Announcing Corn Sausage v2.0

Happy Birthday, Cool Guy

Corn Sausage RPG began as little more than a shitposty practice project to grease my wheels in preparation for a much more ambitious video game. It taught me some things about myself and how I work, but more importantly led me to meet some cool people who against all odds had found something of value in the game. Complete strangers played it on stream, broadcasting to their audiences something deeply and profoundly… embarrassing.

I initially only spent a month on it; I wanted to see what I could accomplish in a short time. Since then, Corn Sausage has sat on Itch.io as an unfinished joke. Sure it had some sweet sentiments, but they were hidden behind an intentionally unnerving title screen and stolen visual assets. Few dared venture beyond such an intimidating barrier. I am an incredibly self-conscious person, so it wasn’t long before I was steamrolled by the realization that my name was associated with a game that looked like Pokemon and played like a thirty-year-old dog. 

The next few months I worked busily on my next project, but all the while there was something nagging at me. It tugged on my shirt, begged for my attention, gnawed at my soul, and haunted my dreams.. It was Cool Guy. Demanding to be finished, to be loved, to be turned into a proper, honest-to-god video game hero. And so I abandoned my social life and put everything on the backburner to return to my firstborn child.

So I spent the last five months on Corn Sausage 2.0-- a complete overhaul of every piece of the game. I don’t know when it will be done. I have zero estimate. When I started in May, I tricked myself into thinking it would all be ready today, but you know how it goes. Scope creep, burn out, perfectionism, blah blah blah blah blah. Game development happened and is happening. Let’s do some sneak peeks.

Everything is subject to change.

The easiest thing for me to share is  how the game has changed graphically. I'm working hard at replacing every single graphic that was present before. Characters, tilesets, UI, everything. There were far too many players who downloaded the game thinking it was a Pokemon Romhack, only to be massively disappointed. No more Pokemon: Crystal artwork. Though the color palette remains the same.

The new graphics aren't professional-grade, no, but they are pretty slick. I'm very inexperienced with pixel art, and RPG Maker MV's 48x48 grid has proved to be a rather difficult canvas to experiment with. Nonetheless, I'm happy with how it's turning out. I'm learning a lot, straining my eyes a bit too much, and prettying up the place.

Everything looks and feels so much better. Much more alive and responsive. Characters are expressive, buildings have personality, and the ground.... well, the ground still needs work.


More than anything else, I wanted to improve the game's exploration. I've always been drawn to games that focused heavily on exploration and finding secrets. To turn Corn Sausage into the comedy adventure game of my dreams, I've spent a lot of my focus on improving that side of it, starting with little details, such as adding a hefty border around every map screen to always keep Cool Guy centered, and including moving arrow graphics that spawn when the player approaches them.

Moving around is becoming more fun! The player's base movement is faster, Cool Guy has a slick new running animation separate from his normal walk cycle. It's really cute. He has other animations for different actions. He's so expressive now!
Picking up items is about 99% faster. No more message window that halts the game. Now a little pop-up appears and-- get this-- it doesn't interrupt player movement. Fucking incredible.

It's important for the physical space of the world to make sense. Where many maps were at first made to be dreamlike and nonsensical, players found them to be jarring with sudden and confusing connections. Thus. most maps have been redesigned for clarity and convenience. The critical path and boundaries are much clearer, plus optional areas and teased future sections are a bit more exciting to find. My testers have found these redesigns to be just what the doctor ordered.


The writing was by far the most praised part of the game at release. Dear fans of Corn Sausage, do not worry; the game is still stupid and funny. The silly tone, wacky jokes, and rare glimpses at heartfelt connection is all preserved and in many cases improved with some trimming down or re-wording.

I'm also adding a substantial number of new characters and optional quests. Nothing that's "filler." Only prime cuts. This is a wacky world the game takes place in, and only has room for the wackiest inhabitants.

Some boring bits: I changed the dialogue box  to be easier on the eyes with a "Dark Mode-esque" theming, and altered some letters in the font. No longer will you have to guess whether it's an "h" or a "k." I've added highlighting to some important words (such as "Cool Guy" in the first screenshot on this post) to help out with readability.


The biggest criticism players had for the game was its combat. This was to be expected; I had only barely touched the combat systems in my one month of development time!

The new combat system in place isn't groundbreaking, but I set out to create something fun and intuitive. To start, I removed the "MAtk," "MDef," and "Luck" stats and cut out Leveling entirely. Previously, the player was capped at Lv5 for a joke. I liked the joke, but it led to mass confusion and hysteria. Players will find stat boosts as rewards from Quests and bonuses from Equipment.

Combat will be a high-octane extravaganza with a heavy emphasis on status effects and synergy. All party members have new skills that can play off each other in interesting ways. New and improved enemies will provide a reasonable and entertaining challenge. The "Heal" and "Guard" abilities have been removed. In place of Guard is a Quick-Time Event based Dodge skill which has proven fun to play around with. and generates a feeling of momentum. It's turning out pretty cool!

Do I have a preview of it? Nope! Sorry! Just take my word on it. I'm allowed to do that because this game is free.

While it's tempting to say that as a solo developer and artist, I've done this all by myself, it wouldn't feel right to conclude without showing my appreciation for everyone who has shown me support. I'd like to give special thanks to my fiance, Tessa, for all of her love and patience as I throw almost all of my free time at this project. To my friend Syvesh, who has probably in total tested this game as many times as it has been played by others. It would be nowhere near as nice without his awesome feedback and suggestions. To Possumbee and Ilma for encouraging me as I flood our Discord server with preview screenshots. To my pals Elio, Ben, and Noah for their help filming some live action videos. More on those later.

Finally, to Riggy2k3and DZPG1, two rad streamers who not only played the game to an audience, showered it with praise, and continuously give it free advertising, but have warmly welcomed me into their communities. Please be sure to check them out. You'll dig their styles.

While you're at it, check out DELUGE, a fun spooky RPG by Riggy that was also released on Halloween. You get to play as a Skeleton laying siege on a small village on a dark, stormy night. It's rad.


I wish there was something more flashy I could do to celebrate Corn Sausage's first birthday. This blog post has been thrown together kind of hastily, and these screenshots are far from the best representation of what's to come. I'm so excited to share that with you when I can.

I'm planning to release a short Demo of the update before the end of the year. Comment below if you're interested in testing that before its release!

When I started this thirteen months ago, I asked two people for one word each. They gave me "Sausage," and "Corn." 

This game has come a long way. It still has a long way to go. It's going to be well worth the wait.

Thank you for reading.



tl;dr : (fart noises)