Restitched: From The Vault | Cut Worlds (Patreon)

Game development is a journey, and some ideas and concepts come and go. Decisions are made, ideas are changed - and, as is often the case, some content is left on the cutting room floor.

In this edition of From The Vault, we'll be looking at a couple of our cut worlds.

Untitled French Bakery Theme

We've touched upon the French Bakery theme before, in March 2022's Recapped! post. This is a whole world that we decided to cut from the main game to streamline the Story. It was to be set after The Rolling Acres farm theme that we've showcased before and would be where the produce of that farm is sent to.

Here's a brief concept of this world's background style from our Music Director Thomas:

As you may be able to tell from this concept, several themes from this area were translated into our Haddock Harbour theme!

We struggled to incorporate this theme into the larger story, though it was to be more focused on Stuffy helping the locals of this town with their personal requests. Unfortunately, the world was cut when we decided that the story was already too large and growing outside of our scope.

Here is another image of Jean Éclaire, who would be one of the main characters of this world. We've previously shared a concept of this character in the aforementioned Recapped... but here they are in full color!

...and a never-before-seen unnamed character who was also conceptualized for this theme:

Those with a keen eye might notice a few assets from this theme have made their way into Restitched anyway, such as in the form of Stamps and outfit concepts

Rock-A-Hula

When we cut the French Bakery theme, we also cut another world at the same time. That's right, there are actually two locations we've cut from the final story!

Rock-A-Hula was to be set at a Hawaiian music festival. It would feature a volcano and be a more tropical and fire-based world with both touristy and tribal theming. Think rock music with Hula dancing!

Some assets were made for the theme (and remain in-game) before it was scrapped, such as a handful of Building Materials and Stamps.

The eagle-eyed of you may have realized that we've actually hinted at this scene before in previous posts. While no concepts for characters have been explicitly drawn, we did decide that Rock-A-Hula would have a volcano, which was featured in early drafts of the Key Art!

The main character from the story's first world was also due to make a large return in this theme.

Though these themes were scrapped very early in our story planning, remnants of them remain in the form of ideas and assets - even if they've evolved into something new. We still have a soft spot for these themes, so maybe we'll see them again someday!