Thread Bound: Re-Created To Be Original

Hey look a fancy tile!
Anyway, I've made this journal to announce both some good news, and some "what?" news. I guess it really just depends on your preference. The good news is: I decided not to let Thread Bound die, and gave it a good second try. The "what?" news is, it's not going to be like the Thread Bound you've been waiting for.
What happened?
As of recently, I had the idea to go completely "Freedom Planet" on this game, and re-write it to where it did not feature any owned web comic characters or worlds. In other words, make it a completely original IP. For a while I thought against it, as I thought the game would loose a lot of it's charm and creativity, on top of the fact that I didn't wan't to disappoint people. However, I began talking about it on twitter with and the more and more we talked about it, the more comfortable I was with the idea. So, I began writting and making character concepts. At first I thought it was still weird and wasn't right, but the more and more I worked on it I found a new found fondness for the concept of the game. Since the characters where my own, I had more fun working on their personalities, designs, and stories. The characters felt like they could be their own main character in their own stories, which was something I tried to do in the original script but it didn't work out as well. And now, here we are today.
Why did you make this decision?
A large number of reasons caused this to come up, some spanning from the very beginning of the game's creation. One was that I really couldn't do almost ANYTHING with this property in terms of copyright. I couldn't sell it (not that I originally wanted to) or sell anything FOR it (like prints, posters, shirts, ect). The game would just be "the game" and that's it. I wanted to do more for it, but I couldn't. On top of that, the game would hardly get any recognition, or if it did it would be a very nitch fanbase. It would probably be one of the biggest games I'd ever made for a few years, and only a small group of people would actually like it/understand it. Yes, there are many people in each fanbase, but it wouldn't grow anywhere past said fanbases. It may sound kinda mean to say, but it didn't really seem worth it. I still love each comic to death and want to make things for them, but I'd much rather make smaller projects for each than one huge time consuming one.
Plus, I felt that the writing and gameplay surpassed the game's purpose. I considered it to be one of the best things I'd ever written (under Cheetah Kid) and could even be compared to full fledged RPG's or games in general. And even then, I couldn't completely call it "mine" as passionate as I was about it. These weren't my characters, and a portion of it wasn't my idea technically either. The game would go majorly unrecognized by default, and I didn't want that to happen to my creation.
Aside from that, it was always a bit harder to write for some of the characters. This is mainly in reference to Mace, Freddy, and oddly enough, Cheetah Kid. Since Mace's World could only take place during specific parts of his prelude comic, there wasn't much room for character development, world content, or action even. Freddy's comic was way too new, so I couldn't really get a read on his character. I also couldn't do what I wanted with him as it would be far to drastic of a deviation of his character. Cheetah Kid was A: my character, making it hard to write him any differently than how he already developes, B: Only went through 3-5 arcs of his comic, and most of his development in the series takes place slowly over a matter of months and years. Besides that, it was just hard to have some of the characters have good chemistry with each other. It's a bit of a complicated matter, and hard to describe, so I'll just leave it at that.
Is the story the same/different?
In terms of plot, no. It's still about Taylor's girlfriend dying and him going world to world to find a way to revive her, and along the way getting involved with fighting the Woven. The THEME, however, is a bit different. Instead of traveling to different Web Comic worlds, the Worlds and companions are all based on fiction genres (Fantasy, Scifi, Adventure, ect). There are obviously some similarities between each of the old worlds/companions and the ones that took their place, but I can assure you that they are unique, and not carbon copies.
I will admit that I found it REALLY hard to deviate away from certain characters *COUGH* *COUGH* Peanut and Trace *COUGH* *COUGH*. I found myself to have grown too attached to their friendship and dynamic with Taylor, and felt that the three of them where pretty much the mascots of the game. So if you notice that two characters have a STRIKING resemblance to either of them, you know why.
So are you going to show the characters or what?
Oh right:

*Cough*

I mean I didn't even try to hide it with Purky, I even used the same style to draw him XD



She didn't have to be a cat, I just wanted a balance in animal-esque characters 

Now see, my main worry about changing the characters was because I was sure it'd be weird outside of any scenario besides "these characters are from different webcomics", and looking at the cast alone it probably does look weird as heck. But hopefully when you get around to playing the game, you'll get to see how well they interact with one another.
Anything new game play wise?
The game itself will probably be a bit smaller than the original, only because it doesn't have a need for as many Secret Bosses or Side Companions. The main game will be about as long though.
The combat, on the other hand, has actually been improved! Each character will have 3 base attack animations, a combo if you will, to make the action a bit less stale. There will also be unique animations for certain spells and abilities.
I also have plans to add blocking, dodging, and locking on, but that's still in development.
Will the graphics be like the ones displayed in the last video?
After a lot of practice with the GGMaker engine, and with making pixel art, I can assure you that the game will look FAR nicer. For example:



Some of Taylor's new sprites (Idle/Walking on top, And his basic combo at the bottom)
You'll notice that he's not holding a spear, that's because I figured out how to make holding frames for each character! That means the weapon sprite is separate from his base sprite, so all of Taylors weapons follow the same animation pattern as eachother. You'll see what I mean in a later video.
I also changed the HUD to look better, but I think I'll have to change Taylor's health to be less...

Kingdom Hearts inspired.  I mean it's not EXACTLY Kingdom Hearts but I mean... look at it. THE KH HUD JUST WORKS SO WELL, it's honestly one of the best HUDs I've seen.
I also have to change the MP to AP (Aurora Points) and make it purple instead of blue. The little Item/Magic box will have to be changed as well.
Also, this is just a test map, it's not actually part of Infiniville.

On a side note, While the character graphics will all be 2D, Most of the environment will be in 3D. This means the Trees, fences, ect. For some of the larger enemies, I MIGHT make it 3D, but I hold no promises as I'm still not the best at 3D stuff.

What about the weapons? Will they be any different?
Unfortunately, yes. A lot of the weapon designs made by me and will have to go unused, mainly because they where heavily based on their user or the companion's worlds.
And the soundtrack?
I recently taught myself how to use Fruity Loop Studio, so I'll be using that so I can actually make music NOT made with non-commercial use loops. Some of the songs won't sound as good as the original OST, but those were made with music loops made by professionals.
The original OST will be released on both YouTube and SoundCloud. However, I'm not sure if I'll be putting ALL of the tracks on youtube, as there's about 40 songs on it 
Wait, does this mean that the game's no longer free???
I honestly have no idea at this moment in time. I could totally sell the game now with no problem, but I'm not sure if I should. With where my life is going, I probably should to help me financially, but some part of me still says I shouldn't. I know the new soundtrack probably won't be free, that much is true. Neither of these things would be expensive though. I don't think the game is quite at the level to be more than $5-$10. I think the new OST would be around $10 though.
So is the original idea for the game dead?
Not quite, I have ideas as what to do with it.  
Friends always find their way back to one another. We never truly forget where your roots lie.  

That's all for now though, if you feel there are some questions left un-answered in this, feel free to ask in the comments. There will be further details as time goes on, so stay tuned! Hopefully you guys understand my reasoning though. Trust me,it may seem weird at first, but I'll show you in time that this was for the best (Hopefully).