State of Decay #10 (July 2025): Introduction to the demo 0 characters of Toparo ~ the Forgotten Rotting Technology.

Well, well, well… I’ll cut to the chase this time around, as of writing it’s only the 12th of June; you might ask why I’m writing this so early and the answer is a bit convoluted. Ok so, there I was, June 1st, after having just posted all of the last SoD I was ready to really get into things, do something for at least three hours a day. It was going well, quite well, of course things always take a turn for the worse and I got ill to the point where I couldn’t do anything at all; but it was fine because I’d be back to it in just a week right? Well about a week later rolls by and literally the *day before* that first illness ended up going away to the point where I can do stuff again, I get ill with a second thing that *also* takes me out for the better part of a week.

Ok, ok, whatever - It’s the 12th now, both illnesses are mostly behind me (the one silver lining is that the worst of it passed quite quickly), now it’s time to get back into things like nothing happened, right? Well, doing basically nothing other than lying in bed for effectively two weeks has really thrown me off. Before, I was working for multiple hours a day, as I’ve already said, but now I can hardly do, like, thirty minutes before I need a break. Not just that I’m not feeling it, but also because I can’t quite move my hands right, which means everything is taking just a bit longer than it really should, which is frustrating. Just typing this, I keep fumbling over the keys like an idiot haha (^^;

So basically, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done this month (or next month for that matter) and I would very much like to keep this monthly blog monthly, yeah? Ok, cool, but why I am writing this *so early* surely I’ll be fine by about the 20th? Well, for the last week and a bit of June and the first week and a bit of July it turns out that I’m not really in a position to do anything regardless of illness. I’ve known about this for months, but it sucks that it happened so close to getting ill and just generally not feeling up to things.

So that’s that (hopefully that was understandable, I’m still not quite all there yet), I’m writing this now with a low hanging fruit focus just to have something done and to maybe hopefully warm up my hands with a bunch of typing, I probably just need to ease myself back into things; thought writing something this long would help - I mean, it couldn’t hurt right? Not that I had any plans on what to do for this SoD anyway…

Alright, what’s this low hanging fruit then? It’s the (near) exact same idea as the second State of Decay, just this time with all of the demo 0 characters. Now that I have a bit better idea of what’s going to happen plot wise throughout the whole game, I can probably give a bit more interesting/thorough look, even if it’ll be less set in stone than last time, things shouldn’t change *too* much. I’m basically done planning all the non VS mode plot in my head, just have to write it all down at some point, which is where most of the changes worm their way in. Anyway, on to it!

Morgan (the green one) and Archimedes (the cat one) are the protagonists of the A route. The two of them are a sort of dysfunctional duo, the type where you wonder how they stick around each other even though they clearly don’t get along; rather predictably with these sorts of duos is that they need something from the other. You see, Archimedes isn’t actually a cat, or more accurately, that cat like form isn’t his original one; a really long time ago, he was quite powerful and quite a big deal, but at some point also a really long time ago, his power was sealed and that’s all he’s been caring about since then.

Morgan on the other hand is just some magician, well not just *some guy,* his family name is a bit of a big deal to anyone who knows of it (for this reason, you’ll notice he’s basically the only character who ever mentions their second name when introducing themselves). He’s only working to help restore Archimedes’s power because he owes him; otherwise he isn’t anything special, mostly because he hasn’t had the chance to be, considering how much work Archimedes is always putting on the two of them (mostly Morgan though).

Their latest little adventure starts off as most of them do: looking for leads on how to restore Archimedes in awful tabloid magazines. Their newest lead leads them down into the Ancient Underground looking for something Archimedes thinks might be directly related to how his power was sealed in the first place, it’s probably their best lead in years - How convenient! While the two of them are down there, they end up getting half involved with something that has absolutely nothing to do with them.

I first came up with Morgan absolutely ages ago, I think it was just before I started to plan out “the Brilliant Shining Light” as a six stage + extra story. Initially he wasn’t even made for the game, but once I was expanding it from just three stages, I ended up having no idea what to do for the stage four boss, I just had Morgan lying around and I decided to just shove him there. Most of his character evolved directly from being the stage four boss, it ended up taking him a pretty different direction than *initially* initially planned. After a while I ended up thinking he was missing something, so I just quickly drew a cat on his head and called it a day, that was all Archimedes was originally supposed to be. For some reason, I took quite a liking to Morgan (not sure why, I think I just like how stupid he looks) which directly caused me to try and think of ways to make him important so he could reasonably return as a playable character in a later game; that’s how Archimedes became more than just a cat on Morgan’s head, eventually leading directly to how they are today. Them ending up in “the Forgotten Rotting Technology” was as a result of something I’ll discuss in Kenji’s trivia section, this one’s already too damn long and I barely went into any detail! Shows how much I like this stupid red and green magician.

Kenji is the protagonist of the B route. Even though all of the characters in the game look like twelve-ish year old boys, Kenji actually is one! Or well, somewhere around that age, I haven't decided yet, mostly because his exact age will end up placing some vaguely important events awkwardly if I get it wrong. Because he’s only twelve or so there’s not too terribly much to him specifically, it’s more the people around him that do much of anything; he lives with his mother and her familiars, or rather, he *used too.*

For some reason or other, he’s recently become pretty unhappy with his life in the Underground’s Floating City, so he started to plan on running away (as does every vaguely moody child) and eventually decided on running away to the Ancient Underground after learning about it over the course of a school term. Very quickly after he gets down there and starts to look for somewhere to stay, he overhears part of a conversation between Morgan and Archimedes he comes to the (totally not paranoid) conclusion that his mother has sent people down to look for him and bring him home… Thus ensuing flying around trying (and failing) to avoid as many people as possible instead of the alternate of hobbling around and somewhat uneventfully deciding which empty building strikes his fancy that particular day.

Kenji was originally made for a music album that never got particularly far before I decided it would make for a far better first game than what I was working on at the time; mostly down to the fact that the story bit of the album introduced the world and some key ideas far *far* better than the game was going to. Kenji was the main character of said story and it would have just been snippets of him exploring the Ancient Underground while Morgan and Archimedes had their own little adventure in the background where Kenji would see the effects of their actions at the end. Morgan and Archimedes were only there as I wanted at least something that directly relates the album story to the game story (and sets the two of them up for playable character level activity haha); as it turned into a game, those two ended up stealing kenji’s main character slot even if kenji still is the *real* protagonist for most of the story here - Or at least the main reason the B, C and D routes even happen. If you’re wondering, yes, he *was* designed to look like a child who dressed themself in the morning (but I guess that’s not too different from the rest of the characters huh?)

Miho is the protagonist of the C route (technically the D route as well). She’s Kenji’s mother and lives (lived) with him alongside her two familiars in the underground’s Floating City; she’s quite busy and has a lot of work to do all of the time there, so she mostly lets her familiars look after her son. Kind of like Morgan, her family’s a bit of a big deal, but unlike Morgan, the name itself carries little weight as hardly anyone would recognise it; either way, she’s at least a little known for being quite the handy and strong magician to have around - Even if she’s almost never available.

For reasons unknown to both Miho and her two familiars, Kenji had run away from home about a week ago; Miho’s been taking lots of time off to try and look for him alongside one of her familiars, Linz, to no avail. After getting into a sort of argument with said familiar, Linz reveals that she’s got a pretty good idea of where Kenji ran off to - She’d gotten bored of looking for someone who she knows is absolutely not there. After this revelation the two instantly head down to the Ancient Underground to go look for him, using Linz’s all seeing eye; unfortunately, said eye doesn’t quite work that well, so they have to do things in the standard fashion of talking to people and inexplicably getting into fights.

Miho was originally just the stage five boss of the game back when there were only two routes; once I decided I wanted four instead, she was a very logical pick as she surely must have gone on her own little adventure looking for Kenji, right? Technically she’s older than that as she was sort of an implied character in “the Brilliant Shining Light” but she was never physically present or even named; she never had a design at this point, although I’m pretty sure she was supposed to have a very out of place cowboy hat… Genuinely can’t remember why, good thing I forgot about that when it came to making her first sprites (^^;

(Look, I finally remembered to give this gif a different coloured background so you can actually see her outline).

Linz is the protagonist of the D route (technically the C route as well). She’s one of Miho’s familiars alongside Boye (who only ever gets mentioned, he’s probably doing something or other at home). She was (and still sort of is) a very powerful demon that became Miho’s familiar at some point or other; unfortunately the two of them don’t get along too well, probably because of how drastic a lifestyle shift becoming a familiar caused Linz to undergo - From roaming around the lands doing what she pleased to whomever she pleased to being shackled to a single person, mostly doing their menial housework and looking after their child, not to mention having her power dampened to prevent her from just breaking the “contract” and running off.

After a week of searching for Kenji in all of his usual haunts, Linz grows bored and decides to just tell Miho where he probably is, which causes Miho much frustration to Linz’s delight. She’s dragged along by Miho to help find her son, but Linz isn’t all too concerned about Kenji, not that she doesn’t care at all about him, just that she doesn’t care *enough* to do anything other than annoy her master at every opportunity and waste their time as long as it’s fun.

Linz was made entirely for the role of route D protagonist, I wanted someone who could “buddy up” with Miho so that the later had someone to talk to about Kenji, so that any and all random exposition felt a little more natural; basically so Miho didn’t end up making a habit of talking to herself before the boss/midboss showed up (^^; Originally it was going to be Boye, Miho’s other familiar who already existed at that point, but he’d probably earnestly try to help which didn’t leave much room for the kind of conversations I wanted Miho’s “buddy” to have, so I just gave her another familiar who didn’t like her much, but still sort of liked Kenji. Of course, Linz would end up becoming more of her own character as I bounced all of Miho’s family off of each other in my head, making each of them a bit more interesting; although I’ve definitely given Linz herself a lot more thought than the other family members. Also, those bauble like things on her horns were added by Miho to limit her power.

Sapphire is the stage one midboss of the C and D routes. For lack of a better descriptor, you could call her an “idol”; she’s part of a group on the surface that’s started to become a lot more popular recently, but they’re still a decent bit obscure, especially as you get further away from where they’re based.

Right now she’s on a sort of solo tour, but it’s hard to get any big name places without the rest of the group, so she’s taken her latest show down to the Ancient Underground. Partly because it’s been making quite the buzz in the media here and there lately, but mostly because no one really owns any of the stadiums and such down here, so that’s one cost cut. Before the show she’s been stalking around the area looking to drum up some extra interest in all of the people down here who’ve inevitably never heard of her where she briefly runs into Miho and Linz.

Made to be the stage four boss of the C and D routes, Sapphire ended up also ended up filling in for the stage one midboss as a nice way to establish the stage four conflict a bit more cleanly (I also tend to try and avoid having the boss and midboss of a stage being the same character). I can’t remember why she ended up as an idol, I don’t know if the design came first and *then* I decided idol, or if she looks like that because I went into her design with the intention of making some silly fancy dress thing; but her show just ended up as a decent way to handwave a surprising amount of things in the game. Also, she’s some sort of jellyfish thing, that’s why she has such long legs under that weird skirt. Also, also, that’s not a hat, that's a little guy on her head, his name is Torema, he’s sort of kind of her manager(?), but he doesn’t say much of anything, I doubt he’ll ever get acknowledged much..

Puglia is the stage one boss of all four routes. There’s not too terribly much to her, she’s a ghost that lives in the Ancient Underground with her (also deceased) older sibling Apulia. She’s a bit all over the place but she quite likes spell card duels so she’s ready to jump at the chance for one, especially since Apulia doesn’t much care for them.

With all the activity happening in the Ancient Underground lately, she’s had a lot of new people to meet and a lot of reasons to be out and about; she first meets Miho and Linz before later meeting the other protagonists a bit later. All three times, she’s unable to really help in any way and overall does a whole lot of nothing in standard stage one boss fashion. Although that’s fine, because she’ll end up bumping into everyone at least once more later in a position to actually help some of them.

Puglia was the first new character made after the unnamed and unfinished album turned into a game, always intended to be the stage one boss; she shows up multiple times later in the game, both in stage three of all routes as well as stage seven of the C and D routes. A lot of the characters in the game are just residents of the Ancient Underground, Puglia and Apulia are sort of that idea in its most basic form being residents when calling the place the “Ancient Underground” wouldn’t have made any sense at all - So even though they both died pretty young, they’re some of the oldest characters in the game; weird paradoxes like that are always funny.

That’s that then! I’ll spare you from talking about all of the stage enemies too, this is plenty long enough as it is~

Haven't even mentioned the fact that this is the first double digit State of Decay yet, that’s cool but also kind of scary; two more and it’ll have been a year since the first one; this past year’s been weird for me with getting ill all the time - Some parts have been fast, some delightfully slow… But despite that, I’ve hardly made as much progress as I wanted to this past year; although I should probably hold that sentiment until it’s actually been a year, who knows how much I’ll get done over the next two months (I doubt I’ll do enough to really shake up that opinion though).

Also, in terms of demo 0 itself, uh… I’m never putting a date on anything I haven’t already completed ever again, I keep telling myself I’ll stop putting dates on stuff; but I think this month’s been proof of exactly why that’s a good idea. Comes out when it comes out… not that there’s a single person on earth actually waiting for it other than me and one person I personally know (^^;

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This month’s crystal ball grazing: When it’s hot, it’s miserable; when it’s miserable, it’s hot. I’m hot… It’s miserable~