I love the commentary posts that Toby has been doing, so i wanted to follow suit and give some backstory to the episode! It goes without saying that there will be spoilers, so mute #OK KO SPOILERS if you wanna keep your eyes and ears unspoilt!

This was the first episode that Haewon and I got that addressed substantial main story points! It was a very intimidating episode to tackle, but it ended up being immensely fun and satisfying to work on! Since it’s about getting trapped in a video game, i decided to lean hard into my nerdy videogamey roots and paid a lot of homage to games that left a huge impact on me!

The Face Of Fear arcade machine:





The arcade machine was in Haewon’s part of the episode, but i couldn’t help making designs for it… and not only did she use it, she made it even better!! She designed the SUPER EXTRA HARD DIFFICULTY version that the machine turns into after Gar bites off more than he can chew!

Dendy’s explanation of how the game works:



I made a little video game overworld map segment to accompany dendy’s explanation of how the Face of Fear game works! This was a blend of three of my all time favorite games: I referenced MAGICAL DROP 3 for the general UI of the map because I love its aesthetics, I referenced the TURBO TUNNEL stage from the original BATTLETOADS N.E.S. game because that was one of the most terrifying and nightmarish stages i have ever played through as a child (a perfect fit for a game that is basically a nightmare given form imo), and i referenced EXOR from SUPER MARIO RPG, because that boss battle had such a huge impact on me when i first played it! Exor still looks really cool and badass to me, to this very day.



Enid’s Fear:

This is probably the most obvious reference, if you’ve ever played Chrono Trigger! It’s based on the climactic Magus fight, about a quarter of the way into the game! chrono trigger has been such a huge influence and helped me shape what my definitions of dramatic storytelling were, so i just HAD to give it a nod, even if its application wasn’t half as dramatic as the source material, hehe.

Rad’s Fear:

I can’t remember for the life of me if it was me or haewon that thought of having rad’s fear set in a room that was just a bunch of rad faces laughing and posturing (pretty sure it was haewon), but i DID draw this diagram of the room’s layout!

I have hit the image limit for this post, so i think i will end this here! There are more references in this episode, maybe i’ll do a part 2? maybe not? who knows! Thanks for reading, all the same! And to those who were saying that the right enid portrait in her fearscape looked a little familiar…