Neopets: The Darkest Faerie; discussion about certain mysteries

[rossthereddragon]

This thread only concerns those who have played or are familiar with the PS2 game 'Neopets: The Darkest Faerie'

Many years ago, I stumbled upon a site run by whichever company made the models and animations. That's the origin place where these model sheet styles came from.

Some ref sheets are still searchable online if you google 'Neopets the darkest faerie model sheet' but not all of them will show up

The website (which is long gone now) had a ref sheet containing Psellia and Siyana. However, they do not appear in the game (as the description of the image also says 'cut'). The models looked as expected, with both faeries sharing the same body shape and type as Illusen and Fyora.
Additionally, there was a list showing the names of the different model assets (example: since baby grarrls exist as a model, it is listed as 'Young Grarrl' and so on).
And then I noticed something odd. There were 2 names I have not seen before, Spyder boss (cut) and Cloud beast (cut). Which means 2 bosses (assuming Cloud Beast is a boss) have been cut from the game. There was no model sheet or additional info, just the names were present, which leads me to believe that the either was either cut early on before modelling finished or even began.

Also, upon further digging on info, I found this site: http://www.peterjwalters.com/video-games.html#neopets
It is, however, not the website I was talking about, but it DOES have the Psellia model, but not the Siyana model. It also does not talk about the cut bosses.

On that site you can also see a 'playtesting' video which shows early footage of the game. And it is early footage, because in the final version, the bandit enemies have longer lifebars.
I also do recall seeing (not on this site, I don't know where I found it) of an early video game footage of 'Crypt of the sentries' area where the 'skull spirit' enemies had short lifebars. Additionally the 'dumb skeleton' enemies were not called that. I forgot the name but it was somewhere along the lines of 'Skeleton' or 'Skeleton basher'

There was also a youtube channel ran by one of the animators where some (not all) of the game's animations (particularly Tor and Roberta) were being tested against a gray background, which included Roberta making funny faces. I cannot find this channel sadly.

I was wondering if anyone had any info about those mysteries because I can't be the only one curious about it

[Rayd1978]

I was actually talking with someone about the game just the other day.    I know next to nothing about the production, other than it was a little too rushed since the copy I have can't be completed.   The 'Cape of Invisibility' or whatever it was called didn't drop properly, so you could never complete the missions where it was required.

As I never got the finish the game, I remain curious about the Hidden Tower very early in the game.   You could go in, but at that point in the game only had a couple of coins, and the items it sold were several thousand coins.    It was technically possible to spend a couple hours farming a blade of golden grass to get enough coins, but I sort of have to assume you were meant to go back there later.  I just havn't the slightest idea how.

[kuhlowie]

 

I just played through this game all over again a couple months ago and the nostalgia filled with me with glee! 

Although I don't know anything about the mysteries you've mentioned, I did find this video that I thought was interesting:

 

[kuhlowie]

Actually, I see a comment on that video now that looks almost identical to what you just posted about so maybe you've already seen that video 

[rossthereddragon]

On 11/29/2018 at 12:37 AM, Rayd1978 said:

I was actually talking with someone about the game just the other day.    I know next to nothing about the production, other than it was a little too rushed since the copy I have can't be completed.   The 'Cape of Invisibility' or whatever it was called didn't drop properly, so you could never complete the missions where it was required.

As I never got the finish the game, I remain curious about the Hidden Tower very early in the game.   You could go in, but at that point in the game only had a couple of coins, and the items it sold were several thousand coins.    It was technically possible to spend a couple hours farming a blade of golden grass to get enough coins, but I sort of have to assume you were meant to go back there later.  I just havn't the slightest idea how.

Yes you do return there later at the end of Act 3, after obtaining Fyora's Rod. You can lessen the grinding time by entering and exiting the library to instantly regrow the grass. Also sorry to hear that you don't get the Cloak of heroes :'c