Relic

Relic is an upcoming sci-fi adventure puzzle platformer game developed by Extant Notion Entertainment. Set in the Simulation, players take on the role of a secret agent in the Firewall Agency, tasked with the mission to track down a powerful criminal called the Inquisitor. Players explore worlds and complete obstacle courses and unique missions to collect the Consciousness Cores of individuals, bringing them one step closer to finding the Inquisitor.

Development on the game started on March 31, 2020. It started out as a solo project by experienced builder BuiltRealm, before briefly being joined by programmer cloelius in October 2020, who later stepped down as a developer. The game is still being worked on at the moment. There is currently no release date planned.

A playable demo was released in September 2020, featuring introductory cutscenes, the Prologue, and Cael's Courtyard. It is still receiving sporadic updates.

The full game will feature 12 worlds, 60 Cores and 144 Chips to collect, boss battles, a multitude of hidden secrets, bonus worlds, and a creative commons soundtrack.

Synopsis
The player is an up and coming agent of the Firewall Agency. After having passed the Academy with top grades, they were promoted up to a full time spot in the agency. They are given the identity Agent 82W (Windsor), a supposed Member of the Control Panel. During the Prologue, the Director debriefs them about the task at hand. A simulated being who called themselves the Inquisitor had been secretly funding rebel groups in Drive D for the past six months. With the new influx of both money and weaponry, the rebel groups rose to power, and they quickly became a concern to the Control Panel. The Firewall is given then given the task of tracking down the Inquisitor.

The player is dropped off at the Kernel to have an impromptu rendezvous with the Firewall's first suspect Commander Cael. During their meeting, the Simulation's central systems are attacked from the inside by an unknown hacker off site. As the Kernel technicians struggled to get back control, Cael enters the Terminal in an effort to thwart the attack. He is followed by the player, and together they are able to regain control of the Simulation's systems. However, their efforts had been in vain. In the short amount of time the systems had been down, the long banished Virus had escaped Quarantine and were now entering the domains of the Simulation, fueled at the prospect of all out war. Cael alerts the Simulation Squadron to prepare for battle.

After a few days, the player and Cael decide to reconvene at his mansion.

(More information coming only after full release.)

Development
After an almost four year hiatus from Roblox, BuiltRealm returned to the platform in March 2020 with no real plans of ever getting back into developing. However, mainly driven by curiosity, he created some rough concepts for an adventure game in the first few weeks of March. Initially, he thought of creating a small, fantasy, story driven platformer, aptly titled An Adventure Game. This idea was soon scrapped a few days later.

On March 31, 2020, Realm created the original Relic place file, still with no real plans for the game. Initially, the project was titled Vague, titled so because aside from usual adventure game mechanics, there were no plans for characters, worlds, or even how puzzle mechanics would work. Over the course of April, the engine was programmed. Ideas for it being a futuristic, sci-fi game set in the simulation also arose. As for how the worlds were to be structured, Realm intended to follow in the steps of radiogamer's A ROBLOX Quest: Elements of Robloxia, where all the worlds would be in one place file. Lack of programming knowledge led him to believe that this would be the most viable option, despite it being an outdated practice. Early screenshots during this phase shows very lackluster worlds with little to no detail. Soon, this system would be scrapped, and universes would be implemented. There were also plans for a hub, which was also removed. At the tail end of April, he fully committed himself to the project, and decided to market the game under the Extant Notion name, which was also created during this time. His experiences in development during the following months was recorded through the use of written devlogs, although only three editions of them were ever written. In June, the project name was officially renamed to Relic. On October 11, 2020, cloelius joined the team to help out with programming. After making some invaluable contributions, he later stepped down in January 2021 to pursue his endeavours in real life.

The main menu would see its debut in January 2021.

Throughout 2021, work was done on revising the engine, which was beginning to hamper efficiency in development. The main powerups (barriers, force fields, raygun barriers, and jump boosts) received a complete rework in April 2021 with new animations and effects. The first major cutscenes found in the Prologue were released in May 2021. The HUD and accompanying UI received a massive overhaul in July 2021, giving the game extra polish. In September 2021, the NPC dialogue UI was integrated to the new HUD.

Public Pre-Alpha (September 2020 - Present Day)
On September 18, 2020, the first public demo for Relic would be released, featuring a now scrapped tutorial level and the first world. Although the gameplay aspect of the demo was of acceptable quality, many of the NPCs had temporary dialogue. After some small updates all through latter half of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, the most noteworthy and biggest update was in May 2021 which saw the release of the Prologue level.

The Pre-Alpha still receives sporadic updates, although there are plans to stop updating the demo at a later date in order to focus fully on the main game.

Relic 1 Year Anniversary Event - (March 20, 2021)
To celebrate Relic being a year in development, an event was hosted at the Extant Notion Convention Center. Two separate events were held at different times to accommodate for time zone issues. The Asia/Oceania event was held at 6:30 AM GMT and the EU/US event was held at 3:30 PM GMT. The event featured a tour of a very work in progress version of World 9, Ace's city. The Asia/Oceania event saw an attendance of 2-4 people. However, the EU/US event was attended by around 30-40 people after an unexpected shout out by Stars Align developer SirRovers. After an introductory speech by BuiltRealm, the guests were teleported to the work in progress world, where they had the chance to explore the world.

The official highlights video of the event can be found here.

Worlds

 * Prologue
 * The Kernel
 * 1: Cael's Courtyard
 * 2: Seph's Sea
 * 3: Blitz's Backyard

Characters

 * Commander Cael
 * Seph
 * Blitz
 * Faber

Trivia

 * Relic was originally titled Vague.