Lost Citadel blockout, 7/29/2023 - Overclocked Prototypes

This is one of the first versions of Lost Citadel that was properly playable. Episode Metal has a bit of an interesting history: it was conceptualized in 2019 as a three-stage analogue to Episode Shadow in the original game, but it wound up getting scrapped a few months after some initial work was done on it.

But a few months before the final version's release, the concept was revived as a shorter one-stage prologue, which served to patch some holes in the story. These were mainly the lack of a satisfying explanation for how exactly Metal Sonic found the Ruby and "Overclocked" it, along with stumbling upon Infinite within the fortress. Plus, it fixed another issue where the original game's Episode Shadow was still accessible, but in a very broken form due to various changes Overclocked made to other aspects of the game. The shortness of the stage and relative faithfulness to Mortar Canyon's original layout stems from the stage being made on very short notice, but the stage still turned out well despite the limitations.