Trivia / BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm

• Based on a Dream: According to Word of God, the Superbosses ORDERHEAD and Lady Ny'agai were supposedly inspired by a nightmare that the developer and his sister (who also helped with the game) had, respectively, in her case a recurring nightmare since she was little.
• Creator Backlash: Shrimp seems to regard the original as shameful, as he warns players away from it on the sequel's download page. To be fair, it did contain a few elements that would be seen as problematic in today’s internet climate.
• Deleted Scene: A scene exists buried in the data, fully scripted but unused. It goes into more detail about Tyalie's meta-awareness, and reveals that Catie shares it. (In the final game, Catie never joins in with the fourth wall shenanigans.) This scene was possibly meant to play in a run following an "Easy Mode" playthrough, a sidequest which got cut.
• Development Gag: Before Catie leaves the Sphere, in Steurun and Solid Snake's house:
  • On the first floor, Solid Snake mentions that the prequel happened two years ago, then adds, "has it really only been two years? It feels more like six years." referencing the sequel's lengthy development time.
  • On the second floor, Kittykat 45973 says, "Are you finally setting off on your next big adventure? That's terrific! It seems to have been delayed quite a few times by now..." poking fun at the game’s numerous setbacks and trips through Development Hell.
• Development Hell: The game was originally announced in late 2013, and scheduled to release one year later in 2014. However, due to various required changes and other issues in the creator's life, it ended up being pushed back several times, and didn’t fully release until September 2018.
• Dummied Out:
  • There's an item called Expansion Gel, which would've given Catie temporarily huge boobs in exchange for a stat boost. The Developer's Room mentions that it didn't really fit with the game's tone, so both the gel and its related quest were left inaccessible (although both are still fully functional if hacked back in).
  • A number of unused rooms exist that can only be viewed in the editor, including an unfinished costume shop, and, for some reason, a full recreation of the Uboa event from Yume Nikki.
  • There's also an alternate, unused version of the scene with Tyalie on top of the train, which seems to have been meant for some kind of New Game Plus. In it, she states that a reset can't change the way she feels, and laments having to follow the game's script so closely.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As of 2019, the official downloads for the first game have been taken down. If you're absolutely determined to play it, the safest bet may be to track down someone from the forum who still has it in their archives.
• Throw It In!: There's a chest in The Spire that dispenses salt every time you open it. According to an NPC in the Developer's Room, this started out as a glitch, but was kept in for being funny.
• What Could Have Been: The Intersite Town museum has a whole room dedicated to this:
  • There was going to be a lengthy sequence set in the real world, as well as a chapter taking place in Instagram where the Social Justice Warriors would be the Arc Villain. Apparently, these were both cut due to pacing issues, and because the real world could not be threatened by the Big Bad which made the final chapter less intense.
  • TotalBiscuit originally had a cameo appearance, but it was removed following his passing in May 2018.
  • An elaborate easter egg called "Easy Mode" was planned but ultimately scrapped in favor of releasing the game sooner. It would have pretended to be a lower difficulty option, before unraveling into a dark, Creepypasta-esque version of the game, and have Rcoastee, who is the Final Boss and major antagonist from the original game, return as the mastermind. Apparently, several things would have played out differently in a post-Easy Mode playthrough. Of this huge secret, only a few unused sprites and a Dummied Out cutscene remain intact.
  • A fully functional recreation of Poniko's room remains among the maps of /x/. There's no way to access the maps in-game.
• Working Title: The first few demo versions were titled BoxxyQuest 2: Storm Gathering. When the decision was made to release the game outside the Boxxysphere, it was retitled to avoid putting off new players.