How SWASHPAWS began

I began the Handshake multiplayer game challenge on September 30, 2026. The game I set out to make was not SWASHPAWS. It was a liminal-space theme park adventure called S33k3r’s Ghosts, connected to the larger world of The S33k3r Transmission.

That was the starting point: an amusement park where something had gone wrong with reality. Familiar attractions would become unsettling places to explore. Players would work together, investigate the park and try to understand what had happened to the people inside it. I wanted the environment to carry the story, with rides, underground spaces and transmissions giving players reasons to keep looking.

The game before the pirates

Ghosts grew into a multiplayer idea built around people occupying overlapping realities. Other players could appear as delayed spectral echoes rather than ordinary live characters. Footsteps, traces and shared changes in the environment could tell you that someone had been there, even when you could not see them directly. The NULL SPECTER, cooperative restoration and a separate Arena gave that world its own rules and dangers.

The design changed as I explored how to deliver it for the contest. The earlier fully 3D park direction led into a smaller browser-game approach using photographic scenes, character animation, FMV and top-down multiplayer elements. Those were different production approaches to the same larger creative world. They were not proof that the platform could only support one kind of game.

There was more than a concept by the time I stopped: a repository, character references, recorded animation candidates, cleanup work and tests. Some material was still awaiting review. Having files and recorded movement did not mean the game or its animations were finished.

Making the change

About a week ago, I abandoned that scope as my entry for this contest and changed direction. I wanted a game with a clear premise that people could understand quickly, then create their own trouble inside. The work on Ghosts remains preserved. I am not erasing the project or pretending it never happened.

I intend to circle back to S33k3r’s Ghosts in 2027 or 2028. That timing depends in part on whether Liminal Sin gets the green light for production first. For now, Ghosts is shelved, and SWASHPAWS is the game I am moving forward with for the contest.

Cute cuddly pirates

SWASHPAWS began with cute animal characters, dungeons, treasure and a princess to rescue. Then came the detail that made the direction click: these cute, cuddly animals are pirates. Players can fight the baddies, collect loot, trade, form secret crews and betray one another while racing toward the rescue.

The tagline settled into something direct: Fight the baddies. Steal the loot. Save the princess. The first pirate or eligible secret crew to complete the rescue wins. Treasure and monster scores still matter as awards, but the main objective stays understandable.

I chose a true top-down view and a fixed 16:9 gameplay frame across devices. The characters have a stylized 3D look. Android phones and desktop browsers are the immediate priorities. The approved roster has eight playable animal pirates, five regular baddies, a mini-boss, the Nameless One and a white-cat princess.

Designing the route

The adventure starts at a dock in a cove, moves into the cavern and then descends underground. We have ten main story rooms and three supporting areas: a ship interior, a two-lock entrance chamber and a separate raging river course. That is thirteen environment areas to produce, not thirteen finished levels.

The revisions have mattered. A boat needed a real boarding route and an interior that filled the screen. The mini-boss needed enough floor space for players to fight. The river needed a complete redesign, with downstream drops, floating coins, branching decisions and no way to get off the rafts. A wrong turn now costs health and sends the raft back to the previous fork.

I have approved all thirty current visual directions. That completes Phase 0: concept, ideation and design. It does not turn the images into models, rigs or a playable game. Production still has to prove the movement, combat, multiplayer and performance on real devices.

Keeping the record

I want the making of SWASHPAWS to be visible while it happens. The first production priority is the Coming Soon landing page and a Behind the Scenes blog at swashpaws.com/bts. The page will follow the project from this contest through production, release and whatever comes next. Video can join the record later; the blog comes first.

Each production step will have a version-controlled checkpoint and a journal entry. Entries from the same day will stay together in one Word document, with real timestamps and an honest account of what changed.

This is the beginning of that record. SWASHPAWS is created by Mycelia Interactive LLC and designed, written and created by me, Jeremy Robards. The designs are approved. Now I want to document how they become a game people can actually play.