All posts by ShinyUmbreon25

It was recently announced that Phoenix Rising, as it currently is, will no longer be continuing development. Here is the announcement from the Discord:

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Hello @everyone . We have recently come to the conclusion that Phoenix Rising, in its current form, needs to cease development. TPCI and Nintendo have become significantly more protective of their IP in recent months, with the most significant example being the closure of Relic Castle’s website. This, coupled with upcoming changes to Discord’s Community Guidelines, makes the state of fangames significantly more unstable. As much as we all love the Pokemon franchise, these are not conditions we can work under. That said, there is still a lot of life in the ideas in this game. Phoenix Rising’s strength lies in its character-driven narrative rather than its connection to Pokemon, and can stand on its own without that connection. It is with this in mind that the team is moving forward by detaching the game from the Pokemon IP rather than canceling it outright. The immediate consequences of this are that new ideas will need to be created to replace the existing Pokemon gameplay loop, and the team will need to reach out to several former members to determine what assets can be retained and what will need to be replaced. Because of this, it will take an indeterminate amount of time before the public hears about any future progress. Rather than put the server in an indefinite limbo of anticipation, the team has decided to move all future development discussion to a private server, and designate this server as being exclusively for discussion of the 2018 demo. That being said, when the team does eventually have content to show, it can be found here. There may be a new community server in the future, but we are currently not at that stage.

We want to thank everyone in this server and in the broader community for patiently encouraging us for the past five years. We genuinely wish we were able to present you with the game you all were waiting for, but we believe that what we create will be a worthy alternative.

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TL;DR Due to recent takedowns from the Pokemon Company (including Relic Castle), the team has chosen to move away from the Pokemon IP and will be rebooting it under an original IP. The current server will exist as a discussion forum for the previous demo version of the game.

As for the wiki, it'll exist in its current state as a guide to the 0.1.5.1 demo. If the new project is released, a new wiki will be created for that; however, it may be run by different admins

Today the PR Team made an announcement on the Discord regarding the status of game, why progress has been slow, and their plans to re-release Episode 1 with new content. I'll transcribe the announcement here:

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Hello @everyone, PR Team here with a project update on Episode 1. We know that we’ve been quiet for a while, and we’d like to discuss why that was as well as outline what we’re doing with the upcoming rerelease of Phoenix Rising Episode 1. When the project changed hands and the new team began working on it, our primary goal was to resolve all current bugs and optimize performance in Episode 1. However as we performed that work, we observed that the project was running on some pretty heavily customized systems that were really difficult to debug (we tried for about a year and a half), and we ultimately decided that the project needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. We looked at various options, including PSDK and LiteRGSS, before ultimately deciding to switch to Pokemon Essentials v20.1. This has been a lengthy process, due in part to Phoenix Rising being a free project the team is working on in their spare time between school and work and other such life commitments, but we are now well on our way to the re-release of Episode 1. As part of that progress, we wanted to update you all on some of the most significant changes that are being made to Episode 1 as part of its re-release. While remaking the game in Essentials v20.1, the writing team took the time to revamp the story of Episode 1, updating it to meet the proposed goals of Phoenix Rising’s story. This means that the game now features additional quests and character interactions throughout Episode 1, which will make the game feel fresh to even those who’ve played the currently released version. To give a brief look at these changes, we’ve prepared these screenshots to show you some of the differences in the new Episode 1.

The player character and Perrin exploring Timbre Woods.
The player in Sonata Port.
The player travelling through Pausa Camp.
The player character and Lin arriving in Onde City.

For those who’ve played through the current Episode 1, the name “Sonata Port” may raise eyebrows. That’s because as part of the update to the story, we’ve also modified some of the existing locations in Phoenix Rising. Sonata Town has now become Sonata Port, and you’ll find Pausa Camp in the location Sonata Town once was. As for further changes to the world map, please look forward to future announcements as we continue our work on releasing the new Episode 1. Slightly less obvious may be the presence of some Pokemon in the Pausa Camp screenshot that do not appear in the currently released version of Episode 1. The Phoenix Rising Pokedex has also been reworked and updated, adding some new Pokemon to the dex and also removing some from Episode 1. Because of these combined changes in story and Pokedex, it has become impossible for save files from version 0.1.5.1 of Phoenix Rising to carry over: 0.1.6, the version we have been developing, will require all players to begin with a fresh save file. We can however guarantee that this save file will continue onwards into all future content developed for Phoenix Rising. While this may be a disappointing update for our long-term players, the Phoenix Rising team feels confident that the new version of Episode 1 will feel exciting and new enough to justify our decision, and leave all players excited for what we’ll be doing in Episode 2 and beyond. As development continues, we hope to share with you more of what we’ve achieved as we work on the release of the updated Phoenix Rising Episode 1.

Additionally, we’re still recruiting! We have revamped our application form and changed which roles are available. It can now be found at https://forms.gle/R8otv9dCuTFkX65t9.

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TL;DR: The team basically had to remake the game from scratch and are now planning on re-releasing Episode 1 with new content. Saves from the previous version of the game will not be transferrable to this new version. They are also accepting applications for new members of the team.

If you wish to stay up-to-date, it's best to join the Discord here

Join the Phoenix Rising Discord Server!Discord