Where Did “The Journey” Come From?

The Journey came from a School Project?

Pencilified Studios is getting ready for the launch of their upcoming 2D Platformer titled “The Journey”, but it’s been in development for much longer than some people may believe. The Journey actually started development all the way back in 2019… and it’s quite the tale.

The screenshot above is from the very first level designed for The Journey, with the games original art style. Back in 2019, our CEO, Charlie was given the assignment in a class to create a 2D Platformer game, so that’s exactly what he did. But he didn’t want this 2D Platformer game to be like any other game, he wanted the game to have something unique.

Although Charlie is a huge fan of the “Super Mario” series by Nintendo, The Journey actually took a lot of its inspiration from the Indie Game series titled “You Have 10 Seconds”. Within You Have 10 Seconds, there’s a specific type of object that the player can interact with, which slows down the player. This object is glue, which is a pale colour. Charlie wanted to recreate this feeling within his game, but after coding it into the game… it just didn’t work properly!

Charlie wanted the player to be able to get unstuck from the glue with the press of a button, but once that was implemented, the character began bouncing using the momentum of the previous jump. At first, Charlie tried to figure out what the problem was, and really tried to fix the problem, but he just could not work out what the main problem was.

So instead of fixing it, he decided to play into the bug, and make it a feature.

This wasn’t the first time he had done this, as in an earlier game he made, one that never released titled “Just Keep Moving!”, the main goal of the game was to complete several maze levels (which you see as the final level of the original version of The Journey and in the upcoming OG Mappack), but Charlie accidentally implemented a glitch where the player would not stop moving after pressing the first button, but he really enjoyed the way it worked, so he made that the entire feature behind the game. Instead of having to complete a maze the normal way, you also had to pay attention to what part of the game you were up to. This made it a bit of a challenge.

The other time Charlie used a glitch to his advantage was in the very first game by Pencilified Studios, Driving Mania. Within Driving Mania, Charlie didn’t make a barrier around the play area, so you could drive off the edge of the map and fall into the endless skybox.

An earlier version of Driving Mania

So instead of letting the player fall into the endless void, Charlie implemented a secret area below the map, one that took up the resemblance of the unreleased Pencilified Studios game, Turtle Simulator, along with The Moon. The Moon was used as inspiration for the eventual addition of the Solar System within the main game during the Final Update.

But now, back to The Journey. This glitch that Charlie had accidentally made became a major feature in the game. Several parts of some levels ended up needing you to use your momentum. Sometimes, you’d need to do a regular jump, but sometimes you’d need to bounce, but watch out! For bouncing, you need to build up momentum! This was helpful because bouncing also made it so you couldn’t die to the spikes, so Charlie used it to his advantage, and that’s noticeable in the upcoming worlds that will appear within the next version of The Journey.

The Journey also went through a complete art-style remake once the game became bigger than a school project, as the sprites made for the original game were only supposed to be temporary anyway. Below you can see some screenshots from the original version of the game.

You may know if you’re a current owner of The Journey that we haven’t redone the texture of sand yet… but it’s coming!

Well that’s a complete and comprehensive look at the early parts of The Journey’s development. And in case you’re wondering, Charlie got an A+ for this assignment.

Next week we’ll be looking at the story behind The Little Pencil! Who else is excited? We are! Thanks for coming back to the Paper and Games Blog. See you next week!