Ballast

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Welcome to the Anchor

Hello! We are the developers of an in-development Roblox game known as BALLAST. BALLAST is a game that is inspired by Pressure, Doors, EPIC: The Musical, SCP, The Backrooms, Bioshock, and more! We aim to take it elsewhere in the future (Godot, perhaps), but for now, we are here for ease of development and accessibility. We want to make an experience that, while reminiscent and clearly inspired, is unique in its own right. Some things will echo what you've experienced before, but most things will be fresh (we hope!). We want to create something that allows you to have a new space with the aspects and gameplay many of us loved while adding to it and weaving something new. New faces, new lore, new stories! Perhaps as expected, it will feature Doors-style gameplay, a familiar setting and familiar theme. However, it will have a new story to piece together thought interaction and environmental storytelling, new bad guy(s), and new characters to interact with. In particular, we are aiming to have an affinity system implemented with some of the NPCs that will impact your gameplay to some degree! Gianni had said something along the lines of "There is going to be a lot of cool, new stuff that will come out, and you're going to make some of it". We have taken that to heart. With that out of the way, this is going to be an ask blog in traditional tumblr fashion! You can ask questions about the characters, directly to them or the developers, ask about the world, or mechanics, or whatever! We hope you will give us a chance to share our story and characters with you. We're very excited to see you in The Anchor!

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Happy Pride, everyone!

Just a friendly reminder that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, respect, and kindness. Love is love. And we can’t wait to see what kind of crazy ships you guys come up with when more of our characters are fleshed out.

We also plan on including cannon LGBT representation where possible, too! So we hope you guys stick around to see what we have in store for the future. ❤️

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to message us. 🏳️‍🌈

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We wanted to give a quick apology for the lack of updates! Our plan is to post something every day when we can, but things have been busy for us between work and life stuff. We're catching up, though! ♥ We hope to share more with you soon! As always, feel free to send in questions if you have them!

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Introduction

Heya! I'm Kara! I'm one of the three lead devs of Ballast and I'm the one kind of spearheading the project! We're not the only devs by any means, but we're the ones in charge. Everyone working on this is pretty passionate about it and all have some amazing ideas, so I'm excited for you all to see what we come up with! I'm an artist by trade; I've worked on Homestuck as one of the artists under the first wave of the Art Team back in the day (under my deadname), and I also designed a poster that made its way into Bendy and the Ink Machine! (Under my old username-- it was the Siren's Serenade poster!) Needless to say, I'm comfortable with digital art as well as 3D modeling (I make stuff for VRchat, too)... but game development is a whole different beast! I'm learning Luau and animation as I go, I'm the one making the rooms, helping with props and concept art, and trying to dabble in music to help out there... it's a lot to juggle! All of us are adults (a few of us 30+!), and most of us have full time jobs, so what we do is where we can in our free time. I tend to have a lot more time than the others, so I'm working my hardest between my other obligations. As a result, DEVELOPMENT IS VERY SLOW, but it's coming together, piece by piece. We don't want to rush this, but we don't want to just sit on it without talking about it, either! We're doing our best to consolidate concept art, screenshots of props and the very few rooms we have so far to at least give you guys an idea of where we're heading with this. We've also got LOTS of lore; we won't share everything, but we'll share plenty! ♥ I had been a big fan of Pressure, like a lot of people. Around October/November of 2024, I had made an OC, a scientist, that I had wanted to utilize in that universe and explore his dynamic with the world and other characters. I got the idea for him while listening to EPIC; for obvious reasons, I needed to repurpose him... and so the idea Ballast kind of came about.

I made a post a while back asking people what they liked and disliked about Pressure... I took the answers we received, shared it with the other devs, and we took it all into consideration as we started development. There's gonna be similarities to Pressure; that game is obviously a huge inspiration for this one, in terms of locale, gameplay and the SCP-like setting. However, WE AREN'T LOOKING TO BE A COPY, and it is far from the ONLY inspiration. I've loved the ideas of massive megacorps since The Secret World, so I drew inspiration from their Orochi Group. There's a LOT of inspiration from Epic, too, and we've also drawn from Portal, Bioshock, Lobotomy Corp and some more liminal space and horror media too; the Backrooms, Annihilation, As Above, So Below, etc! We're taking these inspirations and aiming to make something new! Nostalgic, familiar... but not the same. We even have plans for a secondary game mode that plays entirely different from the main one, and we have ideas for other mechanics and elements that will keep things fresh! I'm really, REALLY excited to share what we can with you. That said, I may not interact much directly myself; my flavor of neurdivergency makes me a not very social person, lol. Pookie and Rune will be running the social accounts, and I'll just be sharing in-character or dev responses as necessary! We will also very likely NOT be running a community discord... it's a lot to maintain and we hope you can understand. Updates and communications will be shared on our social media pages instead. ♥ We also ask that you keep in mind: what we share is subject to change. Nothing is set in stone, as to be expected in early development like this. This is already way too long, lol... all that said, I hope you guys enjoy what we can share with you! - Kara

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--- (Open image in a new tab for best quality.) --- CASPIAN VEGA

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A 37 year old (former) pharmacologist. Born in Ensenada, Guánica, Puerto Rico, he and his family moved to Philadelphia in his teenage years to provide better care for his younger sister, who suffers from a debilitating lung disease. With no cure, discovering one himself had become his life's purpose; he went to college for pharmacology and upon receiving his masters, secured at job at Aegis Research and Cytology, where he was mentored by Kai Delmar, an expert in the field of genetics.

He was inevitably turned on due to pettiness and greed, mutated into a monster (utilizing the very gene he carried and had hoped to use to find a cure) and forced into the true ARC's research facility deep within the Challenger Deep. At present, the facility is in disarray and the inhabitants are either dead or have fled, save for himself and one other. Even now, his sole motivation is researching a cure for the lung disease ailing his younger sister. He can seem rather cold, but he is not heartless... he cares quite deeply for those he considers family and friends, few though they may be. --- While you won't be dealing with Caspian for purchases, you will be able to interact with him all the same. Upon your first encounter with him, Caspian will appear in the lobby on subsequent runs, to keep an eye on you (though he won't admit as such). You'll be able to bring him back special items you find on your runs that will either raise or lower your affinity with him... pay close attention to what you learn as you play to figure out what's best!

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What types of enemies/entities do you plan on implementing into the game?

Currently we plan on implementing creatures based around mythology, cryptids, folklore, as well as a couple of creatures inspired by Doors and Pressure (in mechanics), and some more SCP-like! Examples would be things like the "not-deer", an urban legend originating from the Appalachian region of the United States. A white-tailed deer at first glance, but something isn't quite right about it... We also have more fleshed out concepts, like this! These are called Nerves, and they'll function similarly to the Squiddle entities from Pressure. They are based on a big fin squid.

Art by happylittlesatyr