🧀KRIS LEE · @ActualRatKris
28th Aug 2022 from TwitLonger
SORROW - The Full Story
Hello! I wanted to make a post that goes into detail about the history of "Sorrow", and how it led to this point. I feel like it's necessary for closure, for those who were really looking forward to it.
"Sorrow" was not my first game. I've made a lot of games / projects, most of them never seeing the light of day.
Initially I started working with a team on a Fan-Game called "TimeSplitters: Rewind" back in 2013. This dominated at least half of my highschool life. A few years later I'd use the experience and knowledge to splinter off and create my own game. Something in the same vein as TimeSplitters, but also something different.
That game would eventually be called Neon Beasts, "This Game" https://youtu.be/hLnqNQ3hB2Y , and it would go on to dominate my whole life. It was a game that should have taken at least a team of 100 to make, and I was doing it all on my own. Everything seen in that trailer is something I built.
It was at this time where my life became increasingly dark. Many traumatic events with no end or hope in sight did a number on me. Neon Beasts in it's final state, was very much a product of it. Unfortunately, I was quite literally throwing my life away to make it. I got in with a publisher, and thought I had finally amounted to something. While little kid me would be blown away to have a cool game with a cool publisher, I slowly started to sink in that it was never something I actually wanted, now that I was finally at that peak. Life around me became increasingly more dire still. Eventually, after pouring years of life into the game, the cord was cut. The game was no longer mine, and all of the life I had senselessly tossed into it was gone.
It took me a long while to accept it. To try and move past it. After the dust settled, I was afraid I'd never want to create again. I was still highly depressed at this time, and these events only strengthened it.
But then I was reminded of "Haunted PS1"
It was a group I had always wanted to join, to share ideas with. My bonds with Neon Beasts made that impossible. Now that I was free, I wanted to take all of that sadness and put it into a game. A King's Field / Silent Hill inspired RPG, called Sorrow.
The game was called Sorrow for a reason, after all. I began work on it, and managed to find my spark to create again. Using all of that emotion, I wanted to build something dark, special, sad, and beautiful. I grew up with FromSoftware, having been exposed to King's Field 2 through my dad's blockbuster rental. I became obsessed with King's Field. The Ancient City eventually became one of my favorite games of all time. I took the guidebook to school every single day to study it. "I still have it". With all the darkness that I faced in my life, I wanted to put that into something special. That game called Sorrow.
As time went on, I feel like the game was a place for me to vent my frustrations. I wrote a lot of sad characters, sad stories, and even tied the central theme of "Sorrow" into the main plot. No, it's wasn't just a cool name lol. In a way, this game was exactly what I needed to pick myself up again. After slaving away on Neon Beasts and doing the work of 100 people on my own, it was an attempt for me to scale back, to do something more reasonable for a single person. While Sorrow wasn't particularly giant or difficult to work on, it was still too much for me, as I would later discover. My efforts to subconsciously overwork myself began to take hold once again.
Eventually, I worked out most of my frustrations on Sorrow. I was finally at a point in my life where I felt I could get better, and get happy again. As you might imagine, this had a negative effect on Sorrow. I had been reaching from darker times to make the game, and as I became happier, that became increasingly more difficult. It became impossible for me to fully tap into that. Sorrow was nearing it's end as I managed to pick myself up, turn around, and go down a happier path. Work slowed to a halt, and I canceled it.
I found myself wanting to make something less dark. Something happier. That was a feeling I hadn't felt in a very long time, and so I did it. Sorrow was left behind, but not entirely. I still very much loved Sorrow as a whole, and did not want to waste what I had done for it. A lot of the themes, stories, and some familiar elements like the "Moonlight Sword" would make its way into my new game, Heartvale.
Heartvale was a happier game, and an idea I've had for a very, very long time. That doesn't mean it's entirely happy, however. It can get dark, it can get sad, but the important thing is that it would never stay that way forever, like Sorrow would. Not only was this game better for me emotionally, but it was far smaller in scale than anything I had ever done. It's a game that I could easily handle on my own. My thought process is something like... "Well, if I can put all this energy into these bigger things, all my creativity and heart, what would happen if I condensed it into the smallest package possible?" And here we are, with Heartvale.
The story for Sorrow is not yet finished. As a rat, I only have a single brain cell to be used at any given time. While I was ecstatic to finally move on, I had foolishly forgotten my Trailer submission to EEK3. By the time I realized it, it was too late. Part of me hoped the trailer was rejected, and that it wouldn't have been shown. I'd later find that this was not the case.
To those who have interest in Sorrow and appreciate it, thank you. While it currently lives on in Heartvale, I don't think that'll be the end of the story for Sorrow at all. There could come a time in the future where I'm able to finish it "Less likely", or I could release it as something else entirely. I had been considering releasing everything I had ever made for the project in the form of a "Kit" for everyone to have, so they could make their own King's Field inspired game with ease. This is the most likely future for Sorrow, I think. A lot of work was done on the game, but a lot of work is still yet to be done in order to release it as a kit. In the future, I hope to finish the code and release it as standalone "Packs" on the Unreal Marketplace. My "PS1 Engine" that I poured so much research into, and what could easily be a template for any First Person RPG, easily editable. Some of the content, like the assets themselves, I think I'll release for free, so people can use those in their own games and projects.
While Sorrows unfortunate fate makes me sad, I am still hopeful that it's only a matter of time before someone makes something King's Field inspired.
If you were looking forward to Sorrow, I hope you'll look forward to Heartvale! While it may be smaller and different, I think it's going to be something truly special. With all of my heart in it, we'll see. Thank you. <3