Devlog #1

Welcome to the very first devlog for Vesper & The Umbral Passage!

Since this is the first time posting here, we wanted to give an overview of what the game is, what you can expect, and where we’re headed.

The Premise

Vesper & The Umbral Passage is a third-person action-adventure platformer set in a surreal network of fractured worlds. You play as Vesper Vaughn, a young jerboa explorer searching for his missing parents, famed adventurers who vanished during a forbidden expedition into the Umbral Passage. The Passage isn’t just a mystery of worlds; it’s tangled in the legacy of two families who once explored it together. Not everyone who left for that expedition returned, and the truth about why has been buried under years of half-told accounts and rewritten history. As Vesper follows the trail of clues, he’s pulled into a journey where finding his parents means confronting the same forces and the same people that may have caused their disappearance.

Gameplay

Vesper’s signature ability is staff teleportation: throw his staff at certain walls or surfaces and instantly blink to it, creating fast, fluid movement for platforming and combat. Combined with double jumps, dashes, and environmental puzzles, this allows for varied traversal across each level. Players will explore semi-open areas filled with platforming challenges, environmental hazards, collectibles, and hidden lore.

Tone & Style

We’re aiming for a bold, comic-inspired visual style with cel-shading, dynamic outlines, and rich environmental storytelling. While the world is fantastical, the narrative leans into mystery, history, and the personal stakes of Vesper’s journey. You’ll uncover not just what happened to his parents, but the deeper truths about the Passage and those who have tried to control it.

What’s Already in the Game

The Umbral Station Hub

Serving as the game’s central hub, the Umbral Station is where all journeys begin and where their threads converge. It’s more than just a place to catch the train, it’s a living crossroads between worlds. Here you’ll find unfinished rooms, strange artifacts, and cryptic brochures that hint at destinations beyond the fog. Powering the station through offerings unlocks new routes, turning it into both a narrative anchor and a gateway to the unknown.

World One - Sandtrap Standoff

Dotted with strange architecture, glowing crystal growths, and towering sandstone structures marked with shifting purple sigils, world one is layered with multiple platforms, vantage points, and entrances to other playable levels, inviting you to climb and teleport your way through its vertical spaces.

Level: Cracking the Core

One of the current playable levels is set deep underground, inside a massive industrial pump chamber bathed in red glow from the molten lava below. Your goal: sabotage the geothermal machinery by hunting down critical valves hidden throughout the facility and destroying them. The level blends environmental hazards and vertical platforming, you’ll navigate rotating and moving gear platforms, while utilizing temporal mirrors to redirect and extend the reach of Vesper’s thrown staff.

Level: Scarab Squeeze

A more ancient and ominous location, the Scarab Sanctum sends you searching for a legendary scarab artifact within a ruined desert temple. The structure is filled with towering columns inscribed with shifting purple markings, some partially collapsed and others still standing in precarious stacks. Here, traversal is a test of timing as much as skill. Certain passageways are rigged with massive rolling pillars that thunder down the halls, forcing you to find cover or dive out of the way at the last moment. Between dodging these traps, you’ll navigate across crumbling ledges and scale decorated obelisks. 

Phone Booth Calls

Scattered through the Umbral Station and beyond are strange, half-buried phone booths, their glass cracked and crawling with luminous crystal growths. Push the receiver button and you’re instantly connected to voices from far away, some familiar, some less so. These calls aren’t just for show: they deliver key story beats, subtle hints, and the kind of cryptic banter that can make you question whether you’re getting the whole truth. 

The Umbral Station - New Travel Sequence

The train doesn’t just show up anymore. It demands a sacrifice, but you’ll have to earn your passage.

Here’s the rundown:

Find the Travel Agency

When you load into the Station level, head to the Travel Agency. Sitting right there, rotating just enough to make you suspicious, is the artifact. Pick it up  Press E (or Circle on controller). This also opens the brochure. The art is a work in progress. You’ll get level details, hints, and a few cryptic notes for the road ahead.

Press E/Circle again to close it. When you do, you’ll also collect the artifact because Vesper is incapable of reading travel materials without also snatching the display piece.

Make The Offering

Take that artifact to the Atrium Clock. Press E/Circle to offer it. The station responds in kind, otherworldly lightning, dangerous sparks, and you might hear something moving far off down the rails.

After the short sequence, the train arrives. It’s big, it’s loud, and it somehow manages to be both inviting and vaguely offended that you made it wait. Board it. Try not to think about where it came from.

Bugs

Slo-Mo Throw Fix 

This one’s for all of you who enjoyed the “five-second dramatic pause” before Vesper would actually throw the staff in mid-air slow motion.  Now, when you throw while falling in slow-mo, it immediately exits slow-mo and launches the staff at normal speed.

Softlock – Teleport Bug

Rare, but sometimes (mostly in Scarab Sanctum), the staff refuses to come back after teleporting, leaving Vesper stranded like a decorative statue. 

Floaty Jump

Spamming jump right now can keep Vesper hovering in mid-air. Yes, it’s exploitable. No, that doesn’t mean you should trust the laws of physics here.

Lava Floor Collision

If you drop into lava fast enough, sometimes it, like, doesn’t care. Which is not the kind of mercy we want to build into this game.

Tutorial Performance

If you see the FPS dipping in the tutorial, it’s probably because the trains got overexcited and started spawning too many copies of themselves. Lower your graphics settings if this happens until we fix their enthusiasm.

Camera Conflicts

Dialogue and brochure interactions can sometimes wrestle for control of the camera, causing aiming mode to get stuck afterward. If your view feels wrong, you’ve probably just witnessed a UI fistfight.

Next Steps:

Swap out those placeholder greybox props for fully textured, optimized 3D models. Yes, even the train. And yes, it’s as exciting as it sounds. First on the list for levels is the station itself, architecture, the atrium clock (where the offering is made) indoor props. 

Integrate more phone calls into other levels to integrate lore and narrative.

Final Word from the Passage

This build is about making the Station feel more alive, not just a hub, but a place that reacts to Vesper's presence. It’s a link between worlds and the first step toward Vesper finding the one's he's lost.

Or in our case? The first step toward really annoying a certain interdimensional transit schedule.