#toad tavern devlog

Well, we missed you. This past summer had been a rollercoaster for us. Things like family emergencies, a slew of car and computer troubles, moving jobs, moving homes, all of these things can impede progress in an indie project like ours. Since we work this project outside of our day jobs, it can be difficult to keep pushing for progress when that free time is compromised by other more pressing issues. But fret not ! We still made progress over the time we were silent on social media, and most excitingly, we finished our official cinematic trailer.

We’ll be debuting it on drumroll please the 9th of October alongside other amazing developer projects from Puerto Rico in the Puerto Rico Game Showcase on the Yo Soy Un Gamer channel! Last year we launched a teaser of our trailer, but this year we are ecstatic to present the cinematic.

Moving onto development, last newsletter back in July, (read here if you missed it!) we had proposed the question if our game was actually fun, and detailed about our attack plan moving forward to avoid repetitive gameplay that may bore the player. We’ve been working on a series of minigames that will trigger in different order depending on what kind of cocktail you're making. So here’s a tid bit of the stuff we’ve been working on, can’t spill all our secrets just yet ;)

This past summer we also bid farewell to our composer Emmanuel who moved to Bulgaria to complete a Masters in the Film Scoring Academy of Europe. He will still be working with us just veeeerryyyy far away (miss you already buddy!) If you'd like to support him feel free to check out his stuff here!

Just want to take this moment to thank all of those who have been so excited about our project despite our online absence, this summer has been anything but easy, but seeing all the support truly keeps us going ! Talk to you guys soon.

xoxo,

Your local devs who just love frogs and drinks <3

We want to hear from you !

After our famous Toad Tavern Jam at the beginning of June, we took a week off from the sheer exhaustion of working a whole weekend straight. We made so much progress, and hopes were very high, and right after that is when our social media started taking off.

During July we began to run into a problematic question, is the game actually fun?

At the rate we were going, we hoped to have a playable demo by now, but we kept on running into this rock wall. Various ideas went through our heads, the main one was putting out the game in a small closed playtesting round to get feedback from players. While still something we plan on doing, right now we just didn’t feel the game was quite ready for it. Then again, maybe this is how every developer feels.

The main problem is that the drink making in the game felt too repetitive. You select ingredients, you pour to the recipe’s specifications, you mix, and you have the drink. So we dug into our archives of ideas when the game first began (first time we tried making it was back in 2020, when we were a team of 5 people, and most if not all were in college). And by we, I mean Eryel and Victor. So they divided and conquered, making a series of small minigames the player will have to go through to make the perfect drink.

Currently that’s what the programmers are working on. While still in it’s barebones, I have high hopes this will increase the player experience over all. Our main goal for our demo is to have something tangible, but still of a good quality that lives up to the hype being drummed around our game.

QUESTIONS FROM OUR COMMUNITY

What platform will it be on?

While we’ve answered this in a previous video, there has been a massive influx of new people looking at our game through instagram specifically. Our first launch will be on steam, but we plan to port onto consoles later on. Honestly, my dream would be to port onto the switch. There’s also been a lot of people who have asked if it will be on mobile, which genuinely surprised me. So yes, while our main platform will be steam we’d want the game to be on different platforms for more people to play it.

Do you guys need any help?

We’ve gotten many people messaging us, emailing us and even commenting asking if we will be needing more help on the game. While we appreciate the influx of kind, talented folk who want to be a part of the game's development, for now we aren't accepting any more team members. But do not fret ! In the occasion that we do need more talent, whether it be music, programming, art, or anything else then we'll be letting you guys know there and on the other socials.