10 years ago in June 2015 I began work on Untold Story.

Today, I want to talk about some stories relating to that journey!

The Beginning

To start, I want to go back even further, to 2014. Before Untold Story, I had been working on another game, titled Hero's Quest. All media and anything relating this this game has been lost, except for 2 YouTube videos I uploaded all the way back then of the very beginning.

These videos show off the very beginning of the game and 2nd dungeon. It also shows off how bad inexperienced I was at game development back then! I wasn't great at developing things, but I had a lot of ideas and RPG Maker was an outlet for those ideas. I fell in love and knew I wanted to make something great. This game had a "demo" to it, it had 8 party members, it had it all. About a year into development though, let's say...around May 2015...my computer died. Everything on it, lost. The game I spent a year working on, gone. Just like that. 

I was...upset. But, I didn't let it end there. I took everything I learned from Hero's Quest and vowed to make a new game. A better game. 

The Last Hope

In June of 2015, I began work on a new project. Back then, it was known as The Last Hope. The plan was to make a short, 10-15 hourish RPG. Back then, there were almost no party-based, turn-based RPGs coming out. Games just didn't have what I was looking for. It was action this. Single party member that. It just wasn't that I wanted out of a game. So I decided to make a game that had everything I wanted in an RPG. Party members. Turn based combat. Collectables. Little did I know back then that this "short 10-15 hour game" would end up into a 10 year+ development for a game that takes over 75 hours to 100%.

Full disclosure: I've known the ending of this game since 2015. One of the first things I ever did in development was create the main characters. From day 1 I've known the backstories of motives of characters. I've known story beats and huge moments. All the way until the end. It would take me over half a decade to ever write some of these characters and scenes. 

For the first couple years, development went smoothly. I was making good progress and the game was regular length. It was going so well I decided to make a demo: The Last Hope: Attack on Surrel.

The download itself is long gone, but once again I had a couple videos I took and uploaded. 

The Last Hope is a very weird thing to look back on. It's similar to what Untold Story is, but isn't quite right. It has all the same characters, and the gameplay is kind of the same, but it's missing everything that makes the game today what it is. This demo, by the way, covered a completely unique storyline that just isn't present in the full game. 

After I released this, I kept developing at a regular pace. It was going good until I developed what is now referred to as Chapter 5. This is where everything would come to a massive halt.

The Remodel

Sometime in 2018, I decided I didn't like how The Last Hope was going. Recall, I wanted to make a game that had everything I wanted in an RPG, and I just didn't get that feeling. So that was when I made a decision that changed the course of development for several years. This is the birth of Untold Story. 

The name Untold Story comes from the fact that, back then, I had convinced myself that this game would never be finished. It would be a story that remained untold. 7 years later it still hasn't been released...

I went through everything I had developed already, and remodeled it. I made it better, I 'modernized' everything. I basically started development all over again from the very beginning. I had to redo the entire database, restructure all of the enemies, all of the skills. I essentially started from scratch.  I spent another few years doing this, up until 2020. It was at this point I felt comfortable enough to put out a video on what the game looked like. 

This was the first video I posted, showing off one of the first major dungeons of the game. It was around this time I decided I wanted to make a "demo" again. Some of you that have been around might before this demo version. Basically, I went through everything I had developed up to that point, and spent the year polishing the hell out of it. This would be Untold Story: Demo Version. 

Keep in mind, it's just about 2021 now, and this entire time, I have not developed anything past what I had done before this remodel. Nothing past Chapter 5 had even begun development.

Feedback

In Feb. 2021, I would post this demo version onto the RPG Maker fourms, and this would change everything. I got feedback. I had other people play Untold Story, and got construtive critisms of what worked and what didn't. It was here when true development of Untold Story really began. The amount of changes are impossible to say, but the biggest one was the removal of random encounters. It was a reality call when others played, and I learned that while I was making a game I wanted, a game modeled after RPGs of old, that didn't mean I had to copy all of teh archaic things they did.  I spent a good chuck of 2021 fixing issues with the demo and going back through the first 5 chapters once again to change everything. 

Progress

In 2018 I halted development to make a demo. Then I polished that demo, Then I fixed that demo. It was now over halfway through 2021, and I was finally, finally, beginning to develop what is now Chapter 5.5.

That is why this game has taken me so long. All of my previous work polishing and getting feedback had locked me in on what Untold Story was about, so with all that in tow, I worked on 5.5 Then Chapter 6. Then 7 and so on. Finally, after 7 years  of development, I was finally writing characters whose stories I had known about since day 1. Writing scenes I had envisoned since day 1. And as recent as this year, writing the ending I had known 10 years prior. 

A lot of choices I made have extended development of this game. Deciding to redo everything all that time ago. Deciding that every single NPC would have their own quest (and that every NPC would be unique). And I don't regret any of those decisions. I have played Untold Story dozens of times across many versions, and every single time I enjoy playing it. I have not once gotten tired of it. The goal at the beginning was always to make a game I wanted to play, and I have succeeded at that. And I hope that before long, you all will get to play it and enjoy it as well.