Robits and Robobs

> Fanwork

Please credit and/or tag me, it’s not a bother at all and I’ll jump with joy when I see it! You’re free to ship my characters or make fan OCs. Just use basic morality and no AI.

> Human Conditions

A game idea that I like to chip away at! It's a very casual 'whatever seems most fun' sort of deal, so please treat it that way too!

I adore questions (send me them anytime), but I might not answer much regarding plot and character arcs for the sake of keeping some things secret…

Current TLDR:

Roughly a decade ago, the humans of a remote country mutated. The majority of the population couldn’t handle the physical strain and died.

Most people have since sought refuge in the largest city still running, Straystern, in the hopes of scraping together a normal life for themselves or to simply have a dependable source of food and water.

Shell, the player character, has finally made it to the city and in a rare spot of luck, a government worker wiggles them into a government job as a clean up worker, of sorts.

The city’s starved for knowledge and technology, but the supply of salvageable loot has boiled down to its last dregs. On the job, explore old homes, wreckages, and overgrown streets to help scavenge and clear out what you can. People are scattered all over the place, though Straystern’s main hub is welcoming enough.

- Characters should initially have a strong visual vibe and personality that can be summarized in a short sentence (or 1-2 words).

Ex, Kohn should appear angry/sharp/intimidating at first. Later on I can add more elaboration as the viewer gets to know him better (and even recontextualize certain assumption)

- I simplify my character designs by drawing them as pixel sprites so I can spot and cut unnecessary details. Chibis work too!

- Having other people draw my designs and interpret the character can lead to a lot of interesting takes and often they have incredible ideas I probably wouldn’t have thought of!

Art trades, commissions, and drawing together all work for the above! Shoutout to @/warddokteur and @/many-a-hues. They’ve helped me with so many of my guys, haha.

- Visually, I like to pick one object/animal/role and just really lean into it. Garrett’s a tape recorder, Pinstripe’s a shark, etc etc.

- I also tend to group my characters in duos/give them one character they feel strongly about. It makes them easier to visualize and a lot more fun (and that way they all feel interconnected over time!)

Take the spare sprites page, it’s kinda messy.

And here’s their description as photos because I’m feeling lazy!

Partial process video since I drew over it more on a different canvas for cropping + color adjustments.

I really like this initial sketch, but couldn’t keep the vibe when I kept going :(

How did they become robots: One implicit mechanic of the mutation is that the closer your proximity to the capital city, the stronger the mutation effect alongside a bigger tradeoff of cost and benefit from mutating.

The robots are a special case where most of the mutation ‘energy’ was spent just trying to successfully mutate them into completely inorganic forms, which is both the cost and benefit. It mostly negated itself.

As for why robots, they live in the Technology Sector, where a lot of the factories and machines were being used and developed. Specifically, all of them lived and worked in a company town, so the mutation jumbled them up with the mechanical doodads nearby.

How mutations affect the story in general: Kind of hard to summarize since it’s a large part of the worldbuilding, but here’s some examples!

- Overarching mystery (albeit not the main focus) because I think it’d be fun to naturally pick up information and speculation about it through different characters as you progress

- More logistical problems to even out the rule of cool vibe. Ex. There are literal objecthead characters with otherwise fleshy bodies. Without a head/mouth, they have energy intake issues, so a lot of them are dependent on IVs, which are limited and costly.

Most of the group is malnourished, dependent on the government/holding a job for support, and thus often desperate despite most of them having relatively fantastical skills. It also makes them one of the smaller groups headcount wise since it’s easy to get taken advantage of or literally burn yourself out and die.

- Similar to the above, a bunch of unique and understudied physical forms means getting your health treated and understanding your own body reactions sucks horribly.

There’s a (somewhat mad) scientist duo I have who are actively working on this issue! They’re super fun since they bicker a lot, but I need to get around to redesigning one of them. Gah!

- Body dysphoria’s pretty widespread, although perspectives on wanting to return to the past/human forms depend on the character.

I mentioned this a little in Garrett’s old description (where he hates looking at his body so he tends to cover up), but a more literal example would be @warddokteur’s OC who is a monomaniac about becoming physically more human. Bones and flesh and limbs and such. He will attack you on sight to try to do so.

- Physical appearance can be used for leverage, as you can imagine. Lying and drumming up certain sentiments/stereotypes for some groups, intimidating others, the usual shebang.