As a speedrunner for Treacherous Trials (and as of writing, the any% world record holder by a significant margin), I originally wanted to look at the source code and push the game to its limits. That vision of determination eventually evolved into the fan-made maps that explore the unused tech from the original game with a difficulty increase to match the precision of some tricks.

To make the fan maps, first I needed to either recreate the entire game from scratch, or rip the project and decompile it back to the original Unity project. This second option is both easier and finishes with a more faithful recreation, so that's what I did.

I used Unity AssetRipper to get most of the requisite files. A key issue, however, was that all non-user created scripts (such as any text and the camera movement from Cinemachine, for example) were completely wiped, requiring me to remake all of them. In addition, some of the files ripped had mysterious bugs not present in the original game requiring some tinkering to make function.

As for level design, I tried to keep the gameplay somewhat balanced, although the difficulty does increase quite a lot over the course of the game. I also attempted to keep the theme of each level the same as the base game, even as the new tech was introduced in what is hopefully a fair manner. While there are a few levels I'm not the biggest fan of (namely levels 17 and 20), overall I'm quite satisfied with how it all turned out.

While unintentional, I learned a good deal about Unity and how to put together a game in it. I'm not sure if I'll ever make my own game using it rather than just modifying an existing game, but if it particularly interests me one day for some reason, I might give it a shot!

I shared it with the speedrunning discord for Treacherous Trials, and I think it had a generally positive reception. To be fair, the discord has a whole like, ten memebers max, so I really put in way too much effort given the target audience haha. And also nobody besides me managed to get past level 14 for several months after the mod released, so mayyybe I made it a bit too difficult. Oops!