Feywing was our first public game release, back in October 2023. It was primarily written as short dev-cycle test game. At this time, the Godot engine was undercooked in some things, and our operative pipelines were undercooked in others.

As of now, it would be difficult for us to sit down and actually fix the game. Since its release nearly a year ago, we’d released an entire RPG made in around six months, building on experience from Feywing, and as of writing that RPG’s sequel is in development, with a whole second gamesworth of experience behind it. Given the precarious state of the game, and the lack of resources or time to go back through cobweb-cluttered code and fix it, we figure it better to just re-release the game for free in all its buggy, clunky mess.

The original source code was initially committed on June 30, 2023, with an intended release date of October 2023, Friday the 13^th. This ended up being missed, however, due to various factors during development. Concept art and ideas were being figured out a week or two prior. This wasn’t as constantly worked on and eventually got crunched at the end. Various things were difficult and cumbersome to work with, and many features were cut or reduced. In the end, Feywing was released on Halloween, October 31 2023.

The general idea of Feywing came from the idea of a horror game that which a monster is never seen, but rather hides in the environment stalking the player. The player would have to pay attention to the environment while finishing some sort of ritual to not be ambushed.

Various little elements snuck into the game taking from classic internet creepypastas. The premise is about getting lost in the woods, following a ritual, and getting back safely giving you a boon of excellent sense of direction. This ritual-esque writing was pulled from a creepypasta format known as the ritualpasta. In a sense, Feywing itself can be considered “The Feywing Ritual” creepypasta. A few other references were slipped in. Most of the time, the cabin has a big open window facing outside. In the intro and one ending, however, it actually is covered by a painting. This is a subtle nod to the old short story in which someone tries to rest in an empty cabin in the woods full of strange paintings of people. After we designed Feywing, anytime I’d heard the story of Mr. Widemouth, I could not shake the image of Feywing out of my mind.

There were some cut assets that were fully or near-fully made and got left in the game. Dataminers are welcome to break in and dig around the game files if they’re curious enough.

Feywing was made to not be as outwardly hostile as the typical creature in these types of games tend to be. At the same time, he was made to not be too trustworthy. Dubious companion seemed fun. He would’ve gotten more going on if time and experience had permitted. Someday we’ll remake the game with our improved resources and experience, but that is a tale to be told another time.