Super Army of Tentacles 3: The Search for Army of Tentacles 2 - Duck Whitman
Winter Sale
No one could have predicted this.
Oh, and Dino Sim 2022 is droppig next week. Could be Monday, could be Friday. Or Tuesday. Or the other two. Just in time to miss Christmas as well as Christmas Eve. Blame the Gregorian Calendar and the constant shift of yearly dates for that chestnut.
So, later on in 2023, the oft prophecized recode is happening..... the code for both Army 1 and Army 3 broke. The Steam versions still work. So that's the good news. If you buy it this sale, you will be buying a working game. It's just the versions on our end that need to be fixed. Which ultimately means that there will be a patch to both games later on down the line.
I want to make it clear that both games work perfectly fine on Steam. If you were planning on making any purchases of the game or DLC this Winter Sale, feel free to do so.
When the newest update to the engine that we use hit, it scrambled our 2016 Code bases brain. Without going into lengthy explanations, the base code for Army 1 (Utahraptor) was written in such a way that, if you push one domino, the whole thing is gonna crumble. We were young and inexperienced. Shit happens.
While Army 3 came out pretty unscathed, it still uses the Argument/Word Battle code. So we need to redo it as well.
The good news is that both games will have fresher, better code. We will be keeping as much as the base game intact as we can. We're also going to try our best to keep the file size to the same as what it was, even though we'll be adding a few new baubles. They will include:
Updated Word Battles: Stats and abilities will now have a bigger impact on how they play out.
New Army Units and Art: We'll have actual art for the Army units.
New Level Up/Upgrade screens: For a better, clearer idea of how you're going to shape your army of monsters for the new endgame Invasion.
Updated Shops and Stats
Redone endgame Invasion system
Redone DLC pathcode
New UI
Those patches will hit sometime (hopefully) early this year, with Army of Tentacles 1's patch going up before Army 3.
Introducing: DINOSAUR COUSIN SQUAD!
Our first platformer - made in GameMaker Studio 2. While we were going to shift the release dates for our current 2023 crop to get this out before Summer Sale, the version of base code that we got earlier last month still needed a fair amount of polish, and we didn't want to have our contractors work through the holidays. Our current investors were cool with the shift, but since it's going to need more time to cook before we can really start work on it, we're going to try to clear our slate of current investor projects before working on this one in full.
Earlier in October, we had split up into two teams: Team Army of Tentacles - working on Army 2, Tentacle Prawn, and Unicorn Island - and Team Cousin Squad - working on Dinosaur Cousin Squad only. But because Dinosaur Cousin Squad has shifted, Team DCS has now taken up a new project that will also be officially announced next month:
To Date Or Not To Date Cat Girls? 2 is in development
While Tentacle Prawn is the game where we detail the relationship between our Lovecraft and Shakespeare worlds, Furry Shakespeare: To Date Or Not To Date Cat Girls? 2 is going to be a more standalone title that deals specifically with the various Furry Shakespeare tales we've been telling so far. For instance, we have an entire group that actually deals with keeping the spirit of the holidays alive. How do they fit into the overall lore? Do they also go to the same college for royalty that everyone else does? What about the Spooky Scary Halloween Spooky Times and Historylands crews? Those are retail jobs. Why do those exist in this world?
But the most important question of all: can you date a Monarch Butterfly?
Originally, Spooky Cat Girls? was going to be the canon sequel to Cat Girls?, but.... well, not anymore, obviously.
Super Army of Tentacles 3: The Search for Army of Tentacles 2 - Duck Whitman
Late Autumn/Black Friday Sale
A bunch of products are on sale. Yeah, we know iot is not the official Autumn sale, but better late than never.
New Frontiers
Last Christmas, I started working on a non-VN with input from my cousins, and the restrictions were that I had to do whatever they gave me, within reason. So now the Velociraptor has Telekinesis and the Pterodactyl has the water levels.
It's going to be our first platformer, and our first game in a new engine. No idea when the store page is going up. Our 2023 slate is a bit packed, but we've got a good schedule and we have managed to fit everything in without burning ourselves out.
Super Army of Tentacles 3: The Search for Army of Tentacles 2 - Duck Whitman
We're only eight games away from finishing our mad quest of adapting every Shakespeare play into a video game. Well, more than eight actual plays, but like Rainbow Hollow, we've got some tomfoolery up our sleeves.
So, not only are we planning on a third and final game in the main Army of Tentacles trilogy next year, we're also planning two spin-offs in the Paper Shakespeare universe. Shakespeare and Lovecraft, together at last.
We have sort of an ongoing storyline through all our games, and so far, it's been most apparent in the Paper Shakespeare/Furry Shakespeare ones. There's some reality/multiverse jank that's been threading through the games, which was have been affectionately calling The Multiverse BS (no, we only started calling it that when Marvel started calling their current films The Multiverse Saga). So, the idea here is that Army of Tentacles 2 will end that storyline and the next two games will showcase the consequences of a new reality being born.
The first game, but reimagined as Shakespeare's Trojan War play. Perry, Riley, Webster, Thatcher, Apocalypse Bunny, and more are on a quest to push back the invading Greeks and save their home.
Our first fully-voiced game since 2016. Expect it sometime..... later.
Super Army of Tentacles 3: The Search for Army of Tentacles 2 - Duck Whitman
We had a few game announcements to make - we're seriously cutting down on content produced in 2023. But we have some announcements that we *think* round out next year alongside the already announced 2023 games.
But we felt Halloween was not the right time to make those announcements. We want as many eyeballs on us as possible (or as is possible for a small indie outfit), and we felt that Halloween Day was not the day to make such annoucements.
Here's a small content DLC for Embers of the Zombie Battlemage that we cooked up over the weekend, adding a new Guest Path throughout the entire game. What are Guest Paths? Well, they are like Johnny Handsome in the idea that they are complete character arcs, but for guests. You'll need to figure out what section they'll pop up in each Act, though. We're not giving out Halloween treats in the form of spoilers.