Chirality

This hack was a little bit of a thought experiment, and like so many other things that seem to happen with me and Saela, started as a joke.

Working on First Step Forward actually turned out to be even more fun than anticipated. I think it was the first time we both worked on making something with a predetermined difficulty goal. I still think that making beginner friendly stuff that is engaging and interesting is the hardest thing to do.

Regardless, at one point near the end, we joked "What if we just added reverse controls to the whole hack and never mentioned it?" The thought of a beginner hack randomly having reverse controls just struck us as funny. Pretty sure that a day after that quip was made, I had the first half of Incunabula designed.

It was also around this time where I was taking random levels I was playing in hacks and remapping left and right, just because I liked how it made my brain respond. Because of this, I wanted to slowly take it a bit further and make the player (and myself) adapt to control changes and fight against muscle memory they had built from the start of playing SMW. For me, it got to the point where I hardly noticed if controls were reversed.

The strange thing about making this hack was that it felt very freeing. It had the restriction that I wanted it to appear very beginner friendly to anyone who didn't know the gimmick. I also was very honest with myself, and knew from the start that the interest for this was going to be very small. This led to me making the hack just for myself, and being OK with limited overall interest. It was funny apologizing to testers in advance though...

To my surprise, it was actually pretty well received. Some people really enjoyed it, and there is even a deathless speedrun that was submitted for it. But truthfully, some of the funniest memories I have about this hack are people loading it up, realizing left and right are reversed on the first level, and immediately shutting it off. The hack title and description were telling, but people still didn't quite put it together until trying it themselves. It also led to a gem of a comment that to this day still makes me smile.

I still think, if the controls were normal, that these are the easiest levels I have ever and probably will ever make. There are some harder versions of the levels on a computer somewhere, including one with an ASM I created that allowed multiple stacks of inverted controls based on conditions. To those who say I cannot practice restraint, please believe me when I say I can.

I tend to be critical of my part of basically everything I am involved in, but I was pretty happy with how the artwork for this hack turned out. Very simple black and white inversion, with an inclusion of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album cover.