#something closer to just. a human level of body dysphoria. no focus on the whole duplicate thing just... raw disgust for the self

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[nathlomon]

very rough concepts for apophistuck

so today ive been questioning over what planets there would be for the whole story n stuff. bc its not just hanging around but a buncha other stuff. so. yea. each so far has like 2 level varieties- the “architecture” levels w/built stuff n the “natural” ones which are just like the ecosystem around it. but there will be more.

(i accidentally turned this into somewhat of a narrative as i kept writing, sorryy)

Gaia

The “Earth” setting of the story. It has a very biology-based, natural setting. There are cave levels, eventually the player is brought to other ones where they fight prokaryotic beasts as they evolve in little-oxygen, volcanic Proto-Earth. Godzilla is available in this setting as the level progresses into the city. There they meet an enormous human congregation, panicked, in one of the final levels, where monsters flood the scenery. In the end of the world they are chased by a beast that resembles some sort of...Miasmad Jr.

Stygius

Stygius is a planet- well, not really a planet, but sort of like an underworld setting of Gaia, full of mountains and ghostly opponents. Hokmuto is unlocked upon completing the first level. Lots of large spiderlike beasts trot around shack-like structures and many slightly bigger that Miasmad Jr in Gaia. In some levels, there are no opponents though the focus is more on some sort of visual storytelling, talking about the story of many game aspects, one of the visions being of Solomon and Red fighting, as well as some sort of funeral pyre being offered to a giant monster as some sort of sacrifice. Some revelations are made about certain characters and the boss is like a giant aquatic beast dwelling inside a lake, resembling a fish-squid mix. As it dies, its body dissolves in the water into a mass of garbled graphics that resemble somewhat intelligible game glyphs.

Audacium

The entire world has a rather industrial look and organic robotics aesthetic. where horned grey abstractions of monsters climb on top of walls and attempt to attack the player, who is made incredibly small and whose attacks deal much lesser damage than usual for the first half of the planet’s levels, which are some of the hardest of the game. Upon completing them, the opposite happens and the player’s usual size doubles, as well as its attack power and health- but so do the enemies (...so the game doesn’t really change that much from normal). The colors of the assorted forms of the enemies seem to be sequential, with groups of enemies ranging from red, to orange, all the way until purple and a slightly-pinker purple, where the level layout starts to resemble more of a river platform thing more than anything. The boss resembles a large pink human/fish/salamander thing with a large rainbow-y trident for a weapon. It towered over the player and often opens its mouth to reveal a large robotic cannon that shoots lasers at the player. Upon defeat, the monster drops a small, black pixelated mass that can be picked up.

Secular

A planet that has plain-looking natural features that are like the surface of a moon, with opponents that look like half-alien lich beasts. It also contains levels that take place in what seem like space colony formations with mostly inorganic enemies, like traps that can be found around, like rockets and explosives. Every once in a while scientist-like figures with elk heads can be seen using giant syringes to take life from the player, with every wave of them being completed by a giant monster that resembles an upside-down rotting elk head which “walks” with its antlers and spits out swarms of blowflies.  The final boss resembles a strange, lanky white form (somewhat like Not-Gezora) with a large featureless head, and at death it has an animation of it melting down into diminutive, spider-like animals.

Baroque

A world that is marked by nearly full darkness. What makes the natural levels even remotely visible are the impaled poles in the background, which contain horned, humanoid skulls with bright yellow lights radiating from its jaw gaps and eye sockets, like a jack-o-lantern. Enemies often resemble wormlike beasts that stay underground until they sense they player, which is when they attack. Multiple-headed bats are also other enemies seen in the natural levels, with a miniboss being eventually fought that resembles a beastly cleric. The final blows aren’t the ones that defeat it, but rather a giant sword that swings and decapitates it.

 The other variety of levels involve colorful and unusually cheery church-like structures depicting stained glass art of morbid events, strangely enough.  The level includes enemies such as greyish flying cherubim/seraphim and quadrupedal caprine monsters wearing what look like nun robes. The boss of that level is a large dark grey monster with messy white and black face markings and long, distorted purple horns with multi colored splotches. At death, a cutscene plays, and text that says “ORDER HAS BEEN VIOLATED BY YOUR GALL. THE MARK IN YOUR DISOBEDIENT FLESH SHOWS A PREMONITION OF YOUR DOOM.” Upon viewing this, Kaiju!Janavo becomes available as a player character.

Hiraeth

A stage where everything feels old, nostalgic, like eons ago- or was it something perhaps closer, more recent? The levels seem to resemble a castle with eagles and lizards decorating it. Worn, yellow papers with interrogation marks on them mark the walls, with enemies looking like ghostly formations made from cobwebs and tattered bags of straw, and haunted knight armor filled with what looks like a slime monster. In the end of each level there would be a chest that revealed to be a crablike mimic. After defeating it, the player receives some HP. Another level features what resembles a swamp with towering mangrove trees. The enemies resemble skeletal sea snakes and dryad-esque opossums, as well as six-winged parrots. At the end of the level, the player finds a hooded figure kneeling in the shallow water. When they notice its presence, the hood is lifted and a nearly unrecognizable face is visible, covered in wounds and a sorrowful look in its features. The screen turns black as to display text, that says “GONE FOR SO LONG. THE LOST SPAWN OF ATLAS. REUNITE.”. Upon that, the figure starts to weep, and tears begin to drop from its sprite. As it cries, the water level rises and it incentives the player to continue walking, as to end the world.

Dysphoria

A level that has its entire atmosphere drawn to a colorless and sharp aesthetic. Unlike the other levels, that contain a horizontal line as its route for the player to walk towards. one of Dysphoria’s level types involves having them climb a diagonal, upwards-facing mountain. For flying characters, the rise is relatively faster although they are vulnerable to airborne attacks like a pendulum-like mace that appears from the top of the screen and swings for a couple of seconds.

 Enemies come crawling downwards the mountain and tend to resemble frozen, incredibly thin and bony wolves, which tend to every once in a while self-sacrifice by detonating themselves and sending bone shrapnel to deal gradual damage to the player.  Other enemies involve vultures which open their mouths to throw spinning daggers. Upon reaching the summit, the mountain begins to break apart as something like an earthquake strikes the soil, pushing the player into platforms. There they meet one of the bosses- a beast that resembles a large dragon covered in quills, whose attacks are based off spitting a black fluid that immobilizes the player for melee offense, and also beam attacks that resemble fiery raindrops. No cutscene follows the defeat. 

Another level features a scenario that resembles a courtroom, with multiple uniform, faceless entities as the jury, two horned creatures that seem covered in drapes as the parties and a judge that looked more like a strange sharklike beast. After the “trial” ends by the shark slamming a femur on the table as a gavel, the entire setting is attacked by batlike creatures with human skulls, one of the draped parties being mauled by the monsters, and a dark pink puddle of blood pooling under its dying body. One of the skullbats proceeds to impale its body with a trident coming from its mouth as a final blow. The screen, again turns to black and text saying “A MEMORY REVIVED, TO NEVER BRING JOY AGAIN”. 

Lugubre

The final level. It’s almost completely natural in terms of level scenery, resembling some sort of haunted, bone-filled forest with frozen puddles of water on the ground. The enemies resemble mostly half-reptile, half-mammalian beasts with snarling teeth and drops that caused the game interface to become nearly invisible from darkness for around 30 seconds, only the player sprite being outlined white. As the level progresses, humanoid skulls with spider legs appear and use green lasers as ranged attacks. Another level features cobra-like beasts with centipede legs inside a flooded cave, which has a viperfish-mudskipper hybrid covered with spines and open wounds. When defeated, it soaks the ground in a dark red fluid, which starts to consume the level’s walls while phasing through all of the spectrum until it reaches pink, when the entire screen has become covered. Eventually black fish skeletons begin to pile up at the bottom of the level, slowly rising, and eventually the player is stuck in a mound of bones, without having an end-level route. After they get consumed by bones, the level ends.

 When they move to the final level, the scenario resembles a rocky wasteland covered in inorganic parts and surrounded by glowing cyan lakes. There are barely any hostile enemies though NPCs can be viewed interacting with each other, like fishes getting snatched up by crows and carrion being consumed by bears. Eventually, the layout begins to become more aquatic, and it’s the stage where hostile characters begin to appear, which resemble intermediate stages of cetacean evolution and amphibians. They tend to attack the player with pink “acid fluid”. The level, after it becomes simply a far-away platform-jumping scene with water in between, starts to include fish. Passive, pink fish are seen jumping out in schools, only to splash back underwater again. Suddenly, a lightning bolt is seen zapping the fish mid-air and causes them to float around, with a lonely one falling back into the water. 

The player finally is left to swim only, having to fight large mollusk monsters that have the average health of a miniboss. A particular one, which seems to resemble a large, plate-covered squid with lobster pincers, manages to drain away a large portion of the player character’s health, and when they find themselves trapped, the dropped fish returns as a large whale, striking itself against them and having them attach themselves to its sprite, as if somehow riding it. The two float around the air for around 8 seconds, which then is followed by the whale splashing back into the water and spraying water onto the player from its blowhole, restoring the health of all its characters. However, when it returns underwater, it dissolves into sea foam- leaving the player alone yet again. 

The sprite of Warlock appears, half-turned into a shark. A black screen with text says “FROM THE WALLS YOU’VE SMASHED. THIS IS THE ONE THAT WILL BREAK YOUR NAILS”. The duel between Warlock and the player is tricky, as he moves extremely fast and is able to sacrifice local NPCS for health, as well as draining it from the player. His attacks are somewhat like a combo, managing to inflict lots of damage multiple times in a short timespan. Ranged attacks involves him glowing bright green and making a radius of boiling water around his body that deals damage. Easily he could bring half of the player’s monsters to less than 5 life bars during the fight. 

And when he is finally defeated- he does not swim away or dissolve, but instead has his mouth open and from within, is revealed a much larger and intimidating marine beast, skin covered in deep wounds, blotches of pink and blue littering its hide, with two jaws, four sharp claws, and a sharp extendable fin. A black screen with text says “I’VE MANAGED TO TEAR DOWN AT YOU QUITE WELL, JANAVO. I CAN SENSE YOUR WEAKENING MUSCLES, YOUR MIND SHUTTING DOWN. NOW SOON I WILL DISPLAY YOUR CARCASS TO MY REIGN, YOUR BLOOD WILL MIX WITH MAERAH’S FOR OUR ULTIMATE FEAST!”

The player is locked to only utilize Janavo as a character, whose attacks seem to deal not a lot of damage to the scarred beast, and his move which involves lowering his damage from an attack by using his hood is rendered useless. Its attacks involve spraying dark purple ink at the player, temporarily disabling their attacks, and slashing at them with its claws. This combination of moves makes for a challenging and nearly impossible battle, together with taunting comments and imagery. The beast, once Janavo is at one life bar, makes one last comment, saying “HOW WEAK AND LAUGHABLE OF YOU TO SUCCUMB LIKE THIS. JUST LIKE YOU WERE MANY YEARS AGO, FRAIL AND SENSITIVE. HOW ABOUT YOU FINALLY RETURN TO SUCH A FORM AGAIN, AND LET’S END YOUR PATHETIC, PETTY EXISTENCE!”

And so it proceeds to charge a bright red beam and shoot it at his sprite, which was twitching, becoming thinner and smaller, until Janavo resembled nothing but a dry, shriveled husk worm contorted into a curled up shape, surrounded by a blue “mist”. A laugh comes from the killer monster, which proceeds to grow large tentacles from its scars which start to consume the screen, but when it least notices, they are all pulled back and torn from its body in a gory fashion. Then it is shown that the whale had ripped them off itself and was consuming them. It faces the screen and everything fades to black as it dialogues with the player. 

“Dear. The blood of Atlas still flows through me. This is not the true fate of you. Remember the dueling behemoths that once managed to climb their way out. The two, who now offer their own lives to reverse this nightmare.”

The screen returns to the death of Janavo and the husk is devoured by the whale. On his place, appears a strange, purple tauric creature which was labeled “Mialomon”. The scarred beast went at full speed to successfully devour and kill him, but 10 health bars were taken away as its body seemingly goes limp as if broken inside. Mialomon’s attacks are a heat beam and using his tail as a whip, which both seem to deal a moderate amount of damage yet he shows to have an extremely high level of defense, with every blow received draining around only a quarter of his life bar. With every hit he gives, the beast seems to be torn to shreds, with its scars becoming screaming mouths, and its movements becoming more frantic. When nothing but its heads, spine and ribs remain, Miamolon inserts its front legs on the top jaw and pushes them apart, splitting both heads in half, ending its existence and clouding itself in dark violet blood. 

The whale appears again, and says “The pain has been vanquished, at last. Salvation has been reached. Now it can all sprout back again, fill itself with life and joy”. It opens its mouth, and from it, comes the revived sprite of Janavo, large and majestic again. The other characters are again accessible and soon the whale turns into some sort of mermaid. “I’ve missed you so much. The spawn of Atlas truly did save and reunite with its ophidian cavalier. I will never allow anyone to separate us again“. A pink sigil appears, and the game returns to the Godzilla: MoM home screen.

BONUS: Password Screen and More

The glyphs that can be seen at the death of Stygius’ boss can be used as an input. It will make so that the next time you (re)play the final level of Gaia featuring the human cluster, you will receive a cutscene that features Aloisio and his relations to both Earth and Stygius, and upon that, you will gain him as a playable character. Smaller in defense and size, he compensates it with high attack speed and strength.

By replaying the courtroom Dysphoria level, without setting in any code, by leaving the scene before watching the murder of the draped entity, the screen also turns to black. But the text instead says “A familiar yet so fresh scene you had to witness. Much like the manuscripts mention. Pain so sharp and tearful, like a talon slash to the eye. Not evaporating, not even when you try to close them. May warmth be in your heart, might by your side, and you will never shed blood tears again.” After that display, the player has a new playable character in the board- Sebastian.

By typing in “ENDOGENAS” as an input after finishing Lugubre, by replaying the game, Janavo’s sprite is shown to wear the carcass of the scarred beast as a lavish cloak.