RUBATO V1.2 (Director's Cut Update) - Releases June 29th

Steam post imageThere is a lot I'm changing. I'd like to think of this as a director's cut.

I've finished most of this update already. I just need to finish cutscene implementation, add some last little features and run the update through testing.

Area 2 Rewritten + Cutscene Touch-up

Apart from the starting few cutscenes, the entirety of Area 2 has been rewritten. The stretch from finishing The Bakery (Area 1) boss to starting gameplay in The City (Area 3) has been changed. But first I must answer…

Why is the game like that..?

To put it simply, I wrote the first half of the game when I was 16/17 years old. I am now 22. You played the work of a literal teenager.

Yes, that's right… This is a zoomer game… Sorry…

This is why the game gets better as it goes along. The Bakery and The Fairground were designed and created in around 2020-2022. The game was developed chronologically, so my own skills and the skills of everyone involved improved over time.

Despite polishing dialogue and rewriting scenes over and over again, you can't really fix something foundationally hamfisted and flawed. So I've taken to redoing the entire thing from scratch. Not rewriting cutscenes, but completely redoing and reimplementing them.

Wait, why did the game take so long to make?

Two reasons:

• I developed 60% of the game on a laptop from 2018 with only 4GB RAM. The game would take 30-60 mins to compile after I made a small change. This… really impacted development. Seriously. Even if you're developing a 2D pixel art game, please get a decent computer or it will drive you insane.

• Everyone involved including myself was balancing employment and education.

The game's content was completed around early July 2025 and the remaining amount of time was spent polishing gameplay. The game needed to be released at some point, so there was more priority put into stability, polish and porting, instead of redoing every cutscene.

What has changed with Area 1, 2 and 3?

Most of the important cutscenes in the second area of the game have been completely replaced. Don't worry, I didn't really jive with them too much in the first place either. The most controversial ones were added at the end of development due to tester/artist interest in Tokki and Luna, but…

For a first time player, this creates a really horrendous impression for the rest of the game. This is the sorest spot in the game by a long shot and I frankly have always got ridiculously embarrassed whenever I watched anyone get to this part of the game in testing. I really should have trusted my gut and followed my original intended vision here.

So, this is what most of the time in the update was spent on; completely redoing almost every scene and still having it flow in a logical way back into the third area. There are a few scenes retained, but now the plot progression is completely different. Rewriting a large chunk of the story like this was risky, so I put a great amount of care into this.

Some of the original cutscenes do still exist in-game though, accessible via an NPC. The initial reaction I had to removing those scenes was fairly negative, so they will exist as completely optional extra content.

Steam post imageA completely new room has been added too, so the second area has been slightly extended.

Finally, the ending of the first area and the opening of the third area have been adjusted a fair bit. In fact, I've opted to mostly redo the third area's opening.

So, yeah! A literal director's cut.

What has changed with the rest of the game?

The rest of the game hasn't been changed as aggressively, as I stand by what I've written and created there. Some changes include:

• Lots of rewritten lines to tighten cutscenes and loop everything together thematically.

• Redone/revised art in some places

• Reduced gags across the game, atleast where they're inappropriate or step into being annoying. I'm not removing references to a certain hit Korean pop song released on July 15th 2012 from the game though, as this is an essential plot point. Did you seriously not put together why every character wears shades?

• Convert the forced calls into "phone hotspots". Some new ones have been added.

• Some cutscenes have been edited down to be shorter or completely wordless.

• Some new cutscenes have been added, but these focus on getting the point across faster instead of… words… words… words… words.

• There are things people didn't get or understand about the game's plot, so I'm focusing on removing a lot of subtextual/subtle stuff and making them more obvious. This is for the better.

  EDIT: There's been some worry over this, so I'd like to clarify a bit. There's a lot of thematic stuff that's quietly alluded to across the game that should definitely be more obvious. I'm not removing all subtext and subtlety, just that I feel there's some things that SHOULDN'T be subtle. It's cool people are noticing details on second playthroughs, but there's some things I REALLY think should be noticed during a first time playthrough!

  People won't start making connections over intentional choices done throughout the game if they have no strong point of reference for them.

  So I'm not exactly dumbing down the story, as much as I'm bringing some aspects of the plot more to the forefront. The plot isn't random and there is a throughline to the second half. It's just not built up strong enough!

  So really, what I'm saying is that the game is going to be slightly more insane than it was before. Better to commit fully, right?

Map System

This shows you the layout of the current room you're in, along with positions of Planet Bits and doors. I feel any further information limits how much you engage with exploration and where "quality of life" reduces friction far too much.

This was one of the first things in the update I've shown, but now it's been finished with some polished graphics provided by Shima.

Hard Mode

I've added a hard mode to the game which includes:

• Limited lives

• Manual save points

• Start from 1HP health

• Game Overs

There are two additional harder difficulty settings that I won't mention as a surprise.

Cutscene + FMV Skipping

You can skip through most cutscenes and FMVs in the game now, though there's a very small handful of unskippable ones that act as loading buffers. Effectively, you can skip 99% of cutscenes.

Skip Area 4.5 option after playing the game once + "CONTINUE?" option for the act screens

For that one part of the game later in the game, you can now skip it entirely if you've finished the game once. Additionally, you can return to the main menu from the act card screen.

It'd surprise you to hear that the initial reaction from contributors of the game to adding this was pretty negative. I was also honestly mixed with adding this. But, I think it's important to give people a means to engage in the game in their own way.

Volume Mixing

I don't know why this wasn't in the game at launch. Sorry.

Additional Changes

This isn't exhaustive as I'm still adding/changing things:

• You can now exit subareas from the pause menu

• Optional save point has been added towards the end of Area 5

• Hugo Mech on World Map will send you back to the backer credits. For a price.

• The fact you can zoom out the camera is actually now mentioned in the game lol

• Mouse lock (Thanks YellowAfterLife)

• Lots of art and music has been revised across the game

• Can now exit to the field map from Mystery Toilet X

• Balls have a new visual effect when collected

• Added visual effects to zipline

• Rocket Launcher's ability to push objects around has been nerfed

• Planet Bits per area is shown in the Planet Bit menu

• Planet Bit menu can be used with a mouse now

• Removed Hero Guy

• Reduced Area 4 boss Planet Bit requirement from 96 to 92

• Minor level design tweaks across the whole game

• Added Quaver from UNBEATABLE

• Fixed "Restore to Default Settings" somehow not working

• Minor bug fixes and adjustments

There's a lot more than what's listed here. And some stuff I'll intentionally avoid mentioning, even when this releases Please look out for the full patch notes when the update releases this June!

Things That Might Make It If There's Time

As of writing, this update isn't feature locked, but once everything is in, I'm hoping to add:

• Steam Cards + Point Shop (this is definitely releasing at some point)

• Playable Cut Subareas

• Model Gallery

• Redone Boat Subarea

• Subarea Timers + Subarea Timer Badge

Console Update

Because of the cutscene skipping, we'll need to monitor memory usage for lower spec console platforms. And of course, both platforms will need to be tested by Headcannon. I'm not sure when this update will be released on console, but it'll be before August for sure. Apologies for the additional wait.

Future Updates

I've mentioned the possibility of a second update that adds more Planet Bits, but I think it's too late and too damaging to change the structure of the game at this point. Everything planned for that update will be implemented in this one instead. Future updates will be dedicated to localisation and bug fixes. Sorry for any disappointment, but at the same time I think there needs to be a cut off point of how much I work on this game. Ship of Theseus type crap.

And of course, I will probably be making more games in the future. Best I save the good ideas for that, right?

Final Thoughts

Frankly it's been driving me up the wall that new players are still having to play the old version as their first experience. Even though it's been very well received in its current state, I'm not proud of it and it's been driving me crazy. This game was very self-indulgent for me, but there are aspects of it still unchanged from their initial implementation. I have not been able to have much peace since release because of this.

Thank you for the feedback, both positive and negative. Even though this update is mostly focused on fixing my own personal problems with the game, the wide variety of feedback has contributed to what's made it into this update.

Anyway, this update will be released on June 22nd. Very suspiciously close to a certain sale… Interesting…

See you then!