Devlog: Why I Made You Were Made

When I set out to design You Were Made, I wasn’t interested in building a system packed with stats, modifiers, or combat loops. I wanted to create something quieter. Something stranger. Something that lingers.

This game didn’t come from a place of “what would be fun to play.” It came from the question: what does it mean to be made? And more importantly: what does it mean when your maker is gone?

Memory Over Mechanics

At the center of You Were Made is memory. Not just the presence of it, but the absence as well. Forgetting is part of the narrative. The Echoforms, the artificial beings you play, are caught in this space between reverence and loss, trying to piece together a truth that may never come. There are no stats like Strength or Charisma here. No hit points. No initiative. Instead, you draw a card. You roll a die. You reflect.

The real engine of the game isn’t numerical, it’s emotional.

Solitude and Silence

You Were Made is intentionally a solo experience. I wanted to give players space to explore without pressure, competition, or correction. It’s a game about being part of a vast and lonely universe, and making meaning anyway. It’s also quiet. There are no big explosions or heroic boss battles. Just you, your journal, and the ache of something half-remembered.

Fragments and Philosophy

Fragments are a light mechanic in the game, but they’re also a metaphor. You gather them as you play. You spend them to reframe the narrative. Mechanically, they’re a form of agency. Thematically, they represent hope: what little you’ve salvaged from the ruins of the past.

The Reflect prompts on each card are deliberately philosophical. They’re not there to guide the story so much as to unsettle it. To make you question. To offer just enough ambiguity that your answers feel like discoveries.

A Glitch in the System

More than anything, You Were Made is about the tension between what we are and what we were told to be.

The Echoforms are trying to understand humanity through scattered myths and corrupted data. In many ways, that’s what we do as players too: trying to make sense of a world with pieces missing.

I designed this game to feel like a memory that doesn’t quite belong to you. If it leaves you with more questions than answers, I’ve done my job.

Thanks for walking this road with me.

— Deny
12 Parsecs Designs