Since graduating on it, I have made some abortive attempts to expand upon the game’s current form, trying to somehow divine where it’s headed, or where it should be headed. The game’s original incarnation was built around a necessary minimum of content, both conceptually as well as practically. While this worked reasonably well, I’ve since concluded that this represents a bare essentials state for the game, rather than an ideal one. It is a proving ground for some of the mechanics, and has some novelty value in its lack of content, but future versions should at least feature some things, if only to re-engage returning players.

As Death appeared to be a prominent element in the .1 initial phase of EPBAB, I thought perhaps to expand on this. If every level, vignette or scenario was a small meditation of certain death, a small play of acceptance or reluctance in the face of inevitable extinction would that somehow provide a guiding theme? Would there be a bear? Is death a bear?

It wasn’t a particularly fruitful period.

Regardless, I set about extrapolating from this theme, distilling more exact scenes of gradual decay like the prototype, eventually landing at one where a bear god kills both of the characters, and one where an idol of a bear god drowns them both.

In the end, because I was working against a very short deadline, I chose the Water Chamber both for reasons of attainability and irrational preference. I turned the level around in a little less than a week, roughly functional and just barely in time for a deadline that has since turned out to have not been as important as I thought back then.

The Water Chamber, again, allows a short space of time for players to acclimatise to one another and establish a rudimentray relationship. Then, the water begins to rise, and they can attempt to survive by hopping onto gradually disappearing platforms. A timed sequence of Cameras attempts to package the whole as a cinematic, semi-playable whole.

I haven’t added this to my itch.io page yet, but I might shortly, after splicing a few more things in. From there on out, more iterations and more desperate stabs at cohesion, until we arrive at a semblance of a ‘game’.