Trivia / Prodigal

• Ascended Glitch: The Flare Knuckle is supposed only move forward by 1 tile, but players found that if they charge the pickaxe and then press the Flare Knuckle's corresponding button, it not only lets them move 2 tiles instead but also allows them to go through certain obstacles and enemies without taking damage, as well as allowing movement while charging it. This became popular with speedrunners and made some of the harder boss battles much easier, and the developers decided to leave it in; in fact, the Enlightenment dungeon in the game's last content update actually requires it in order to travel over 2-tile gaps.
• Dummied Out: There are several unused assets found in the game's files:
  • There is a sprite for the dead body of Sheriff Vann. In the game proper, he gets blasted offscreen, so we don't see it.
  • There are silhouetted dialogue sprites of some of the characters, likely intended for the segment with Oran's Heroic BSoD after Pa and the Sheriff are killed, but in the actual game only the Dockmaster's sprite is used. There's also some silhouetted overworld sprites of characters who do not appear in this segment.
  • There are unused sprites of Oran riding a minecart both alone and with Oakley, as well as enemies riding in them and some tracks, suggesting that Oakley's marriage path was originally going to involve a minigame where they rode in minecarts. In the final game, this is instead changed to two different stealth sequences depending if you talk to the Gravedigger after getting the Blessed Pickaxe but before continuing with Oakley's marriage path or not. There's also an unused image of tracks in what appears to be the Tidal Mines, suggesting that this scrapped sequence would have taken place there or somewhere similar.
  • It's possible that one of the casino minigames was going to involve rolling dice, since there are unused sprites for dice being rolled and landing on different numbers.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • Originally, each marryable character was going to have their own small dungeon that would be exclusive to them, and would end with them automatically marrying you at the end. Only the Bjerg Castle, for Mariana, was left in, with the other characters either having sidequests or segments that didn't end in automatic marriage, or involving larger dungeons which were required to be completed as part of the post-game quest.
  • Speaking of the Bjerg Castle, the first room in the Howling Bjerg shows an unreachable door. You were supposed to be able to exit through the locked door at the Bjerg Castle and it would turn out to be that same unreachable door, but there were problems with getting it to work with the code.
  • Oran was going to have a crossbow at one point, which is why Shadow Oran has one when you fight him in Daemon's Dive, but that idea was scrapped because the developers didn't want to make things too easy by giving him a ranged attack.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The artbook shows several ideas that came up during the game's development, such as Oran having an Ambiguous Gender and a lack of personality so that the player could project onto him more (with several different concept designs), Hugh being older and overweight, and Crocodile at one point being an actual, antrhopormophic crocodile.
  • One of Amadeus' designs had him with a noose around his neck or hanging from his beard, implying that he was originally going to have been executed by hanging rather than drowning, but this design was scrapped for being considered too dark.
  • There is concept art of Ulni, one of the NPCs in the Colorless Void, wearing a wedding dress, implying that she was originally going to be one of the characters you could marry. A sidequest where you help her collect stories for a new "sister" may have been left over from that.
  • The names of some of Mariana's sprites in the game's files refer to her as Molly, suggesting that that was originally going to be her name.
  • As mentioned above, each marryable character would originally have their own dungeon that ended with automatic marriage, but only Mariana's was kept in.
  • Ashwood was intended to be much more of a jerk who got better over time, and his cellar was going to be an entire dungeon where Inkwell (who was going to be a transformed Ashwood) would be fought at the end. In the final game, the cellar is just one room while Inkwell is instead fought at the Pirate's Pier, and Ashwood is much nicer (though he still gets to have some development in the form of becoming a bit more humbler and marrying Lynn).
  • There was intended to be a content update to the game that would expand more on Veritus and the Dread Hand, taking place after a Time Skip. However, it was eventually decided that it would be better to make this content into a separate game instead.

---