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The Unused Content Of Everypence

This page is a reupload of my original Blogger post from the 3rd of February, 2023. The original has been deleted and now links to here instead!

Hiya! I'm olie, the creator of Everypence :)

For the uninitiated, Everypence is a Baba Is You custom levelpack I created, containing 5 worlds chock-full of new mechanics, custom sprites, a soundtrack, and cutscenes to boot! The best part - it's completely modless. If you've never played it before, you can download the pack here (although a copy of Baba Is You is required to play). You can also watch the official walkthrough here, or a let's play of it here by Icely. I recommend checking it out if you haven't already, because this article will make very little sense otherwise.

I really didn't expect the pack to take me so long to make; 7 months to be precise! I also didn't expect to have so many things left to share about it, half a year after release. This page is going to act as a megadump of sorts for all the unused content that didn't quite make the cut, as well as a bunch of early things that would eventually become real, finished things.

Early Concepts

Since September of 2021, I found the idea of a pack that focuses on a ton of different custom properties using hidden text absolutely fascinating. I would sit in my Biology class and doodle little concepts into the notebook instead of studying:

A notebook page covered in doodles of potential property ideas. The various rules, properties and nouns are as follows: Fossil Is Old, Fossil Is Rare, Fossil Is Club, VIP, Exclusive, Fossil Is Gross, Icky, Smell, Smelly, Lost, Find, Memory, Fossil Is Forget, Remember.

When I tried to channel this vision into a level, it didn't work out the way I was hoping it would. That's partly because I set my expectations way too high, and mostly because I'm really, really bad at following through with things. If it's not perfect I whittle away until I can whittle no longer, and if by that point I still don't like it, then I give up. The closest I got to my vision was this demo of a property idea, LOST and FIND.

I like to call this version THE DINO DEMO since one of the ideas for a world I had prominently featured dinosaur theming, and it's pretty much the only thing I remember about it.

I didn't like it though, so I shelved it.

Or did I???

No I Really Did Shelve The Project For Like An Entire Month LMAO

When the Baba Is You Discord competition unveiled their theme "Keep It Simple", I thought "hey, i might as well try this again. what's the worst that could happen?"

I finished the pack in record time, and I LOVED what I had created. It had a lot of room to grow, but it also stood perfectly well in its own right. I had accidentally taught myself that the small, reasonable, definable goal of 9 levels had lead to a lot more success than the high, unreasonable, unspecific one. It's a moment that stuck with me (although I still have to remind myself about it sometimes) and it's been really helpful even when applied to non-baba stuff.

Using this mindset, I began working on the pack on-and-off for several months, introducing the larger aspects gradually, until I turned around and oops this is the biggest pack I've ever made. As I said, it helped a lot that I didn't go in with the mindset of "I want to make a levelpack with 5 worlds and a complete soundtrack and cutscenes and custom art and hidden text mechanics and everything" because, like, that's a lot, dude. All I had in mind was "let's explore custom properties". Aside from that, I mostly just kinda chased down ideas I thought would be fun and everything else naturally sprung up around it.

Precursor (Although This Is More Like A Regularcursor Since We're Pretty Far In Already)

I could organise the rest of this in chronological order too, but that'd get uninteresting pretty quickly. Instead, each of the different pieces of media can be found under their respective headings, and I'll intersperse a bunch of random trivia about both the pack and the creation process in-between.

FYI: I have a LOT to say about this, so if you're only here for the funny pictures and funny sounds feel free to just look at those. I won't be offended ;)

Unfinished/Unused Music

A SOUND WARNING FOR ALL OF THESE! Since a lot of them aren't mixed, the volume can suddenly spike out of nowhere. Please turn your volume down!

I'll get the worst one out of the way first. Here's the earliest version of the World 3 Temples of Treasure level theme I could find. Warning: it's really bad. Double warning: it's really unfinished.

Yikes, right? Trying to make that sound Not Terrible was such a struggle. I must have chipped away at it for MONTHS before it sounded somewhat decent. I'm so glad I did, though.

Another track I have an early version of due to uploading it to Discord is the World 2 Machines Of Malware level theme, which was an unexpected favourite among the community.

It's not wildly different from the finished product, but it's fun to look at the small tweaks I made to the track before declaring it finished. This track was actually created to go in another pack I was toying with at the time, but when it fizzled out and died I scooped this track up from its remains. Hm.

So, back when I hadn't created much of the pack yet, the idea of a world taking place in the underbelly of a city took me by the reins and dragged me across my dining room table. It was like, wow, I know EXACTLY what I want this next world to feel like, y'know? Combine that with the fact I'd just figured out how to make crunchy, overblown drums in Garageband, I created this as the theme for World 2, named "Battery Acid":

Unfortunately, after showing this to a close friend (love you Chicken <3), they remarked that the aesthetic didn't work. They said that mechanically the levels were pretty good, but the actual theming was... confusing at best. I was upset, obviously, but I'm so glad they told me. It was only after I took a step back that I realised scope creep had somehow lead to the theme being an amalgamation of:

  1. A digital city
  2. More specifically, the grungy underbelly of that city
  3. So there are robots and cars everywhere
  4. The city is infested with deadly malware
  5. The city is infested with deadly water (????)
  6. Oh by the way this all takes place on a computer screen and none of it is real

....it wasn't really working out. Especially when it was so different to the simpler aesthetic I had honed in on for World 1, being "there is a Fens and it is full of Fog". By this point though I had grown really quite attached to the "Malware" part of the theming, as it worked so well for the story I had in mind. I reluctantly scrapped the whole underbelly theme and gave World 2 a new coat of paint and some new music. It was a necessary sacrifice.

I've shown off both unused tracks and unfinished tracks so far. How about a track that's a little bit of both?

Remember I mentioned an early version called THE DINO DEMO? The original idea for the LOST + FIND world is that it would have been a savannah-like area with dinosaurs and fossils, the song title "Fossil Fuels" reflecting this pretty well.

Please follow me into my TIME MACHINE so I can take us much, MUCH, further into the creation process, to when I was trying to conceptualize how I could introduce World 5 from a story standpoint. The idea I had is that after beating the 4 main worlds, now knowing all the mistakes the Pencemakers made, you as the player could reverse the changes and return peace to the corners. I knew I wanted to show this in a cutscene, but no ideas in regards to its tone. Here's a little concept I had for it, aptly named "What Now?":

It's a little too quirky for what's essentially the turning point in the story. Still a fun jingle regardless :D

And, finally, I had the brief idea to style the final world so it looked like the story cutscenes. I didn't end up going in this direction as I thought bringing back each previous theme would be more fun, however I do really like the (unfinished!) music track I had to show for it.

That's pretty much it for the music!

Unfinished/Unused Art

I know the cutscenes are one of the most unique parts of Everypence, but dear lord did I hate creating the art for them. It didn't help that I have incredibly high standards when it comes to the sorts of things I'm allowed to put in a pack, so I would constantly be redrawing or entirely scrapping the pieces of art that didn't feel good enough. There's also a few old versions of icons and sprites thrown into the mix. Here's a random selection of the ones I deem "at least sort of interesting".

A robot holding a hand to their chin, lost in thought. A speech bubble floats above them. A robot is sitting in the back. The whole image is in black and white.

I couldn't find a good place in any of the cutscenes that this could fit, so it was scrapped. A shame, because it reminds me of the Professor Layton "solved it!" pose.

A telescope looking towards the moon in a sky full of stars. The telescope is framed by a giant brick arch with an image of a gem in the centre. The whole image is in black and white.

Unused art that was replaced by the "Me reclining on a lawn chair thoughtfully sipping a glass of wine" drawing. I really liked this one, but sadly all of the art for World 3 required the focus to be on the greedy residents rather than their beautiful architecture :(

A coin flipping with a strange symbol ingrained on it. It's lit by a spotlight. The whole image is in black and white.

The earliest version of the "coin flipping" picture that's shown on the title for each TALES cutscene. The symbol doesn't actually mean anything if I recall correctly, so it was later changed to be the Pencemakers symbol. And fun fact - the current symbol (the Pencemakers wand) is actually based on the alchemic symbol for night!

A cross divides the image into 4 parts. One is a crumbling temple made of isometric shapes. Another is a swamp. Another is modern, cube shaped buildings. The last is empty. The whole image is in black and white.

An unfinished version of the very first image shown in the opening, the iconic "This is the story of a kingdom of 4 corners". I wanted the first cutscene to immediately reel the player in and get them excited, and this particular piece didn't really do it for me.

A hooded figure walking past a pillar. Only their eyes are visible. The whole image is in black and white.

I don't think I ever actually planned to use this in a cutscene, I only wanted to sketch out a design for the Pencemakers early on so that their design was consistent. This is that!

A murky yellow coin sitting on a pile of mud. Fog swirls around it. The background is dark green. A yellow coin with a symbol of an eye crossed out floats in the centre of a black void. A yellow coin with a symbol similar to a magnifying glass floats in the centre of a black void. A crescent moon. Coloured stars twinkle around it. The border of the image is embroidered with glowing white lines.

In chronological order, the icons that the pack went through. I really liked the coin motif, but since that base was already covered by the name of the pack, I figured I'd go with the moon as it'd sprinkle in a bit of variety. I also liked how I could add the details of the different coloured stars in the corners, a small nod towards the upcoming properties.

A gif of a bomb sprite wobbling, in greyscale.

This was made for one of the many demos that never got finished. The property idea I was testing was one called BOOM, which is really funny because a property with the exact same name later got added in an official update alongside a bomb sprite. I guess I'm psychic?

A gif of a cute dinosaur character with a large tail. The animation cycles through their walk cycle.

Little guy from THE DINO DEMO. His name is Dino :)

A Baba Is You property displaying the text 'VIP'

In earlier versions, GREEDY was originally called VIP. VIP originally described the property pretty well; non-VIP objects couldn't transform into an object that was VIP (although, perhaps a name like UNIQUE would have fit better). Unfortunately, it was confusing to understand and really unfun to use in levels, so over iterations, the property's behavior changed and the name VIP didn't fit anymore. Changing it to GREEDY just made sense by that point.

An unfinished crown sprite. The gemstones are blue, red, and green. An unfinished crown sprite. The gemstones are black. A mostly finished crown sprite. The gemstones are blue, red, and green.

The crown sprite gave me a LOT of trouble. These are just a few of the iterations I saved.

An image editor displaying an image of a sun with a pair of sunglasses and a smile.

This isn't really unused because it was a joke edit I made for laughs of the "A NEW DAY" cutscene opening picture. But it made me laugh substantially more than it should have so I'm including it anyway.

Gameplay of Old Levels

Behold! A previous iteration of World 3, called Parks of Power.

I've mentioned it a few times before, but I've actually scrapped World 3 twice before, back when GREEDY was called VIP. Well, hopefully with this video, you'll see why. This is the 2nd attempt at designing levels with this property, and they're not much better than the first. It turns out that a property that negates transformations has only very limited, very unfun uses, which as you can imagine impacts enjoyment while playing these by quite a bit.

The theming was also a bit all over the place; it was supposed to be a suburbia that had been consumed by greed, but... it doesn't really come off like that. The earliest version of this world saw it as a nightclub of sorts which is why you'll spot the weird disco lights everywhere.

Screenshots of Old Levels

A level editor displaying a small box with Baba inside. Multiple complicated rules surround the exterior.

One way I tried to go about creating the rules for the LOOP property was using FEAR. Basically, the way LOOP works is that it requires a fake border around the level to allow objects to go into and reappear from within the border. I originally used FEAR to A. propel an object off of the fake border when it emerges, and B. prevent non-LOOPing objects from entering the border. This was a terrible decision and created a whole plethora of problems (including lag!), so I eventually opted to using AUTO to propel objects and LOCKED to prevent objects from entering the border, which worked a lot better.

A level editor displaying an early version of the level 'Another Day'.

A super early concept for the level Another Day. Sometimes, if I couldn't think of any interesting interactions off the top of my head, I smashed a bunch of objects and words together until I found something interesting. This level is an example of one of the rare times it proved successful.

A level editor displaying an early version of the level 'Just Dropping By'.

Early version of Just Dropping By. Nothing interesting to say about this, just that it exists and I think it's neat how all the ideas were pretty much there from the start.

A level editor displaying an unfinished level featuring the 'Prop' property.

Recognise this level? No?

A level editor displaying a finished level featuring the 'Prop' property.

How about now? Still no?

A level editor displaying the level 'Peak Performance'.

If you guessed "that weird level where you have to shimmy the text around a bunch until you've stacked them in a very specific order" you'd be correct! I'm so glad I took screenshots of the different layouts this level had, as it shows that an idea will only get better the more times you iterate upon it!

A level editor displaying an unfinished map in sepia. The bottom right of the map is empty. The other corners contain modern buildings (bottom left), a castle (top left), and a swamp (top right).

And to end things off, here's an old version of the world map. At this point in the process I didn't even know what I was going to do for World 4 yet! I only had a fiery-sounding music track, and I knew that the mechanic would have to be loosely related to manipulation of some kind to tie in with the Pencemakers. The idea of the world being a corrupted, hollowed-out field didn't come until later.

Final Thoughts

That's about it! Sorry if you were expecting more; a lot of it has either been lost to time or lost due to bad memory. I think I've included the most engaging bits, so hopefully this was at least sort of interesting to look at?

As I said, I don't plan to do anything like Everypence ever again. I'm just going to do small projects I enjoy, and if I do end up chasing a butterfly into the belly of a whale again then I'd like to think of it as a nice coincidence.