's death and him waking up as Ten than it seems.
The game would have multiple paths/endings depending on how many people you can save throughout the story. The biggest branch of events is after BB has come up with a way to convert live people into robots and attacks the hairhead town, some people have been turned into robots and the rest have run away. You find Pink in her home alone, either hiding in a closet or turned into a robot depending on your current path, and then you run into Guy who, if you killed Pink (if she turned into a robot), fights you to the death thinking you're no better than the other robots.
Other disconnected notes and ideas:
- At some point Guy's face and hair is burned by a fire, which makes him depressed, but he later makes a heroic return while wearing a helmet that spews out fire which looks like a long flowy flame hair, and he acts more maturely.
- The first and only memory you have at the start of the game is a symbolic image of a sun with wavy shapes under it.
- At the end of the level with corrupted soul robots, BB rips out the computer on Ten's head, causing him to "die". The next level is inside a messed up digital space where the theme is Ten's soul trying to live despite the computer on his body being removed. When you complete the level, Ten's soul fully awakens and you end up playing a short scene as Sen in the past where you meet up with Yellow, this scene finally completes the first memory that you've had since the start of the game (you complete half of it much earlier when you visit a destroyed version of the same location in reality). Afterwards you wake up back in reality, but a lot of time has passed.
- I considered making Guy the hero of the story: the one who ultimately fights and defeats BB is Guy, you just help in some way. At some point (maybe when BB "kills" you) there would be a fake boss fight, but as soon as it starts BB will disable your ability to move because he can control robots, so it's impossible for a robot to defeat him. I always wanted Ten to be nobody special so the idea that he's helpless towards big villains sounds good to me. Perhaps somewhere at the end of the game, Guy will follow you around and you do the final "quest" together, at that point he has become much more powerful than you and super strong enemies appear which he will defeat. I think it would be interesting if you were some other character's side kick, I don't recall ever seeing that in a game.
- The unnamed key's destiny was related to Sen and/or Yellow, it was not supposed to be born since they died, but was born broken because Sen is simultaneously alive and dead. Originally Yellow was supposed to go into coma, and the key's destiny was to unlock her consciousness to revive her and bring Yellow and Sen back together. After Ten "awakens" (see above) and Pink goes into coma when the town is attacked, the key's destiny becomes available again and the key becomes repaired. Even if you prevent Pink from becoming a robot, she cannot be fully saved unless Key is also alive at the end.
- There's a golden key who is the king of all the keys, you can chat with him and he'd explain the lore of the keys to you. The golden key's destiny is particularly important and he has lived for a very long time waiting to fulfill it. His destiny is to "save the world" by somehow helping to stop BB. Maybe there's some kind of weapon locked in a vault that only he can give access to, or he is a skeleton key that can unlock any single thing without limitation.
Here's some bonus sprites.
