Heyo friends!

We managed to find the source of the black screen / infinite loading screen bug, and should now be fixed.

Unfortunately, we did not find a way to prevent saves to be irremediably corrupted. Players will have to start on a new save.

For more information about our handling of bug reports, please read our latest devlog (that should be already up and running if all goes well)

Thanks for playing Venice 2089, and for reporting bugs and issues.

POPGOES Arcade is part of the "Steam Scream Fest", with 20% off. If you haven't checked out this excellent FNaF Fanverse title, don't be "scared" and go for it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1986840/POPGOES_Arcade/

Hello STEAM friends!

We are getting closer to the Early Access release (7 November)!

Everyone who supported the project with Steam Key is going to receive it soon. You will be able to activate the key on Steam, but the game won't let you download it until 7 November, when the game is released!


If you have access to the current beta version, it will remain how it is, but won't be anymore updated in the future.


The demo which is still available on the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1614550/Astro_Colony/

is going to be removed end of the month. If you still haven't tried the game, you have time until 31st of October!


Yes, there is no risk of postponing the release date. The game is in the late polishing and optimization stage and multiplayer is very stable as well.

Please check Astro Colony refreshed trailer prepared for the game release!


Don't forget to tell your friends about upcoming Astro Colony release. Invite them, so you will have someone to play with! ;)

Join our Discord community

See you soon colonizer!

Hey everyone,

I’m sorry for the extended radio silence. As Nevan mentioned, I’ve been dealing with health issues and, as a solo dev, my personal challenges directly affect the timeline of the game’s updates. At this point, I’m starting to get better, but still have a little way to go on the road to recovery before I’m able to fully re-engage to Reign’s development.

From the development side of things, there are a few issues that need to be addressed before things can really move forward. Zombie, who has been a contributor for some time now, has left the project - I wish him well in his future endeavors. This does mean, though, that there are several things I need to reconfigure as far as dealing with server setup and how the client connects to the server. There are large sections of the code that I left partially complete that I now need to get back up to speed on in order to finish them.

Due to these challenges, and the personal recovery I still need to get through, I’ve decided to put Reign into maintenance mode. This means that I’m committing to getting the server into a stable state and keeping it online, but will have to postpone feature development for the time being. But this isn’t the end, you should know I don't know the meaning of give up after 10+ yrs! :)

Reign, in its current iteration, has always been intended to be a “vertical slice” - a preview of all the different features that I envision for the final product. While it doesn’t currently have everything I want just yet, I’ve learned many valuable lessons and have validated many of the ideas I have. The plan now is to take a quick breather to plan out the features I have not yet gotten to work on, and map out what a path to the final product will look like - a path that I don’t intend to walk alone.

For now, be assured that your support is greatly appreciated, and I’m working hard to make sure all purchases made are preserved and acknowledged as I work on restructuring Reign and the in-game purchase model. It is because of all of you that I’ve made it this far, and have the ability to regroup and push forward into the future.

Server should be available again within a week or so
Thank you again for all your support
More coming soon
Tai

Welcome! Good to see you back at the club!

I’ve got something big for all of you, who are following news about my club out there.

NecroBouncer is participating in MIX Next Showcase!



The Media Indie Exchange (MIX) is all about the games – created by indies and indie game enthusiasts, so it is a perfect (casual yet professional) place for us to showcase our cute management sim to the media.

Mark the date in your calendar - October the 27th, 10 am Pacific | 1 pm Eastern | 7 pm CET

WHERE TO WATCH:
Twitch | YouTube

NecroBouncer among other game reveals, announcements, gameplay and more!


Add the game to your wishlist to not miss the opening:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786830/NecroBouncer/


If you want a VIP-access to the game, play the Prologue and I’ll welcome you with open arms:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2163810/NecroBouncer_Prologue/

The main Prologue features are:

• You can unlock the 2nd floor of the club with a sneak peek at the boss at its end.
  
• All (the whole 250) of the relic unlocked and they will be waiting for you to collect them all.
  
• Fully working and tested Twitch integration - perfect idea for streamers to spice up the gameplay with their audience.

While playing the Prologue don’t forget to participate in an event that I am currently hosting - Relic Idea Contest, read more here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786830/view/3400806564130909904

As always, I welcome each and every one of the visitors to join the club on social media:

• Place to share gameplay footage, work-in-progress material and all kinds of sneak peeks - twitter
  
• A growing library of short clips covering gameplay or just the funny stuff - tik-tok
  
• Lounge to share your thoughts and opinions about the game - discord
  
• Place to discuss the game, see extra content - reddit

Welcome! Good to see you back at the club!

We’ve got big news for all of you out here.

NecroBouncer is participating in MIX Next Showcase!



The Media Indie Exchange (MIX) is all about the games – created by indies and indie game enthusiasts, so it is a perfect (casual yet professional) place for us to showcase our cute management sim to the media.

Mark the date in your calendar - October 27th, 10 am Pacific | 1 pm Eastern | 7 pm CET!

WHERE TO WATCH:
Twitch | YouTube

NecroBouncer among other game reveals, announcements, gameplay and more!

Add the game to your wishlist to not miss the opening:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786830/NecroBouncer/

If you want a VIP-access to the game, play the Prologue and we’ll welcome you with open arms:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2163810/NecroBouncer_Prologue/

The main Prologue features are:

• You can unlock the 2nd floor of the club with a sneak peek at the boss at its end.
  
• All (the whole 250) of the relic unlocked and they will be waiting for you to collect them all.
  
• Fully working and tested Twitch integration - perfect idea for streamers to spice up the gameplay with their audience.

While playing the Prologue don’t forget to participate in an event that we are currently hosting - Relic Idea Contest, read more here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786830/view/3400806564130909904

As always, we welcome each and every one of our visitors to join the club on social media:

• Place for us to share gameplay footage, work-in-progress material and all kinds of sneak peeks - twitter
  
• A growing library of short clips covering gameplay or just the funny stuff we do - tik-tok
  
• Lounge to share your thoughts and opinions about the game - discord
  
• Place to discuss the game, see extra content - reddit

See you next time!

HEYO FRIENDS! 💜

It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like ages since I last wrote a devlog.
And man did I miss writing Nova's Diary.

For those out of the loop, I intented to release this devlog much sooner, but due to illness (that I'm still recovering from) I had to postpone it by a week, which I honestly am a little sad about, considering that we've been silent for a whole week, and the release week at that! But hey, it is what it is.



[ THE DRONE'S OUT OF THE BAG ]



Soo yeah, we did it. We actually released our first title ever.

Boy do I remember being all anxious on Discord (we couldn't organize a release party in-person, sadly), running all kinds of thoughts in my head to see if we did everything correctly and didn't miss anything.

And as much as I would have loved to be the guy that pressed the big green button that released the game, that honour went to one of our Programmers, Roberto, who is also the third person who got to adventure in this intricate and anxiety-inducing wonderful and inspiring journey that is Steamworks (Just kidding, Steam actually has a very nice system, we just needed to get used to it :P )

But even so, it felt great. It felt great to see the little pop-up image saying that our game, a game where we spent 3 years of our life, was finally out there. And WE felt great knowing that were people who were going to purchase our game and play it out.



I personally hope to feel this same feeling again and again, for the rest of my journey as a gamedev.
And I'm sure I'm not the only one here at Safe Place Studio who shares the same hope.






[ LOOKING BACK ]



Little bit of a history lesson for the new friends around here: Venice started off as a school project back in November 2019, back when we were still studying at a place named Event Horizon School. The first prototype didn't have much, it was just this young-looking character zooming around Venice with an hoverboard (and a yo-yo that could function as a grappling hook - rest in peace, gone but not forgotten o7), picking up the very very first iteration of vibes along the way.

It didn't lean that much into climate change either, it was something that we added after hearing about the news of a record high-tide in Venice that happened that same year.

Anyway, August 2020: we finish up our studies and the first demo releases on itch.io. And damn did it went viral! Not only we were featured on the homepage, but we were also featured on freaking GXCorner of OperaGX!

The hype was real, and only strenghtened our will to continue working on Venice 2089.

You can actually still visit the itch.io page, I just did and went down memory lane hard. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should update it, y'know, considering we released the full title. 🤔



With spirits high, we decided soon after to develop an updated version of the demo to put up on Steam, that released on January 25 2021. And yes, it's the same that it's still available today.

Man, 2021 was a wild year. Despite not having much luck in terms of publishers we were going full sails on promoting the game. We took parts in A LOT of events, like LudoNarraCon (Still the best event we have attended hands down - my opinion ofc), and thanks to our friends at Wholesome Direct we managed to attend to the Guerrilla Collective, where we announced our Kickstarter campaign!

...Except we had to wait like, 5 months for it to actually start? And it failed too???

Yeah, our spin at Kickstarter didn't turn out so great as we've believed, but guess what? To this day I still believe it helped us. Sure, call me a die-hard optimist, but thanks to our tank we now know A WHOLE LOT more about the ins-and-outs of Kickstarter, and the crowdfunding industry as a whole.

Besides, it's not like we didn't find new fans along the way. For a team that was at their first ever title, without any prior direct experience in most fields, it was something!



So we started 2022 with a renewed willpower: to publish the game, no matter what, in that year.
AND JUST THAT WE DID. In the meantime we managed to score at new events, talks, podcasts and even an internationally known event in Pisa back in July (I wrote a whole devlog about that if you're interested 👀). We still weren't finding any publisher for Venice, but at least we were starting to get recognized around.

At last, we found a release date. October 14th, 2022.

And I kid you not saying that we RACED for that date.
Not everyone was working on Venice, because we already were in post-production, so our focus was 110% on fixing what was broken, and polishing what was already in; but let me tell you this:

THOSE WHO STILL WERE, DELIVERED NOT ONLY THEIR 110%, BUT WENT THE EXTRA MILE!

And that brings us back to the start of this devlog, at October 14th, on Discord, waiting to press that big green button.


What a journey it has been.





[ LOOKING FORWARD ]



Venice 2089 is finally out, that's great and all... But what's next? Do we plan on continuing to work on it?


Yeah... Kinda?


A better explanation: I saw someone using the term "roadmap" in the discussions a couple days ago, and I fear that I may have been rightfully misunderstood when I said "Post-launch support", so I'd like to clear things up a little:

WE CURRENTLY DO NOT HAVE PLANS TO ADD NEW CONTENT INTO THE GAME.

I'm sorry if you feel disappointed, I probably should have chosen my words more carefully in the note.
However, while we may not have plans to further expand the world of Venice in 2089, what we do have plans for is to improve the experience that people will have with the game, which can be done through bugfixing and further optimization.

...AND HOW EXACTLY DO WE PLAN TO DO THAT?

Well, for starters... We are going to pull out the demo.

Reason is, and I'm suuure you can understand, that it's a little... Outdated.
As I've written above, it basically is the same demo from January 2021, without anything new and prior to all the changes that we applied to the game.
"But can't you just make a new demo based on the final game?" I hear you ask, and while it is indeed a great idea, we don't feel it being our best course of action. (translated: we don't have the resources to create a new demo right now, and honestly told, we kinda want to start working on something else, at least for a while)


Secondly, is increasing our presence in the discussion tab. As of now, I've been the only one running the place, replying to threads and conveying bug reports and stuff to the rest of the team. And considering that we've received a generous number of reports since our release, I think it's better for everyone to have more people out there giving assistance. So you might see a couple of more people with the [developer] tag around the discussions.

(spoiler: they are all better than me at helping people)


Last but not least, is managing patches and bugfixes. We plan to catalog all current and future bugs in order of priority, depending on the impact they have on the game and their complexity, and to fix them accordingly, while releasing patches in cycles (we're still working on that).

For example, since release we've been busy trying to fix a big that caused infinite loading screens after closing and opening the game again. Bugs like this take the highest priority due to them being game-breaking (and in this case, save-corrupting too). Due to the gravity of bugs like these, as soon as they're fixed they are immediately pushed in the live stage (duh, what's why they are called hotfixes).

Right now we are working on fixing a couple more bugs (like the drone not working on some occasions and quest items staying in the inventory after its related quest is done) that have a slightly lower priority, and will probably release in our very first big Patch.

So, as I said in the previous note, KEEP THOSE BUG REPORTS COMING!

Another (kinda secret) reason I like this system is that I can, if I want, tinker again with the dialogues. Thank the stars I haven't seen any typo so far (but I fear there might be some out there), but I feel like some dialogues could be improved over time, made easier to read.

Because I know that I'm not an English native speaker, and there have been occasions throughout the development of Venice where I said to myself "Hold on, this is slang/not standard English", mainly because I associated a character with a particular set of habits (like Nova referring to their Grandfather as 'Pa) or because the english that I found in media I consume (be it books, video or games or whatnot) influence the way I write. So yeah, not a huge thing to think about, but it'd be a nice plus for me.

Oh, and as I said I'm probably going to create a new pinned thread on the discussion tab where I'll write the currently Known Bugs that aren't yet fixed.

OH YEAH AND I'M PROBABLY GOING TO RELEASE THE FIRST HOTFIX AFTER THIS DEVLOG!




[ LOOKING FORWARD ...AGAIN]

We're nearing the end of this devlog.

To be honest, I doubt that I'll write anything else for a long while, so I'm stalling as long as I can just to write something else lol.


...


Soooooo, I may have already spoiled the surprise a couple of paragraphs ago but yeah, we want to make a new game.

If you wanna stay up-to-date, follow our socials. For now they are all branded as Venice 2089, but I believe that I'll soon change that to our studio's name.

Venice has been a great journey, I already said that, but it's just the first title, the tip of the iceberg.
We want to keep working together, doing things that we enjoy, and making impactful games.

And I'm sure Safe Place Studio is up to the task.



(too cheesy right? I can't help it)






I guess that's all then. Thanks for reading these devlogs. I look forward to write them again, in the future.

TrustAlpha, signing off.





(OK that was defo cheesy, borderline cringe. BUT IT SOUNDED SO COOL WHEN I READ THAT IN MY MIND)

Fixed a bug in rally mode.

• Added more documentation to wiki and links from commands and database items.
  
• Standardized numerous numeric input across the editor.
  
• Included support in the engine for vertical pan in sky spheres.
  
• Other stability fixes.

Join the creator of Ocean's Heart Max Mraz's playthrough session, and if you haven't already, use the opportunity to snag Ocean's Heart for 50% OFF!