A few days ago, I asked Shreeps if he still had that ancient beta version of Azure Serenity that he uploaded in 2008. He didn't have that particular version, but he gave me the oldest one he could find. I had permission to share it, so I uploaded it here:
https://knyttlevels.com/levels/Shreeps%20-%20AncientAzure%20Serenity%20BETA.knytt.bin I also did a playthrough of it, though only the first part is really worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgelo2d1gFQ&list=PLPY6G2hmt_KpcG4bg_1HZ02bPiL0aWVov&index=1It's apparently somewhat older than that beta, but it gives the impression that Shreeps was getting ready for a release. Although many screens are quite obviously unfinished, exits that lead to unimplemented parts of the level are usually sealed off, with exception of those in the Valley of the Frozen Moon. There's also a part where the level basically sends you on a tour through all the zones whose placement was not yet decided before ending. So it's actually relatively playable despite its roughness. There's plenty of interesting stuff in there for those curious about the history of this level.
One thing Shreeps remembered that set the version he released apart from this earlier one is that it had a zone that used an edited version of the Honeycomb tileset. He wasn't able to contact the author, Karl-Johan Nilsson, for permission to edit it, so he later scrapped that zone. But he sent me two videos from a later version that show how far along it got before that. I don't really want YouTube to butcher them, so I uploaded them here instead:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/hl09xdpwau4bgmc/7fe3a9ca8544423c626ecebce24a7cf2.mp4/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/rpy1x0zyfntlgrf/12332b5e06d37919cf9f5a0645182c4e.mp4/fileIf anyone still has the version Shreeps uploaded in 2008, it would be great if you could share it. This is not to be confused with the versions from 2014, which are actually finished and were made for KS+.