#slamoids

Slamoids is out and doing well! Sales have definitely been coming in quicker than Star-Pit Starship. I didn’t do a launch discount with Star-Pit so that could be part of the reason why Slamoids is performing better during launch week...but at the end of the day I don’t really know. 

Just the fact that we have 2 games on Steam now makes me super happy. Our goal from the beginning was to make several small games and build up the Puddledock library as quickly as possible without skimping on quality, and so far I think we’ve done just that.

The game is discounted to 85 cents until August 15th, so hop on over to Steam and pick up your copy if you haven’t already ;)

In lvlDown news: there’s no new build this week (again). I did make some updates to the game over the weekend, but nothing too drastic. Mostly I worked on getting achievement art squared away for Steam, and added the demo gating that I mentioned last week. Once I turn the build into a demo on itch.io, you’ll only be able to play the first two levels of the game, and it will prevent you from going to level 3 or beyond. I don’t think I’ll put that into effect for a little bit though. You can play the full game on itch.io here.

I did add a custom mouse cursor for the game. The standard Windows mouse cursor just felt out of place. What do you think? (sorry for the potato quality GIF)

And here’s a sneak peek at the achievement art (cheevos as I call them in code because it’s easier to type). Mostly they’re just icons from the game, but there’s a few unique ones in there. And what could the ? ones mean!?!?!

In other news: I spent the majority of last week working on the new prototype. Normally with prototypes my goal is to get basic gameplay working in a matter of a few days so we can see if the game is fun, but with the plan of making this a much larger game, there’s quite a bit of setup to do before we can even see what the game is. 

One thing that I did though was integrate a dialog system made by Friendly Cosmonaut into the build. I’ve tried writing my own dialog systems in the past and they always turn out super janky. And since Cosmonaut always does high quality work, it was a no-brainer to just go with her system from the get-go. It’s super robust, and I was able to write some wrapper scripts and objects to make it even easier to use in my game. If GameMaker is your thing, be sure to check out her YouTube channel.

I want to start showing off the game and doing dev videos soon. Right now it’s literally rectangles and circles moving around the game world. So I may take a day soon to get some half-decent placeholder art just to get the basic ideas across. 

That’s pretty much it for now. If you’ve read this far, be sure to tweet the word “cheevos” at me so I know. Until next time!

That’s right, Slamoids! officially launches this Wednesday! Awwww yiss!!!! If you haven’t wishlisted it yet, you can do so here. The game is only $0.99 and will be discounted for the first week. You can’t steal it for cheaper! I mean...technically you could, but please don’t.

In lvlDown news, there’s not a whole lot to talk about this week. Last week was mainly just doing gameplay tweaks and updating/adding audio here and there where I thought the game could use some more feedback. I was also busy working on getting Steam integrated into the build. 

That’s right, lvlDown will be releasing on Steam....eventually! There’s still playtesting and balancing to be done, not to mention bug fixing for anything new that crops up. Plus all the Steam store assets that need to be created. So I’m thinking an October/November time frame is most likely. Sam and I have a lot of traveling coming up this Fall, so I don’t really want to promise a hard date until we are absolutely ready to press the Launch button.

What does this mean for the itch.io build? Here’s what we’re thinking: I’m going to turn the itch build into a demo, probably cut the game off at level 2, so players can get a peek at the game without seeing everything there is. That way I can leave lvlDown on itch even after the game is live on Steam, and continue to use that as a source of potential feedback.

I’ll probably work on implementing the demo gating this week, but I’m not sure yet when I’ll make it active. For the time being anyone can play the entire game all the way through on itch.io. 

I’ve also continued to work on the prototype I mentioned last week, getting more of the core systems in place that I know we’ll need: inventory, crafting, etc. Sam and I have had a few brainstorm sessions to figure out the direction we want to go, and while it’s still up in the air, we both agree that we want this to be our biggest game yet. My goal is to show video of the game in action from pretty early on in development, and continue to keep the development process very open. So be on the lookout for that.

And just to prove that we mean business, I’ve set up source control for this new project. So that means we’re real devs now, right? Before I was using Google Drive and manual backups on an external hdd. I’ll still be doing the manual backups, but having revisions on bitbucket feels super nice. I’m just super paranoid haha.

Until next time, thanks for reading (and buy Slamoids!)!

There’s a lot to cover in this post, so here goes:

Sam and I spent the weekend putting the finishing touches on Slamoids. The game is looking amazing and I can’t wait to show it to you. Once we have the trailer finalized this week, I’ll fire out the YouTube link everywhere. Until then, here’s the fancy new logo Sam created for the game!

Right now the target release date is August 8th, assuming the game and store page get approved by Steam quickly. More updates to come on this soon. Get hyped!

Now for some lvlDown news!

Last week I wrapped up the last of the art. So now everything other than the title screen has non-placeholder art (yet likely still not final). Here’s some of what I did:

Followers!

Shooty bang bang eye totem!

Scary boss dude!

In addition to art, I also tuned the gameplay quite a bit and fixed a bunch of bugs. Sam has been awesome at playtesting the game and finding all sorts of issues. Not only did she find a bug where the player would be invisible upon returning to the top level of the world after going to level 2 without a lantern...but she also figured out what was causing the bug based on my previous day’s ramblings to her of all the things I put into the game. Nice to know she’s listening. Good solve, Sam!

ONWARD TO THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!

Today is exactly 2 months to the day that I started working on lvlDown, and I’m extremely happy with the progress I’ve been able to make, and am thrilled to announce that I’ve officially launched a public build for anyone to play!!! The game is free and can be played right in your browser.

Check it out here!

Because the game is free, Sam and I have decided to launch a Puddledock Games Patreon page in order for fans to throw some support our way if they dig what we are doing. There’s also a link on the lvlDown game page to help support the game for those who just want to do a one-time donation.

There’s no pressure to give us money though. It’s purely for those who are looking for more ways to support us.

COMMUNITY!

Lastly, we’ve set up a Puddledock Games Discord server. Because we are actively developing lvlDown with updated public builds for anyone to try, we thought it made sense to have a place where people can join in discussions about the game, offer feedback, suggestions, report bugs, and hang out with other awesome Puddledorks. There are channels for Star-Pit Starship and Slamoids as well if those are (or become) your jam.

So feel free to join and help build our community into something positive and amazing!