Restitched: Dev Diary | Why Restitched?

Whether you've been with us for a while or you're new to the Trixel Creative sphere, you might have wondered - why did we choose to create Restitched? Well, that's exactly what we'll be exploring in this post as we take a look into our history as a team and the events that helped to lead us to where we are today.

First Steps

Our journey began in 2013 as we started to create content and adventures within various UGC-based games. Wanted to create a video game, but with no actual experience in the matter, this is where we found our closest opportunity.

We were (and still are) incredibly proud of these creations and their respective teams. In fact, a significant number of those that worked on these projects have since gone on to pursue game development or study the arts!

Fast forward to 2019, and we officially started a fan-game project for an IP we did not own - albeit with the community manager's approval and guidelines - in collaboration with another developer team. After constantly creating within the restrictions of other developers, we decided that we wanted to create our own confines. This initial project went through multiple rebrands due to creative differences, but it was conceptualized as a 3D platformer.

After months of collaboration, we (Trixel Creative) decided to withdraw from the project. After much internal discussion, it was decided that we wanted to pursue something more traditional, while still staying true to the roots of the franchise we loved as a team. This is when a separate fan game of ours began development.

Our First Solo Venture Into Game Development

This game was to be a 2.5D platformer created from the ground up. We spent many months working on the project and getting it to a presentable state, with the goal to raise awareness in the early stages in order to hopefully gain more developers and interest. However, after an unprecedented amount of success following the project's reveal, we soon received a cease and desist letter from the owner of the IP stating that they couldn't allow us to continue using their artistic copyright and registered trademarks. Furthermore, we had to remove all traces of the project from our website and platform.

We always had the full intention to comply with the company's official guidelines, but, nevertheless, there were no hard feelings from either party, and we took the situation in our stride.

What To Do Next...

In a way, the cease and desist was a blessing in disguise. We spent all of January 2020 figuring out what we wanted to make as a team and, slowly but surely, ideas started to trickle in. We were forming the next vision for our indie development journey and this time it was going to be uniquely Trixel Creative.

You can view the ideas we were spitballing in our Dev Diary 'First Steps'.

We decided that we definitely wanted to stick with the 2.5D platformer genre with user-generated content features, as that was the genre we had the most experience playing and creating within, and found it to be much more intuitive to create for than a 3D platformer. Pretty early on, we settled on the name 'Restitched'. We had used the name before and loved its connotations. The name is especially important as it ties into our game's story.

As this is a largely untouched genre, in this early stage (when spitballing ideas for in-game features and the like), we would intentionally seek other IPs that had similar features and think - how can we do this in a way that is unique? We believe this is evident in the plethora of concept art that is available in our other Dev Diary posts, and help to make the game stand out.

We knew we wanted players to be able to share their uniquely created content and found that the Steam Workshop offered all of the features we were after. As a result of this, we actually became greatly inspired by games such as Garry's Mod when it comes to content sharing and organization.

We desperately wanted a cute, relatable character for multiple age groups, and highly customizable. For this aspect, we were inspired by games such as Unraveled, ModNation Racers, and Naughty Bear. We eventually decided - what better expression of character than a teddy bear? Teddy bears come in all different shapes and sizes and they're extremely customizable and collectible due to their uniquenesses. They are seen throughout the world, meaning they are instantly recognizable to most people and cultures. 

You can find the evolution and creation of Stuffy as a character in our Dev Diary post called 'Stitching Stuffy', as well as the aforementioned 'First Steps' diary.

Restitched was, again, built from the ground up by our own developers. It's a common misconception that we built the game on top of one of our previous projects, but this is not the case - as that would have entered us into a realm of legal ambiguity that we were not willing to risk entering. 

Though we sometimes find inspiration in similar games, we're creating Restitched to be unique and bring new ideas into the mix of a largely-unexplored genre. For some of us, this game is a love letter, and to others, it's the opportunity to create what we've always wanted but doesn't yet exist.

We are passionate about putting our own unique identity into Restitched, and showing the world what we, Trixel Creative, are really about. Restitched is a passion project aiming to bring this gaming genre to the PC platform, where we can provide our own tools, story, and content for so many new people to enjoy.

We hope that Restitched will continue to inspire others to create their own UGC projects as other titles did for us!