Posted October 03, 2025 by phiIRaco
#postmortem #sage
let me start this very clearly.
Collision System Test is not an ARG.
it is not a game that messes with your computer.
it is not a horror game.
it is the product of me reading a shitpost on BlueSky and deciding "this is what I want to spend doing every day until it's out, a maximum of 5 people enjoy it and then the game dies forever".
let me hold you by the collar and warp back time just 2 months ago.
at the end of august 2025, I was trying to make an actual Yume-Nikki clone for a game jam where people intentionally made bad games. it's this one if you want to check out the games, they're hilarious.
because of my engine of choice (Game Maker: Studio 1) and not really having many system pre-made for the jam from other projects, I spent an entire day just coding the hitbox and collision system for the game.
despite that, I actually didn't feel demotivated in any way and just kept chipping away at the project.
i thought back to that shitpost and i wondered... what COULD i make if I dedicated like, a month to make Yume Nikki but there's no understanding of game design or what makes it amazing? i can't actually make it for the game jam, but what if i dedicate more time to it?
then that sorta spiraled into me getting very interesting ideas...
it all culminates in what Collision System Test is building towards, with some of those things being visible in the current demo.
aaaand now you're up to speed!
Collision System Test may not be any of the things i described at the beginning of this post but at its core,
it's a videogame.
it's nothing more. and nothing less.
for the next few updates, I'll be focusing on the main gripes I have with the SAGE demo, polishing game mechanics present in it, but also dialing in on what made people so intrigued in the project.
firstly,
I don't think I conveyed specifically why the texbox is blank, or why you enter a door and are suddenly in a new area, or why the leaves form a fake menu that was never there.
those are all things that are cool on their own, but there's a red string missing that ties all of the things together.
luckily, they're mostly a problem caused by rushing to finish the demo for SAGE, so now that I have more time (not really i HATE job hunting and wish i could just work on CST 24/7) i have planned out how I want the prologue of the game to be.
a lot of stuff will be similar, just with a clearer 'player-induced' path that clearly lets the player know how they get to places.
i also want to add controller support, seems like basically everyone expected it so i'm sorry i didn't get around to adding it in!
secondly,
while i think i did well with the "collision, system, test" puzzle, i wanna add more to it.
originally, you were supposed to not just combine the letters but ALSO rotate them to be able to combine them. this was scrapped because the puzzle was complex enough with just what letters you can combine.
i didn't even realize you could make more words unrelated to the game's title with the blank 4 letter one.
so for the prologue update, i want to reward people for finding alternate puzzle solutions.
the rewards will NOT make sense because they tie into a system that i won't get around to making until i start working on chapter 1, but i think it's a great idea to reward people for thinkign outside the box right away (like deltarune does), even if you don't have all the pieces yet.
i also want to add some backstory, at least in the part before the "collision, system, test" puzzle. like, some small but clear direction as to who Ocean is, why they're in the labyrinth and why the game has a general post-apocalyptic vibe.
lastly for today,
if it wasn't clear already, i have a LOT i want to show with CST.
it might be too early to say, but i genuinely fear what this game might become.
not because of scope
not because of like "oh this will innovate so much" cause i dont think it will
not because i want to publish it on the public domain once it done
moreso because it feels like the first ever project since 'Round the Mind (don't check that one out it's been nearly 14 years and i still can'T figure it out) that i feel is keeping me alive lol
my life is kinda depressing and i won't get into it here
but it genuinely feels like i have something thats SO bad, so AWFUL, so ESOTERIC
and at the same time its thefirst project where ive received nothing but praise
and it just
it makes me think a lot
it makes me think about whether it was i who was doing things wrong
or whether everyone was telling me to do the wrong things
whether games are just meant to be fun boxes to escape reality
or whether they can be genuinely though-provoking beyond commentary
genuinely something worth remembering because of the game part of the game, and not just because it is written very well
i fear
i so agitatedly fear over the fact
this might be it
this might be THE game
THE thing everyone is waiting for
THE thunderstorm that breaks everything in its path
crushing every expectation and direction everyone expects
while laughing directly at your face
not because it thinks less of you
but because you paid attention to it.
and i fear i'm just not equipped to handle it.
but at the same time,
i will never know if i don't give it a go...
i will never know if i don't set sail.
thanks to all of you who helped playtest and/or played the SAGE 2025 demo (link above), I have never recieved this much praise on a project... ever, and it feels very surreal to see something I put a lot of thought towards (instead of focusing on jub hunting oop) be seemingly enjoyed by streamers and random visitors of SAGE and itch.io.
i hope a lot of you stay intrigued for what comes next...
see you in a few days when the first devlog drops on my youtube channel !
join my discord server if you want to discuss anything expressed here.
(oh, and you can use ctrl + A to see any content in the main page.)