Hello. This is a writeup on the history behind Metamorphism. This primarily goes over how the project developed over the years, as well as the troubles that led to what the project transformed into today, starting with the origins of the character Meta. This is largely based on memory and all surviving material for the project I could find, so whatever I couldn't find or remember are most likely lost forever.
For anyone not familiar with this project nor its earliest history, it is a high fantasy project that combines a lot of elements from most of my older projects, all of which date back from 2018-2020.
I first created the character of Meta back in the summer of 2014. It was originally known as Controlbot, and was the main protagonist of a Scratch game called Rotate Master. I quit Scratch before I got the chance to ever finish this game, but it wasn't until 2022 when I finally shared it to the public.
After I left Scratch, I brought Conrtolbot back, this time known as METON. I gave the new design for the character more than two colors, as well as becoming a cube and gave it thicker limbs. I added it as an adoptable on Squiby during that time, which was a virtual pet site that's no longer around, as well as various objects I made on the Manyland virtual world. When Manyland shut down in 2024, the old METON objects were stuck in one of my older accounts and thus never got to back them up.
After bringing METON back, I stopped using it at the end of 2015, and wouldn't return for a while.
Sometime in 2018, I decided to redesign and bring back METON. The character didn't have much going on at the time aside from that, and I didn't use it for anything until much later.
Metamorpho's history actually began in September 2018, when I started work on a project titled "Sword Kid", staring Gladius and Vetitum (though the latter was made first). Anything surrounding the oldest version of Sword Kid is lost to time, as I never preserved a lot of details I wrote for it. November 2018 was when I created the prince character. The prince was the main protagonist of a fictional video game titled "Badcadia", a portmanteau of "Bad" and "Arcadia. The story is about him getting trapped in Badcadia and must escape before the ruler of the realm takes his life. This was the first project aside from a scratch game I tried to make in 2014 to star METON. I also introduced Adèle in the same month, but she wasn't included in anything (yet).
In 2019, I decided to merge Devil Lollipop, Badcadia, and Sword Kid into one anthology project by the name of "The Laughing Sashimi", with METON serving as a major antagonist. The first project, Devil Lollipop, was made much earlier than Sword Kid and Badcadia, as I started making it in January 2018, but it was always standalone in the first place. It initially involving a man named Ben getting stranded on the candy-themed BonBon Island. Here, he encounters Catherine, a cosmic witch who was transformed into a child by Thanatos, and the two embarked on a journey to stop Prince Gumball, the project's main antagonist. The project was dropped from The Laughing Sashimi at an unknown point in time, but when I (tried) reviving it in 2021-2022, it became standalone again.
Back to The Laughing Sashimi, I began to write up the story behind the prince and his time in Badcadia in March 2019, but it never got past the second chapter due to losing interest. Further work on the project continued throughout 2019, and it was towards the end of the year when I made METON into an entity connected to the God of Urd in some way, alongside other gods who sided with it, while another is against it.
When I was struggling with working on The Laughing Sashimi, I decided to make another project, that being "The Arcane Lord". From what I remembered from making this project, it's about a young rabbit mage named Circle who sets off to find the titular arcane lord so he could teach him the ways of magic. He's joined by Matilda, a mysterious young girl with hardly any memory of her past, Prince Wesley, who also shares Circle's goal, and his fairy Hero, alongside many others on their journey to find him as well as save their world from Ragnarok. Several months after that, I ended up stalling on that project too. I worked on another one later on (Ascendorita), but it ended up being canned because of a lack of interest. This was around this time when "The Laughing Sashimi" was renamed to "METONFolk".
When I left the Closed Species ARPG Ranebopets, almost every character I made for it were voided into original characters, but of them, I only successfully integrated Scratchy, Lumbeck, Erika, Guntram, Dejavu, Aleth, and Bell to either METONFolk or The Arcane Lord. The rest were either given away or never received redesigns. In 2021, I redesigned the prince to be slightly more feminine, as well as overhaul a bunch of things regarding him. As a result, Devil Lollipop and Badcadia were no longer considered part of METONFolk canon. While I attempted to give Devil Lollipop a second chance as stated previously, Badcadia is scrapped entirely.
After that, I've been mostly quiet about METONFolk until 2022 when I announced I started working on yet another project titled Mimosa and the Clocktower (Now Gran Krono, which I'll be calling it from then on). As a result, I put the entire project on semihiatus because I found the whole project to be a mess lore and writing-wise. This also befell The Arcane Lord, which went on semihiatus as well. During most of this period, I still added new characters to the projects, but even I feared this would cause a bigger mess, and it largely turned me off from working on both again for a while...
Until 2023 when I decided to unify both METONFolk and The Arcane Lord into one project titled METON Saga. Despite this though, I was still super focused on Gran Krono, and didn't have much time to work on it. Most I did with it is adding a plot summary and some characters. Aside from redesigning Circle and Matilda back in 2024, the project once again fell into radio silence, which also led to potential redesigns for Wesley and Hero being scrapped.
When Gran Krono began to stall in development starting in 2025, my interest with the project was renewed, as I eventually did new designs for the prince and METON, with the latter now being renamed Meta. This eventually led to a reboot of METON Saga titled "Metamorpho", which will completely overhaul the plot and lore I once set up for both METONFolk and The Arcane Lord. Despite this, I decided to still focus on Gran Krono, and kept the new project on hold.
As I was losing interest in working on Gran Krono due to scope creep and difficulty in making a cutesy game aimed at older audiences which made me dissatisfied with it, I eventually put that project on indefinite hold and returned to work on Metamorpho again, this time titled "Metamorphism", to avoid confusion with a certain DC superhero. I have redesigned the prince once more (this time with blue hair and white accents instead of being fully white) and also made Meta being able to transform into the butterfly headband the prince has been known for.
Currently, I have yet to come up with the plot of Metamorphism, but all I could come up is that the prince goes on a journey with Meta to free the world from the despeirs (monsters born from hopelessness) while trying to discover a new name for himself following a curse that caused everyone in his kingdom to lose their names (and forgetting what names are). Aside from these two, I am currently thinking of other characters to bring to Metamorphism while scrapping the rest, but that's something that I'll keep you guys updated on. This project will very likely be a game made in SRPG Studio, which I still need to get a hang of as I am currently only using the demo for that purpose before I consider buying it.
I would like to thank everyone who has made it this far into the history of Metamorphism. Initially, I wanted to post this on my Toyhouse account, but I felt that it could get more reach if I put this up on my website instead for everyone to view. I could only gather as much information as I could remember while working on this article, so I might have missed several things here considering it took me long to get it finished. Regardless it was fun to make a writeup about this project, and I look forward to continue working on it in the future. Feel free to follow me on either Neocities or all other socials I'm on if you wish to stay updated on Metamorphism. That said, see you next time.
If you're curious as to what Metamorphism was like over the years, you can check the following links. This might not be all of them:
METON Saga folder (Prince and Meta have since moved to the Metamorphism folder)
The Laughing Sashimi/METONfolk
- Never-finished lore when the project was called "The Laughing Sashimi"
- Badcadia (Never finished)
- Monsters of Badcadia
- METONfolk world page (I removed the layout of the front page when I merged it with The Arcane Lord, but unfortunately I cannot find it now.)
- METONfolk folder
- Old profile for the prince
- TLS Resources