Folex

Which version of the colors/icons do you prefer? The old versions from 0.1 had different coloring and icons for each of the damage types. The main damage color was outlined by a secondary color, for Red it was bright green, White had dark red, Black had gold, and Pale was just black. The current version just has the outline be black for all of them, though I suppose because of that they decided to make Black damage purple so it wouldn't be black with black outlines.

While I personally think the old version is neat, it does feel a bit too harsh on the eyes, except Black where I actually prefer the gold. It's nice that the color actually used to be black instead of purple. But I do like the current icons for the damage types more since the old ones were very vertical.

There are still some remnants of the old colors if you look at the damage effect that appears while working on an Abnormality. The exception being Black damage where they changed the gold to purple (though the colors should technically be inverted).

There was a brief period where the colors were changed to the current version while keeping the old icon design in 0.1.3.0, but was quickly replaced with the current version in 0.2.0.0

These early sketches of Little Red are so cute. I've never really put much thought into how complicated some of these animations are, she just moves too fast for me to really pay attention.

These are from the game's files from around when Little Red was first added in the Legacy version. Also early Wolf as well, who looks as goofy as ever.

So, is this the order everyone always introduces themselves in? If Rodion wasn't cut off would everyone have continued to introduce themselves in Canto order?

Like, Hong Lu explicitly singling out Gregor to start the introductions with is kind of weird right? Did Hong Lu introduce Gregor first because he knows how the introduction order correlates to the Canto order? Did Hong Lu know Rodion would introduce herself next, following the Canto order?? Does Hong Lu know about the Canto order??? Does he know he's next????

Maybe I'm looking too much into this...

Between the time Lobotomy Corp was first announced, and the time the game first came out the art style of the employees had changed. From blocky squares to a round chibi. But there was actually another art style that Lobotomy Corp had in between these two.

On December 2, 2015, PM expressed how they wanted to shift away from the "2-head size" design to a "3-head size" design to be able to express the employee's animations and details better, especially in death scenes.

With this, they released some concept sketches of potential redesigns. Though, some of these designs seem oddly... familiar

Later in January PM would officially reveal the new designs, which certainly had a unique look to them. Looking at the comments for these posts people seemed to prefer the original look more, which I can't say I disagree with.

Finally, on the 23rd, PM would shift back to the "2-head size" design, with the Legacy look that we all know and love today (or at least I do...). Giving a reasoning of how the "3-head size" design required more work to properly animate and looked awkward as a result, this new-new style was chosen instead as a result.

Though the timeline on when exactly they created the Legacy design is iffy, since on December 3rd of the previous year (just one day after the original "3-head" design was first shown" these animation concepts were shown with a basic version of the Legacy design.

So I suppose they'd already come up with both of these designs and decided to use the "3-head" design before changing their minds to the Legacy design.

Personally I'm not a massive fan of the "3-head" design, but I suppose I could have warmed up to it like how I did with the 0.1 designs. It's always amusing to me just how many different art styles the game had before finally settling on the current design. I wonder how different things would have been if any of the other designs became the final art style of Lobotomy Corp.

Some early versions of Lobotomy Corp were shown at some game conferences PM went to, and the image they used for the booth is pretty interesting. I brightened the image and you can see it more clearly.

In the Background is Apocalypse Bird but with a slightly different design, it has Judgment Bird's head for example but considering the Legacy portrait has that head maybe that was something changed right before AB was released.

On the right side is Child of the Galaxy, Plague Doctor, Snow White's Apple, an early version of Funeral of the Dead Butterflies, and Queen Bee. Some of them have slightly different sprites like SWA, while others are just their normal default sprite like Queen Bee.

I really wonder what the original idea behind Butterfly Man was. Because the current concept of funerals really doesn't fit its original design, so unless this is just a very colorful funeral I feel like the original concept had to be at least somewhat different, right? I'm personally not a massive fan of Solemn Lament because the colors are nonexistent, but considering the initial design still used finger guns I would have liked to see a rainbow version of Solemn Lament.

The left side has the WellCheers vending machine, Alriune, Scorched Girl, Little Helper, Dreaming Current, Spider Bud, and One Sin. This side also has some early designs like Little Helper having a lot more knives and Dreaming Current being less detailed.

What I find interesting about the left side is the Abnormality between Spider Bud and One Sin. It's obscured and you can't see it well, but I think that's an early design of Bloodbath. It seems to be standing on only one leg with some claws/veins? holding the bottom of it, and has bloody-wrapped hands sticking out of it. The only thing is, we already have an early design for Bloodbath and it's mostly the same except it's wearing leg warmers, so it's possible this is some other Abnormality unrelated to Bloodbath. I wish we had a better view of it but I suppose it's better than nothing.

Looking through Project Moon's old YouTube channel, there's some interesting stuff. Originally I was going to write about the Tumblbug as well, but there was a lot more stuff there than I realized, so I'll just talk about the YouTube for now.

The first video shows some very early concept ideas for the game. There's actually a lot of information in this first video, which I suppose makes sense as it's the first introduction to the game and the oldest as well. I've added some markings on my thoughts of some of the images and also brightened some of them as well.

Throughout the video we get to see pages from a manual that gives some basic information about the game. These are in Korean so I put them through Google Translate to read them. It's interesting how even from the very beginning the concept of the Sefirot and the Tree of Life was being used. Page 5 has the same list of Abnormalities that I was straining my eyes to figure out in my NDC post, but then there was the same list in color so all my effort trying to figure out each Abnormality kind of went to waste.

The list that explains the attack types corresponds to the way the attack types worked in the legacy version. With Black damage affecting the facility and Blue damage being Instant death (though attack types are very inaccurately assigned in-game). You can also see how it originally seemed like there were going to be only three types of work: feeding, cleaning, and suppressing. Though there's more information about that on the game's Tumblbug.

It's kind of hard to see, but page 15 shows Tangtang being part of the "Command and Surveillance Team" which is something mentioned in the game's code in early versions. According to the game's code, it seemed like the Control, Information, Safety, and Training teams were originally called the Command and Surveillance, Solution Development, Emergency Planning, and Material Management teams respectively.

This manual seems to be missing page 16 and 17, and it doesn't seem to be shown anywhere in any video.

The line of never forget/we remember the day the Abnormality first escaped that occasionally pops up here and there seems to be referencing Nothing There since it's a line from the first training video where Nothing There escapes.

The second training video was released on October 30, 2015. I don't have much thoughts on this video, but I thought the pixel art was very cute. I mention the date this video was posted because this is the last video with the square employee art style. The next video posted on February 15, 2016 has the Legacy art style, so between October and February the art style for the game changed. I'll talk more about this shift in art style when I look at the Tumblbug.

I also want to take this time to mention Jeremy, the original Lobotomy Corp mascot (not really) who appeared in only three videos but still managed to capture my heart. This post is dedicated in loving memory to Jeremy.

The Teaser Trailor video has a few key things I wanted to mention. First, the assign work UI seems to have the Book w/o Picture or Dialogue as the default icon for every Abnormality, and has a very different UI that I'm not quite sure how it works. Next, you can see some silhouettes of various Abnormalities, and most of them I recognize, but there's some I'm not 100% sure on. Throughout the video we see some Abnormalities that ultimately never made it into the game, but we can see My Sweet Orange Tree in the containment unit at the very end, which made me wonder how far along these unreleased abnormalities were in development. Even the ones in the very old videos, were they actually semi-functional Abnos or were they just placeholder images that never got developed?

The Proto-Demo video shows a manual and a line that leads to the target. The manual isn't in the demo version I have access to but can still be found in the game's files. I don't have much else thoughts on it other than how purposely bad the person playing the game is doing. Just absolutely picking the worst option consistently.

I also don't have much to say about the other game test videos except in the Day 14 video where we can see some very minor differences. First, the entire game seems a lot darker than normal, but that might just be due to the recording. Second, the Abnormality's Damage Type is listed instead of the Attack Type, which is honestly more useful information that I wish was kept for the Legacy version. Third, the hallways are all very dark as if Big Bird was breaching, and generic irrespective of the department. Fourth, the employee assign UI is very slightly different not that huge but just enough to be noticeable. Lastly, I found it funny how PM just left a broken icon for Snow White's Apple in the video.

The third training video with Queen of Hatred is pretty interesting because it seems to be following QoH's story where an employee talks to her over the course of a few days and her moods gets worse every day. But specifically the old version of QoH's story, since it seems like a lot of Abno stories were ever so slightly changed sometime after the 1.0.2.2 version. The new version of the story omits the fact that QoH was neutralized with anesthetic, which was probably because that mechanic was removed after the legacy version. Also, another interesting thing about the video is that the background containment unit seems to be different that usual, where some stuff is in different places and the number written on the wall is 76 instead of 27.

The Lobtomi♥High video was PM's April Fools for 2017, released alongside version 1.0.1.0 which introduced Little Red, Big and Might be Bad Wolf, Central Command Team, and most importantly You're Bald...! PM has historically celebrated April Fools a lot, whether intentionally or not. There's a lot of random abnormalities in this video, including some released, unreleased, and joke abnormalities. I find it interesting that Fragment of the Universe was the only abnormality that was unreleased and not shown before when the video was published that was then released later on. This video was the first time Fragment of the Universe was ever made public.

[ I can't show a screenshot of the video because I reached the max image limit for the post :( ]

There's two launch trailers for the game, one for when the game was first released in early access, and one for when the game was about to fully release. Between the two, I personally like the first one better because it has a better sense of progression rather than just showing bad things happening out of context, but maybe I'm just biased since I like first trumpet more.

Ok, I think that's enough for this post. There's a lot of stuff to unpack with these videos, so it was nice to look back through them again since I haven't really sat down to watch them all in years.

In the newest Walpurgis Night, one of the skills used is named "Rushing Arms of Rest"

This being notable because that's the name of the very first ordeal from the legacy version, the Violet Dusk, which was quickly removed and replaced.

Now, I love it whenever PM mention stuff from the older versions because it makes me feel slightly less insane for being so obsessed with it. Even though using the name for another ordeal's skill might mean that the FloodTentacles might never come back, I'd love it if one day we get the chance to fight the old Violet Dusk again. I have a score to settle with those bastard tentacles and destroying them in the legacy version can only bring so much joy.

For anyone curious, during Violet Dusk several tentacles each spawn throughout almost every room in the facility, dealing strong physical damage to any employee it attacks. Now, you can try to kill them one by one, but that would be incredibly inefficient considering they are decently tanky. In each of the department's main room there is a "main" tentacle that is noticeably larger than the rest. The optimal way of dealing with this dusk is by killing the "main" tentacle, since once that dies all other tentacles in its department also dies alongside it.

What makes this ordeal extremely dangerous is that any low level employee's health can quickly be whittled down by the FloodTentacles, and considering they spawn almost everywhere nowhere's safe (especially since you can't move employees into a specific room in the legacy version). Like I mentioned earlier they're pretty tanky so killing them can be very dangerous if you're not well prepared, and it takes away time spent working on Abnormalities (in the legacy version Abnormalities worked on a mood timer system). Additionally, unlike the current legacy version Ordeals spawn starting from day 11 instead of day 21, and ordeals also have a considerably higher chance of spawning as well (In the current legacy version you realistically could go through the entire game without encountering a single ordeal, but in the old version with the Violet Dusk they were practically guaranteed to spawn any day it was able to). All of these reasons combined meant that the best way to deal with Violet Dusk was to not deal with it at all and hope the day ends quick enough that it doesn't have time to kill anyone.

I don't know how well known this is but back in 2017 Kim Ji-hoon attended NDC2017 to give a presentation about Lobotomy Corp's development and origins. You can find it here (It's in Korean so I used Google Translate to read it).

He describes the origins of Project Moon and Lobotomy Corp, how he recruited people to work on the game, and what inspirations he had for it, which I found to be very interesting. The presentation showed a lot of early footage and images of the game you can't really find anywhere else. (I added some markings on my thoughts)

I think the most interesting picture is this, which showed very early designs for what I assume to be Old Lady, Scorched Girl, Red Shoes, Happy Teddy, Nameless Fetus, and One Sin along with just a very different art style as well.

Some of these assets can still be found in the game's files but others are things I've only seen here. There's a lot more stuff in the presentation, but seeing all these early designs and thinking about how different the game could have been makes me want to see more early development art of Lob Corp. There are also a lot of early developmental images on the game's Tumblbug as well for those that are interested.

Did you know that some Abnormalities have OFFICAL (questionably canon) weights?

In the files for the demo version of the game, Abnormalities have more unique stats listed for each Abnormality, including Size, Weight, Attack Type, Creature Type, Horror, Intelligence, Physical, Mental, Aggression, and Gorgeous.

These stats are never actually presented in-game, but I would have liked to see more info like these for the Abnormalities in the current version. It's a shame the size is just on a vague 1-5 scale because I'd have liked to know what their heights are.

Considering this is from the demo version and never actually used in-game it's probably not considered canon anymore. Especially since 1.76mHz's special ability name is "23th April 1952" which definitely isn't canon anymore. (Though on a side note 1.76mHz's old LoR page was named "Memories of April 23rd" so I guess parts of it might still be considered canon)

It seems like employee's max level was originally meant to be level 7. The legacy version's manual states that an agent's max level is level 7, and this isn't a translation mistake since it's stated in the Korean version as well.

The level of the weapons that agents can use is based off of their own level. With level 1 agents using level 1 weapons, lv2 and 3 agents using lv2 weapons, lv4 agents using lv3 weapons, and lv5 agents using lv4 weapons.

However, in the researches it's stated that level 7 agents can use level 5 weapons.

So even though it's normally unusable there are files for level 5 weapons in the game's files, with unique stats and sprites which would presumably be usable by level 7 agents. (Stun pistols and automatic pistols don't have new sprites)

Has anyone else noticed how broken the employee sprites are on the end result screen?

It can be hard to see normally, but if you zoom in this is how the sprites look:

How did this happen???? D: