There's a reason why it took this long

Virtue's Heaven promotional artwork by Simon Sweetman.

In preparation of Virtue's Heaven's release, I'm going to talk more about the game's history and how it works. If you like this post, or if any of the future posts about this game's development and design interest you, please wishlist the game on Steam and consider buying a copy, once it's out. Thank you!

Virtue’s Heaven will come out on May 20th, almost 90 Months since I first started working on it. A lot has changed in that time. The world is fundamentally different, I feel like a different person and the game also went through a lot of changes. How could it not? Considering the amount of time I spent working on it, it’s funny how it’s only over the last year that I actually understood what Virtue’s Heaven was supposed to be and it’s only for the last few Months that I actually feel happy with it.

I want to take you through the past seven years of my life. I want to show you some of my rough ideas, the failed attempts to turn this ball of movement into a game you could play. How I slowly wrung something like a narrative structure out of it. And how often it fell apart the moment I had to make a boss fight.

So let’s go back to ancient times, back to the year of 2018.

The prelude: “gm2platformtest”

In the latter half of 2017, I got fairly obsessed with expressive, movement heavy action platformers, but I was also committed to not make another platformer after having just finished Splinter Zone.

However, 2017 ended in a very traumatizing fashion for me (a close family member unexpectedly passed away on new year’s eve),and I desperately needed something to keep myself busy. It also just so happened that someone kindly gifted me a copy of Game Maker Studio 2, which at that point I was too poor to afford.

As a test, I tried to see if Maddy Thorson’s (at this point already ancient) “Grandma platforming engine” would still work in Game Maker 2 and once that was confirmed, I started fiddling around with making a character controller. For several weeks all I did was add more special moves to this controller. It started with a wall jump, then came a ledge grab, then a roll, a backflip, an airdash, a double jump, and then several further moves that you could perform out of those primary moves.

A lot of the systems that control the movement in the final version of Virtue’s Heaven were built during that time and are largely untouched. I changed the physics a bit, added/removed some moves, but the very basic structure that is the backbone of the entire game was built in those first few weeks of 2018.

At some point I must have decided that this movement system was cool enough to go back on my decision to abandon the platformer and instead turn what was basically a tech demo into some kind of videogame.

Aetherstone II (2018-2019)

This was meant to be a “weird sequel” to a more conventional first game, only with me skipping the boring first game and immediately making the strange one. It also existed in at least three different shapes over the course of these two years.

Basic idea:

2018: The whole idea for this entire game was “you take the state of a metroidvania character at the end of a regular game, but instead you start from there”. For a while the game had no failure state, instead health was tied into a power up system, a concept that weirdly enough is now a central part of an idea for an RPG system I would like to work on after Virtue’s Heaven is released. Players were supposed to explore a destroyed research base that was part of some weird bio-engineering corporation.

2019: The game is a mixture of action platformer and side-scrolling shoot 'em up, where players switch between these viewpoints within the same stage and things you do in one part have influence on the other. This never really went anywhere, both because the concept was too large for me to do on my own, and because my mental health fell apart. It was this version where I first got the notion that working on this project was making me sick.

Why I stopped working on it:

At least twice it was because I had to think about boss fights and just couldn’t make them work. Something that would happen quite over the next few years and that wasn’t exclusive to this project either. An earlier version of what would become GB Rober ran into the same problem.

It probably didn’t help that 2018 and 2019 were by far the worst years of my life from a mental health point of view. I only really got past my grief by mid 2019, but at this point the two decades of unprocessed stuff I carried with me had completely erased my ability to do anything.

Interesting notebook excerpts:

Virtue’s Heaven (Jan 2020-May 2020)

There isn’t really a lot of game here that is relevant, however I did a ton of conceptual work in that time that laid the foundation for how the rest of the game would develop.

Basic idea:

The players are a gig economy murder machine who is supposed to get something from an abandoned space station (which itself was a failed survival bunker for rich people - did I mention that this was written in the early days of Covid lockdown?). The entire upgrade system was tied into them having to “earn” company currency via “finding artefacts” and “exploration”, which they could then spend on terminals for character upgrades. At some point there was supposed to be a twist, that would show how this was kind of not a good thing and at the end the players were supposed to destroy their own previous work. I remember getting really excited at the idea of the players slowly erasing the minimap they had previously uncovered, as a representation of them loosening their former employers hold on this space.

This is also where I came up with the name “Virtue’s Heaven”. I wanted the game to be named after the location that you were meant to explore. So “Virtue’s Heaven” is named that, because I figured that’s what actual billionaires might call their fake survival bunker paradise. To be honest, I do not like the name that much anymore, however it still fits the game. You see, from this point onwards, Virtue’s Heaven would always be about the player breaking into a refuge for rich people and “Virtue’s Heaven” is still a good representation of the kind of naming scheme that people deploy who think that having money is a reflection of their own moral integrity.

Why I stopped working on it:

I once again had to make a boss fight. It even exists to a degree, but I wasn’t happy with it. I also started to play around with the Super Game Boy palette, realized that it made creating pixel art much, much easier and went on a journey that would eventually lead me to releasing GB Rober in 2021.

Interesting notebook excerpts:

Virtue’s Heaven (2022-2023)

I’m splitting this final iteration of Virtue’s Heaven into two parts, because even though these two share a lot of the same systems and narrative elements, this earlier version is so different in how it tried to approach itself, that it warrants its own entry.

Basic idea:

One thing I learned from making GB Rober is that subtlety is for cowards. So gone is the idea of subverting the metroidvania and starting you out as a tool for capitalist expansion. Instead you were supposed to break into the rich people bunker and tear it apart. Also it’s the end of the world!

This game took many different shapes. For a while it was meant to be more like Zelda 2, with smaller stages and an overworld map that you had to traverse, but that slowly morphed into a more conventional “here’s a big map you can explore!” game.

Why I stopped working on it:

It was too large and I was too afraid to make something that felt small and “cheap”. This lead to me making sprawling maps, that were incredibly hard to handle, levels that didn’t really fit the movement system, the movement system itself was too complicated and weirdly restrictive and every few weeks I had new ideas what this game might be, which repeatedly lead to me tearing down work I already did, just to start over again.

It all ended in February of 2023, when I completely overworked myself in order to get a demo for a Steam Next Fest ready, which wasn’t very good, and was also very broken. In June of ‘23, I then wrote about how making Metroidvanias is hell, and in that process got an idea for how to maybe finish this game anyway.

Interesting notebook excerpts:

I couldn’t find any, but I made so many maps for this game, you have no idea.

Virtue’s Heaven (2024-2025)

This is it! The version that you will be able to play on May 20th. It has more colours than the one from before, because I got kind of tired of the Super Game Boy palette (though I still use it), the map is much denser and everything is just better. After years of running away from making boss fights, I actually found an approach that worked and I understood that even though Virtue’s Heaven is a platformer, I should not treat it like one.

It is, in a lot of ways, very different from what came before, and yet, it carries all of its predecessors in it. In more ways than you might think.

Basic idea:

Virtue’s Heaven is a curse. It’s a curse on the world, but it’s also a curse on me. It has eaten so many worlds, destroyed lives and the only way for anyone to find a true future, lies in its complete and utter destruction.

Interesting notebook excerpts:

In January of 2025 I wrote:

Why I finished it:

I’m not sure how much of that “Be Evil” thing in my notebook actually made it into the game, but what I did do was to let go of any restraints in terms of trying to keep myself away from it. Instead I spent the last few Months, until the end of April basically, just doing what I could to put more of myself into it.

I guess what might also have helped was that I picked two dates, one where I would announce the game’s release date, and one where I would actually release it. This drastically reduced the amount of time I had and thus the risk of my brain causing me to unmake this game again. I’m actually quite shocked how much I managed to get done over the last few Months. The plan back in January was basically: “Add the game’s ending that you stopped working on in Summer of 2024, fix what’s broken and be done with it.” and instead I managed to do those things, but also:

Maybe it’s just because I’m utterly exhausted by this project, but of all the different versions it had, this final version is the one I love the most. I do not know what Virtue’s Heaven's ideal version should be. I’m certain that it doesn’t exist, because its foundation was me going “oh wouldn’t it be cool, if you could do X?” for a few weeks in early 2018. I don’t think that this is a good foundation for a videogame, but I think I found a good place for it in the end.

I have no idea how and if this game will resonate with people who are not me, because I rarely thought of others when I made it. For better and for worse, it's a reflection of who I am and who I was for the last SEVEN YEARS of my life (I still can’t believe this number) and showing this to others is frightening. At the same time, when I play the game, I’m incredibly happy, because that version of me that it reflects is someone I’m happy to see so clearly.

At the end of the day, Virtue’s Heaven does not exist, because the world wanted it to exist. It exists, because I did not want to exist in a world without it. And now it’s finally done.

The final videogame has been made, the world will end, and it’s going to be alright.

Virtue's Heaven is going to come on out on Tuesday, May 20th 2025. It took seven years of my life to make and you're going to have to take my word on it that there isn't anything like it out there. Please wishlist it on Steam, and consider buying a copy once it's out!