There's a reason the only two tilesets used in this level are named
"The Tileset Speedrun". Just like Forgotten Realms, this level was kickstarted by one of my occasional attempts to build an entire KS level with entirely custom graphics as fast as possible, just for the hell of it (if you look at
Tileset6 in FR, you'll notice a similar pattern of trying to squeeze enough graphics for multiple areas into a single set). However, and much to my suprise... I actually succeeded this time! I built the entire main layout in about one month or so, albeit using a rougher, less detailed version of those graphics. The rest of the time, I spent it improving said base graphics, polishing the design/challenges and creating the rest of the level paraphernalia such as the ending cutscenes.
So, in a way, you can think of Ephemeral Realms as
"what Forgotten Realms may have been if I hadn't completely derailed from my original plan" (which ended up being a change for the better, in that particular case... but then again, it could also have gone horribly wrong
).
Another surprising fact (to me, at least) is that I actually did a good deal of planning ahead for this level. A pet peeve of me is that, in general, I don't like doing the same exact thing in a row and in the same exact way twice, hence my idea of turning this one into more of an actual quest (you just don't know you're actually on a mission until the very end). I also thought it'd be an interesting exercise to do things differently in the early stages and drew an outline of the level before diving into the editor, deciding on the main item placement and the intended progress flow very early on. Well, what do you know... apparently this is the key for getting things done faster and more efficiently, who would have guessed. Don't ever tell my boss I said that though, or I will hate you forever.
Regarding your comments on the music, one of the reasons I went with a different style of BGM here basically boils down to what I just said about not doing the same thing twice. That, and also because I genuinely thought I had gone through pretty much all of Fubaka's albums while making FR and had already exhausted all the tracks from him that could either inspire me for a new area or suit any of my existing ideas (turns out I was wrong and there are several more of his albums that I just simply didn't know they existed!). Nevertheless, although this level shares many of the core ideas in FR (including how it was kickstarted), it wasn't meant to be a full-fledged clone, hence why I was reluctant to call it a direct sequel... although I can understand that people who were expecting exactly that may have been disappointed, and if so, that's really too bad. But hey, you never know what the future has in store for us... maybe when I listen to some of Fubs' other works I get this sudden flash of inspiration!