Restitched: Dev Diary | Why Restitched? (Patreon)

Whether you've been with us for a while or you're new to the Trixel Creative sphere, you might have asked yourself - "Why Restitched?". This post explores our history as a team, and what events specifically lead up to where we are today.

Our journey began in 2013 as we started to create content and adventures within LittleBigPlanet. As of 2020 we've released several level series such as Return to Carnivalia and Evergreen Park, mini-games such as Traffic Panic!, and tools such as MusicPlayer. We're incredibly proud of these creations and their respective teams. A significant number of those that worked on these projects have since gone on to pursue game development (even with studios that have worked on LittleBigPlanet!) or study the arts.

Fast forward to 2019, and we officially started a fangame project for LittleBigPlanet with the community manager's approval and guidelines in collaboration with another developer studio. After constantly creating within the restrictions of other developers, we decided that we wanted to create our own confines. This initial project went through multiple rebrands due to creative differences, but it was originally known as "LittleBigPlanet Unwoven" and "LittleBigPlanet Unzipped", and was conceptualized as a 3D platformer.

After months of collaboration, we (Trixel Creative) decided to withdraw from the project. After much internal discussion, it was decided that we wanted to pursue something more traditional, while still staying true to the roots of the franchise we loved as a team. This is when our fan-game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-by-name-for-legal-reasons began development.

This game was to be a 2.5D platformer created from the ground up. We spent many months working on the project and getting it to a presentable state, with the goal to raise awareness in the early stages in order to hopefully gain more developers and interest. However, after an unprecedented amount of success following the project's reveal, we soon received a cease and desist letter from the owner of the original game stating that they couldn't allow us to continue using their artistic copyright and registered trademarks, which are exclusive to the PlayStation platform. Furthermore, we had to remove all traces of the project from our website. We always had the full intention to comply with the company's official guidelines, but, nevertheless, there were no hard feelings from either party, and we took the situation in our stride.

In a way, the cease and desist was a blessing in disguise. We spent a couple of months after January 2020 figuring out what we wanted to make as a team, and one-by-one more ideas started to trickle in. We were slowly but surely forming the next vision for our indie development journey - and this time, it was going to be uniquely Trixel Creative.

We decided that we definitely wanted to stick with the 2.5D platformer genre with user-generated content features, as that was the genre our community group was founded on, and have the most experience playing and creating within.

We wanted a character that was cute, relatable for multiple age groups, and highly-customizable. For this aspect, we were inspired by games such as Unraveled, Dreams, LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, and Naughty Bear. We eventually decided - what better expression of character than a teddy bear? Teddy bears come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and they're extremely customizable. You can find the evolution and creation of Stuffy as a character in our original Restitched: Dev Diary post called "Stitching Stuffy".

Restitched was, again, built from the ground up by our own developers. It's a common misconception that we built the game on-top of the-project-that-shall-not-be-named (mostly due to the similarity in titles), but this is not the case, as that would have entered us into a realm of legal ambiguity that we were not willing to risk entering.

We are genuinely passionate about Restitched, Stuffy, and the widely-untouched gaming genre that is 2.5D UGC. Restitched is a passion project aiming to bring this genre of gaming to the PC platform, where we can provide our own tools, story, and content for so many new people to enjoy. 

It is our hope that Restitched will continue to inspire others to create their own UGC projects as LittleBigPlanet did for us!

Stay on the lookout for future Dev Diaries, which are packed full of more exclusive behind-the-scenes development updates! In the upcoming Dev Diaries we will be covering things like the creation of in-game level backgrounds, animating Stuffy, creating costumes and cosmetic pieces, and a special secret update to an existing Dev Diary post!