Released Stygian Snakewood, a Pokémon Snakewood Remake.

A¹¹ · Jul 25, 2023

Finnjackson77 said:
What does the current pokedex look like will it include pokemon from all generations or is it the same as vanilla snakewood?

So right now my plan is to make the dex mostly based on vanilla Snakewood (and the XtraSnakewood mod). However in vanilla only about half of the dex is available to the player, so I had to considerably increase the amount of encounters in the game.

Anyway about the dex size, I decided to not opt for a National Dex. It's just too much work and the game would be bloated with over 1000 Pokémon in such a small region that is Hoenn.

Anyway here is a Pokémon that is now available which was previously only mentioned:

Healmadio, previously only seen as an NPC in New Mauville, it's now an actually available Pokémon! It's a Ghost/Fairy type with Static, Healer and Triage as its abilities.

DanTheMan452 · Aug 25, 2023

I just discovered snakewood and played it and loved it. Seeing work on a remastered/updated version is AWESOME.Whats the current status? (I do however would love to see some modification in the story though - at the end).

And please during most boss fights the battle music was the "standard" one. e.g. when you talk with Senex before the fight you have this serious music but when the fight starts its just the usual battle music - this could be changed maybe

A¹¹ · Aug 25, 2023

DanTheMan452 said:
I just discovered snakewood and played it and loved it. Seeing work on a remastered/updated version is AWESOME.Whats the current status? (I do however would love to see some modification in the story though - at the end).

And please during most boss fights the battle music was the "standard" one. e.g. when you talk with Senex before the fight you have this serious music but when the fight starts its just the usual battle music - this could be changed maybe

Well, I wouldn't have expected to someone to find the game for the first time 11 years after it was released but I'm glad people still do.

For the progress, my current demo is mostly done (it goes up to the final Alicia battle on Meteor Falls). I just need to fix some mechanics after updating to Essentials 21, play-test both difficulty modes properly, finish a few sprites and ultimately wait for the plugins to update, which should take some weeks at least (doing everything alone gives me burnouts from time to time).

And yes, I'm trying to update the music, for the most part using ORAS soundtracks but better synchronized to the situation (for example, Verdanturf Ruins now use the Drought theme) with the occasional one from a different source.

About the story... I honestly have no idea. It's hard for me to sometimes get a grasp because of how used I am to the game and how far away we are from the end, but sporadically I do change certain dialogue and a few events so that they feel more cohesive.

Conclave · Sep 21, 2023

Are you still taking help? and is there a discord server one can join for this hack's development?

A¹¹ · Sep 21, 2023

Conclave said:
Are you still taking help? and is there a discord server one can join for this hack's development?

Well, not really right now. I've got an artist to work with me and I don't actually feel like I need help with anything else. Thanks for asking though.

About a Discord server. I've been considering making one for a while, but I really don't want to bother managing and moderating a server so I've always stepped down on the idea.

Babushka · Sep 27, 2023

In my opinion, you should change how the madios, or even other Pokémon, look. Their designs are kinda bland. Idk if this is supposed to be a faithful remake, but it would be nice if they were done prettier, with a better design

A¹¹ · Sep 27, 2023

Babushka said:
In my opinion, you should change how the madios, or even other Pokémon, look. Their designs are kinda bland. Idk if this is supposed to be a faithful remake, but it would be nice if they were done prettier, with a better design

Welp, I have good news for you!

Someone named Burgorton contacted me and send me some redesigns, we ended up talking for a while over the days and we managed to get a lot of redesigns for both the Fakémon and trainers, with the majority of them getting some sort of discussion or rough sketch.

Of course that's a lot of designs and it's taking a while to translate them into Sprites, so for now I'm showing one of the first which was shown and worked on, Vigourlan.

The expansion of its concept was around the Insomnia it had, which completely stopped it from evolving into Slaking and awakened some sort of inner Psychic powers. Sadly as it was the first one I converted into a sprite, the quality is rather... subpar.

But anyway, I hope this answers your question! Recently we've been working on these for most days so there's a lot more to show in the future. Maybe as another post here or just in the upcoming beta? Honestly I don't know.

And as a remake the objective is to at least increase the quality of the designs and at most rework them completely. Snakewood is a very old game with very outdated designs, so it's certainly a challenge to re-imagine them while keeping the stupid 2011 concepts and make the game feel fresh yet familiar, thanks for asking!

Babushka · Sep 27, 2023

Loved what you did with Vigourlan.

The only one you should keep untouched is Roclobster. Perfection doesn't need to change (jk). Although, I don't know if you have touched in the soundtrack, you could actually add samples of Rock Lobster into its battle theme.

Babushka · Sep 27, 2023

A¹¹ said:
Welp, I have good news for you!

Someone named Burgorton contacted me and send me some redesigns, we ended up talking for a while over the days and we managed to get a lot of redesigns for both the Fakémon and trainers, with the majority of them getting some sort of discussion or rough sketch.
View attachment 21582

Of course that's a lot of designs and it's taking a while to translate them into Sprites, so for now I'm showing one of the first which was shown and worked on, Vigourlan.

View attachment 21583 View attachment 21584 View attachment 21585
View attachment 21586

The expansion of its concept was around the Insomnia it had, which completely stopped it from evolving into Slaking and awakened some sort of inner Psychic powers. Sadly as it was the first one I converted into a sprite, the quality is rather... subpar.

But anyway, I hope this answers your question! Recently we've been working on these for most days so there's a lot more to show in the future. Maybe as another post here or just in the upcoming beta? Honestly I don't know.

And as a remake the objective is to at least increase the quality of the designs and at most rework them completely. Snakewood is a very old game with very outdated designs, so it's certainly a challenge to re-imagine them while keeping the stupid 2011 concepts and make the game feel fresh yet familiar, thanks for asking!

Another thing: will the sprites be animated or static?

A¹¹ · Sep 27, 2023

Babushka said:
Another thing: will the sprites be animated or static?

Static. Animating sprites is a huge amount of work and I would rather not submit myself to such task, some gen 5 sprites have over 60 frames and doing something like that sounds like a big waste of time.

Babushka · Sep 30, 2023

Some re-designs for Snakewood Fakémon I've been thinking about:

Qwilshark: largely remains the same, Poison/Water type, however the design of the head and eyes now closely resemble the real life species of venomous sharks, the spurdogs:

Telson: ”Renamed into “Telsoldat”, typing is Steel/Water, and, instead of a Qwilfish reskin, it's now a horseshoe crab mixed with a German WW1 helmet.

Telsoldat evolves at level 40 and, if with its Physical Attack stat being higher than its defense, it becomes “Trilopodat”, a pure Steel which, design wise, is like Bisharp with a flat head and more arms. Trilopodat evolves at level 70 into “Kaiserod”, which is still pure Steel, whose head is now based on the Pickelhem, used by German authorities during the Great War:

HOWEVER, if Telsoldat has a Defense stat higher than its Attack, instead it evolves into “Mephishoe”, a Ground/Steel type which is a big, blocky horseshoe crab based on the A7V, German WW1 tanks, more particularly the sole surviving one "Mephisto":

Skylax: Renamed into “Roslax”, largely stays the same, however with a brighter color palette (white for the body, light gold for the wings, eyes stay closed, but curved down so as it looks more “pleased”) and instead of the Sun Stone is evolves with the item “Bacchuberry”, a golden grapefruit-like berry that maximizes the happiness of any pokemon it is used on. They're rare to find, though. The “Ros-” part comes from Eros, god of Love, also known as Cupid, which evolved into the angelic "putto", those baby angels in paintings. It's also a reference to Dyonisius, god of pleasure and, honestly, laziness.

Toxeon & Demoneon: Toxeon is an easy one: Poison type with a goofy deep purple body.
Demoneon, on the other hand, is a trick one, as we already have Umbreon for Dark type and Flareon for Fire type. So, my idea is Demoneon, which, honestly, I want to rename to “Scourgeon”, is the Plague-type evolution and it's based on the Horsemen of the Apocalypse: red eyes, white tipped ears and tail, a green-yellow body and a black paws and claws.

Of course, these are just rough ideas which I would love to discuss. I don't have any talent for drawing, however, so I can only really help with throwing ideas and making concepts. Hope you liked these, I'll share more later.

A¹¹ · Oct 1, 2023

Babushka said:
Some re-designs for Snakewood Fakémon I've been thinking about:

Qwilshark: largely remains the same, Poison/Water type, however the design of the head and eyes now closely resemble the real life species of venomous sharks, the spurdogs:
View attachment 21656

Telson: ”Renamed into “Telsoldat”, typing is Steel/Water, and, instead of a Qwilfish reskin, it's now a horseshoe crab mixed with a German WW1 helmet.
View attachment 21657

View attachment 21658
Telsoldat evolves at level 40 and, if with its Physical Attack stat being higher than its defense, it becomes “Trilopodat”, a pure Steel which, design wise, is like Bisharp with a flat head and more arms. Trilopodat evolves at level 70 into “Kaiserod”, which is still pure Steel, whose head is now based on the Pickelhem, used by German authorities during the Great War:
View attachment 21661

HOWEVER, if Telsoldat has a Defense stat higher than its Attack, instead it evolves into “Mephishoe”, a Ground/Steel type which is a big, blocky horseshoe crab based on the A7V, German WW1 tanks, more particularly the sole surviving one "Mephisto":
View attachment 21662

Skylax: Renamed into “Roslax”, largely stays the same, however with a brighter color palette (white for the body, light gold for the wings, eyes stay closed, but curved down so as it looks more “pleased”) and instead of the Sun Stone is evolves with the item “Bacchuberry”, a golden grapefruit-like berry that maximizes the happiness of any pokemon it is used on. They're rare to find, though. The “Ros-” part comes from Eros, god of Love, also known as Cupid, which evolved into the angelic "putto", those baby angels in paintings. It's also a reference to Dyonisius, god of pleasure and, honestly, laziness.
View attachment 21663
View attachment 21664

Toxeon & Demoneon: Toxeon is an easy one: Poison type with a goofy deep purple body.
Demoneon, on the other hand, is a trick one, as we already have Umbreon for Dark type and Flareon for Fire type. So, my idea is Demoneon, which, honestly, I want to rename to “Scourgeon”, is the Plague-type evolution and it's based on the Horsemen of the Apocalypse: red eyes, white tipped ears and tail, a green-yellow body and a black paws and claws.
View attachment 21665

Of course, these are just rough ideas which I would love to discuss. I don't have any talent for drawing, however, so I can only really help with throwing ideas and making concepts. Hope you liked these, I'll share more later.

I do like the Qwilshark idea! Currently we were debating one inspired mostly on sawsharks due to the quills part of the pokemon so I'll keep it in mind. But sorry, I gotta be honest, the other ideas, specially the Telson one, seem a bit too radical and esoteric compared to the original game. I intended to not deviate that much from the source material, specially since we have base sketches for all of these already (and an almost finished new Demoneon sprite).

This is not to discourage you from having ideas and suggestions though! It's just that there are a lot of base sketches for remade Pokémon already (pretty much all of the Fakémon, with a few exceptions) and those above do somewhat conflict a bit with the game's philosophy. I hope this wasn't a too negative of a response and sorry for rejecting your concepts.

Babushka · Oct 1, 2023

Nah, I figured that there might have been such rejection.
I think I was just being preposterous, as I wanted to give these seemingly random and baseless fakémon like Telson a deeper meaning, with more pokemon-like and dare I say "better" designs. I just don't want to come off as egotistical.
I understand: this is explicitly a remake, not a reimagination of the game. I think I just like to take these half baked ideas and make them into something new with my own ideas.

zyz5211314 · Oct 13, 2023

Excuse me, does this game have discord?

A¹¹ · Oct 13, 2023

zyz5211314 said:
Excuse me, does this game have discord?

Well, not right now but I'm considering it. I've been asked this a lot on Discord so I was with it in mind there is technically one, but I'm the only one in there, but I really can't be bothered managing a whole server, even if small, with people I don't know. What I've been told and experienced from my friends who have games of their own kinda kills my mood about it.

Damoople · Oct 18, 2023

Created an account to say I'm super excited for this!
Snakewood is my personal favorite rom hack, but I can't recommend it to anyone with how far Pokemon roms have gone in the past decade, not to mention the bugs and balancing.

A¹¹ · Oct 27, 2023

Update thread!

Due to the lack of activity I've heard a few people say that the project is dead or that it's not going good so I might as well explain what we are doing currently!

First off, recently I did a Recruitment Thread and someone reached out to me so I might as well mention that @lichen volunteered herself to help with Stygian Snakewood as a Spriter!

Anyway about the current status of the game, the Demo I'm working in currently goes up to Meteor Falls Alicia, events up to the Monastery are finished and stuff beyond it is still WIP, almost every single battle is finished both for Vanilla and Lunatic modes and the maps are practically done, only needing a few fixes such as patching up visible map edges and balancing out item distribution, maybe even a few sidequests.

But for now even with that I'm uncertain if it's close to release, I'm still waiting for Plugins such as Lucidious' to update and in exactly a month I'm going to do a really important exam that I need to focus on.

Ironically though, even with the current demo not being released, we've been already planning what to do on the next demo, which is a major graphic overhaul to almost every single Fakémon, trainer or UI. And it's been going well so far so I might as well share some of the stuff that's already done (Note: they may or may not be already a thing on the next release)

Hombone! One of the Snakewood poster children, this redesign intends to make it look more like a Pokémon while retaining all of its original stupidity so that it doesn't feel like a different Fakémon. The current redesign is inspired by the Chinese Mitten Crab, Rock Crabs, rail-guns and tasers, which meant it got a retype to Rock/Electric, which also helped it differentiate from Golem. (Sprite by lichen, concept by burgorton).

Welp, this is a new face, here is Pcylet (originally Psylet), the pre-evolution of Pcypig (originally Psypig). The thought behind the redesign of it and Psypig was because of their dex entries mentioning how they were mafia pigs which robbed people so we thought and decided to do this redesign. To fit the thematic we also made them Fire/Dark instead of Fire/Psychic, renamed them to be instead of referencing "Psychic" they would reference the word "Cypher" and now technically they're convergent forms, thanks, Gen 9? (Sprite by me, concept/redesign by burgorton, original concept by GenDraconis)

And last but not least, another Snakewood poster child and the cover mascot of that unofficial Snakewood title screen (probably due to its sheer edginess from its concept and specially the Dex Entry). You might have seen this redesign before and you might know from where. This Sprite (originally animated) was made by the Youtuber and Spriter RetroNC which also had the effort to convert the first frame of the animation on an Essentials-friendly 96x96 (or 192x192) sprite. I'm really grateful he gave us permission to use his sprites and giving such credit is the least I could do.

So there are just some of the sprites that were remade, there are more, both in-game and (for now) just as concepts. Not all of them will be completely finished or may even fit well (for example, there isn't an updated Hombone backsprite yet) on the next Demo so for consistency they might or might not even be included on this release. Developing Stygian Snakewood has been a great experience and I hope you people are excited for it.

lige · Nov 1, 2023

Excuse me, was it a complete release or a beta release when it was released?

A¹¹ · Nov 1, 2023

lige said:
Excuse me, was it a complete release or a beta release when it was released?

For Stygian Snakewood there were no releases, outside of closed demos. If you mean to ask if the release is going to be complete or a beta version. It's still incomplete, the game would only go up to Meteor Falls

A¹¹ · Jan 7, 2024

Alright so this is a very big and important update thread to make up for the lack of updates.

First and foremost we do have an official Recruitment Thread if you're interested in helping, spriters are specially appreciated!

Also as I type this I've started my final and personal play-test, when I finish it then there will be the closed demo and hopefully finally the Public Release, which I'm extremely hyped to show, however this brings me to the main point of this point, the QoL and core gameplay changes.

I know they won't be for everyone, it would be impossible to do that. But I would want to hear opinions, DemICE's Exp System (it was used for Soulstones 2, if you're aware of that) means you can't really overlevel and it kinda encourages having 6 Pokémon early on, which can be a turn-off for people - although that hopefully won't be immediate on Vanilla mode, even though it's still kinda hard like the base game lol -, a player might feel like there is some wasted exp idk

Another problem is that I was influenced by games like Perish Song and others and some of the comments criticizing the original Snakewood that it doesn't feel dystopian/apocalyptic enough, so having limited resources made the experience very interesting and resource management became essential, the problem was that some parts could be problematic and Snakewood has quite a lot of free stuff (such as the free Pokéball on S.S Cangrejo that literally stop you from being soft-locked) but after reading some of the problems with this kind of stuff on the new Ashen Frost demo I'm kinda on the fence, thoughts on the matter?

Yet another subject that could split people is the current situation about zombies. Currently I'm unhappy with it, the Plague (formerly Disease, renamed because it wouldn't fit the damn UI) type is weak to Poison, Bug and Psychic (the main type of the starters and overall poor attacking types). While Pokémon with the "Zombie" flag deal increased damage but are unable to switch - which means a non-Plague Pokémon can be a Zombie and vise-versa, but usually Plague are zombies. Furthermore, Zombie Pokémon themselves are only able to be caught with a previously unused item in the original Snakewood named "Necro Ball", such method was chosen not only to make them more interesting but to be a middle ground of making them more accessible but still savage and not regular Pokémon

Overall, I never expected Stygian Snakewood to get this big, it first started as a joke on a friend group to make a Difficulty Mod for Snakewood, which then turned into a decomp hack because it turns out a 13 years old ROMhack has very little room for expansion, at the end turning into an Essentials Fan-game due to me being already considerably more experienced with it. At that point I went all way in to remake one of my favorite games of all time, specially after Burgorton contacted me, helped with literally dozens of redesigns (including a Title Screen, it should be finished in a few months at most) and made the game feel a lot more like a remake/re-imagination. But at the end it was still within the concept of a Difficulty Mod to be shared to my friends, Lunatic mode was the first to be worked in, had everything centered about it and it went from there, which can probably lead to problems in the future. ~~Don't try to nuzlocke it, you will fail.~~

Regardless of it, as usual I'm going to show some screenshots, this time mostly Art-related but with other stuff as well (might contain spoilers?).

You couldn't battle him before, you can now!
View attachment 23864
Decided to redesign a few maps for fun, one of which would be the Solar Caverns, the new Granite Cave after it was apparently attacked by Groudon (probably an excuse to remove the need for Flash lol) so I decided to make it look a lot more volcanic (and with permanent sun-light because funny)

Recently there was a Twitch Plays Pokémon with Snakewood DX, a considerably modified version of Snakewood with bug-fixes, new zombies and new sprites, including a fan favorite in the Zombie Gastly line, which according to the Docs they're free to use so why not? Burgorton did redesign them for fun after all so here they are, new Ghastlier, Haunteyes and Gengaze!

One of the most interesting Snakewood decisions were the retypes, some were reasonable like Poison/Dark Seviper or even Fighting/Normal Hariyama, but a clear outlier was Ghost/Fighting, which made zero sense, so we decided to make it some sort of mutated Pokémon from the rifts that brought the Plague and others, so here it is a redesigned Banette! Based on the Japanese dolls "Wara ningyō" used to fight against evil spirits and plague.

Snakewood is a very infamous hack and a lot of people loved it, so naturally the concept of a remake for them appeared over and over, one of these was made by Kwenio (known for his character designs in romhacks like Unbound, Voyager and Gaia), who made a few-but-great redesigns, which I got permission to use (some, not all of them) like these Madio redesigns which may or may not be used! (currently debating, because they look like actual Pokémon unlike the terrible balls that were made for test, according to an AMA Cutlerine did on Reddit over a decade ago, you can comment your opinion here I guess)

And while I thought first not to reveal it, he would've appeared in the Title Screen anyway so why not, here's a small (at first glance) but nice redesign of Senex made by Burgorton!

To end things up, I've started to make a Google Docs for Stygian Snakewood, currently there is only the dex (made with stardex)
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15THC3ds_Qbkc3Jrsbh5BXaKSGlbLbjgVIbsLhwL7IVI
Might add new/renamed moves and items later. Also the Dex is incomplete, probably 1-3 things will be added to it and about some of the weird types like the Electric/Dragon Zebstrika, basically Burgorton started giving me regional forms even though I wasn't a fan of them at the beggining but they grew on me and they won't really hurt. And I won't reveal the ??? Pokémon, they're a secret!

So basically, making Stygian Snakewood is being a great experience for me, with ups and downs ofc, but it helped me a lot specially since I spent the entirety of 2023 without a job or University and I hope y'all are going to have fun with it!

Released Stygian Snakewood, a Pokémon Snakewood Remake.

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