I had played around with the games timeline a few times trying to get one that was cohesive and made sense with the characters. The line I most leaned on while working on this section was this following description from the Story section in the GDD.

“The Otherworld is Earth, just in the near, possible, unwanted future. It has all of the Earth problems, with its high constrast of wealth and poverty, privilige and discrimination. It is the world abandoned by the best, the brightest and the richest. It is the world collapsed, world that has ended.”

My original sequence of events was what I used in my first milanote board draft, and looked like this:

I had been working on this while talking to my partner who studies biochemistry. Needlessly to say they were confused with the timeline and the idea of mutation/evolution occuring in a faster timespan than 200 years, urging me to stretch out the timeline to be more accurate with real life science.

I tweaked the timeline to fit the worlds mutation, this was a big jump from the original and honestly did feel a bit unnatural (funnily enough). At the next team meeting I presented it to my teammates who agreed with the series of events but found that the dates felt wrong and too exaggerated, even after explaining the choice (that nature needs a long time to be affected by evolution).

We brainstormed potential reasons why mutations and adaptations would occur much faster than naturally possible in order to explain a shorter timeline. I was working on this simultaneously with creating character profiles for the narrative designer and character artist, which was incredibly useful as I was able to compare the character ages with the events of the game world. This was especially true for the character Patty Perriwinkle, the eldest character in the game and therefore the one with the most experience before the ruin of Earth.

The final agreed timeline looks like this:

• 2030s – Political & Climate Crisis
• 2050s – The Great Betrayal
• 2065 – The Exodus * the game begins here
• 2065 Onwards – The Collapse

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Those Left behind Lore – In depth description of timeline

2030s - The Seeds of Collapse
America in the early 2030s was already teetering. The country had never truly recovered from the deep political divide of the previous decades, still reeling from economic instability, civil unrest, and a federal government increasingly out of touch with its people. The president at the time, a populist strongman, had swept into office on promises of restoring greatness, dismantling bureaucracy, and rejecting "globalist" influence. His administration, built on loyalty rather than competence, thrived on paranoia and nationalism, branding critics as enemies and consolidating power through executive orders.

His economic policies catered to the ultra-wealthy, funnelling public funds into corporate partnerships under the guise of job creation while stripping regulations that once kept industries in check. Climate change, dismissed as a hoax or overblown hysteria, was left to spiral unchecked as environmental protections were systematically dismantled. Oil drilling expanded into federal lands and even protected natural reserves, while regulations on industrial waste were erased in the name of "economic freedom."
 
On the world stage, the president’s erratic leadership alienated allies and emboldened adversaries. Long-standing treaties collapsed, trade wars escalated, and foreign relations became a game of brinkmanship. A renewed arms race began, not just in nuclear weapons but in biological and cyber warfare. By the mid-2030s, tensions between the United States, China, and Russia had reached a breaking point, with proxy wars breaking out in South America and Southeast Asia, further straining resources.
 
The administration's final years were marked by extreme authoritarian overreach. Elections became increasingly suspect, dissent was met with brutal crackdowns, and conspiracy theories kept the population divided. The elite continued to thrive, siphoning wealth and preparing for their own escape from the failing world.
 
2050s - The Climate Wars & Technological Hubris
The environmental tipping points ignored in previous decades now erupted into full-blown catastrophe. In the early 2040s, a record-shattering heatwave devastated much of North America, causing the power grid to fail under unprecedented demand.
 
Geoengineering, once dismissed as reckless, was now embraced as a last-ditch effort to stabilize the planet. The U.S. government, working alongside desperate mega corporations, launched Project Skyveil, an atmospheric intervention program designed to cool the Earth by releasing reflective aerosols into the stratosphere. At first, it seemed to work, temperatures dropped slightly, but unintended consequences soon followed. The altered atmosphere disrupted global weather patterns, triggering decade-long superstorms, unpredictable flash freezes, and acid rain that poisoned farmland. Worse, the weakened ozone layer allowed radiation levels to spike, increasing cancer rates and genetic mutations.
 
Meanwhile, as traditional energy sources became unreliable, experimental nuclear and fusion plants were pushed into overdrive without proper safety protocols. Martial law was declared, but it was too late—society was already unravelling.
 
The final blow came when the ultra-rich abandoned the planet as it became clear to them that Earth was beyond saving. For years, the elites had been quietly investing in Project OffWorld, a mass escape plan. Constructing orbital stations and huge deep-space colony ships under the guise of scientific progress. Entire launch sites were cleared out in secret military operations, taking with them scientists, engineers, and the last of Earth's clean resources. Merritt Island, home to the NASA Launch Complex, became the site of humanity’s great betrayal. As the last rockets left, those who remained behind watched in horror, realising they had been abandoned to die.
 
2060s onwards - The Age of Ruin
With no government, no infrastructure, and no hope of escape, the remnants of civilization turned to survival at any cost. The extreme heat, radioactive storms, and poisoned landscapes made large-scale agriculture impossible. Survivors scavenged what they could, living off the remnants of the old world. Over time, nature mutated to adapt to the new conditions. Strange, bioluminescent plants emerged, thriving in the toxic soil, while grotesque, heat-resistant creatures stalked the wastelands. Florida, once a paradise, had transformed into a swamp of death - its waters laced with chemicals, its forests twisted into unnatural colours, its skies filled with storms that never ceased.
 
Some survivors clung to old-world ideologies, forming cult-like factions that worshipped technology, the departed elite, or the disasters themselves. Others embraced lawlessness, becoming nomadic raiders who saw violence as the only means of survival. The last remnants of knowledge - books, data servers, and pre-collapse science - became treasures worth killing for.
 
Now, in the present game world, humanity is scattered, eking out an existence in the ruins of a world it failed to save. Some still dream of rebuilding, of finding a way to tame the wasteland. Others believe it’s better to let the old world die entirely. And in the shadow of Merritt Island’s abandoned launch sites, we find that not all of the elite made it off-world and some were still left behind.