Aug 2, 2023

Temple Of Snek - AethericGames

It's almost six months since Snek slithered out of early access!

It's hard to believe it's been so long. Back in February, I was so used to working on Temple of Snek that I couldn't really believe it was "finished". Heavy scare-quotes.

So this is a bit of a celebration. A half-anniversary. I wanted to write about some of the cool things around and since the 1.0 release, in the game, about development, and from the community. And since it's a celebration, we're doing a big 50% off sale - Snek's biggest discount yet - during the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase on 3rd-10th August. So that's an ideal time to grab it off your wishlist or recommend it to a friend!

About six years ago I typed the following into my ideas doc:

Tower of Snek. It's a Snake-like, except you're a giant snake monster defending the Tower of Snek from invading heroes who want to kill your priests and steal your loot. Small tile-based dungeon levels, could be procgen and roguish?

It didn't turn out exactly like that, huh? But the general idea was there. I was thinking of a tower of stacked levels, getting progressively harder as you climb, envisage as a 2D game with pixel-art tiles. This procgen, rougelike idea didn't stick around for long though. It was another couple of years before I decided to try making a basic Snake-like in 3D using spline meshes, purely as a learning exercise, and then I just kind of fell into making Temple of Snek. Version 0.1 was ready for early access in August 2021, and version 1.0 signified the end of early access in February 2023. Through that time the game got UGC with Workshop support, a kind-of-ridiculously-big, interconnected dungeon, and a ton of overhauls to various systems and features.

All of that was driven partly by the players and community, providing feedback and motivation. I'm very grateful to Temple of Snek players, and proud of the community we had through all of early access, and of the game it turned out to be. Cheers! 💚

Here's a list of seven things worth celebrating.

Cerebral Puzzle Showcase

Temple of Snek is joining the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase this week! It's a wonderful, curated collection of "thinky" games, and it's an honour to be included. If you buy one game this week, it should be a gift copy of Snek 😉… but if you buy more than one check out the showcase. There are some free demos too (including the excellent demo debut of the mysterious and puzzling CRT7 by Snek-friend Amicable Animal).

Updates Updates Updates

Throughout early access, there were minor updates every couple of months, as well as milestone updates like Mek-a-Snek (the snek-skin editor), Snek Workshop (the level editor), the hint system, and the three big Story Mode chunks. You can read more about them in the roadmap or change log. Two of my favourite minor updates were the addition of the rats and quetzal birds, and the spooky-scary-skele-Snek Halloween skin.

Version 1.0 ended early access, but it definitely wasn't finished-finished. Since then, there's been a ton of tweaks and new features like:

Pop-up length counter in the HUD.
Panning and zooming the map screen.
Adjusted some puzzles based on player feedback.
Visibility / readability enhancements.
Improvements to ultrawide support.
Improvements to the save system to help you get out of a jam if you accidentally use up all your restarts on the same checkpoint.
A bunch of bug fixes.

Player-made Snek-Skins

Since the Mek-a-Snek editor launched in version 0.2, players have been able to adorn their snek with custom scale patterns. In version 0.4 Mek-a-Snek got Steam Workshop integration for sharing patterns. All the colour patterns people have made resembling real snake species are fantastic, but personally I especially love the more creative ones, such as Lava Snek, by FerreTrip (which works well with the Glo-Snek body), Hotdog by Bubbles, and Arcade Anaconda, by CraftyMutt, as well as CraftyMutts knit patterns, which work well with the Woolly Snek body type, and are the kind I most like to make too.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933461266
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2964386113
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006194068
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006201977

Scottish Games Awards 2022 Nominee

In October 2022 Temple of Snek was shortlisted for an award in the Creativity category of the inaugural Scottish Games Awards. It was a prestigious bunch of nominees. Snek was in very fine company, and I felt very proud!

Interactive Music

The music in Temple of Snek is a huge part of the vibe and character of the game. I think Miles Tilmann did an excellent job of composing compelling, energetic, expressive bops to fit the environments and chapters of the game and assist the rhythm-based gameplay. It's all produced as individual stems, in a way that made it easy for me to script as interactive music to fit the puzzles. If you're not familiar with the game and its music, you can check it out in the demo. Some of my favourite moments are when the interactive music can anticipate that you're about to solve a puzzle and bring in a flourish not just after it's solved, but almost at the time when you realise you're about to solve it. There are a couple of those moments in the demo. Miles's arrangements and support made that possible.

Player-made Levels

Snek Workshop came out in two parts, completed in 1.0, and lets players make their own self-contained Snek puzzles using simplified tools and share them on Steam. It blows my mind whenever I play one of these creations and a player has used the game mechanics in a way I wouldn't have thought of, or poses a puzzle that challenges and intrigues me. I'd have thought I was so familiar with this game that I couldn't be surprised, but that's so not true. Some of my favourite levels on the Workshop are LEVEL 1 by SonySeva, Length Problem by Лёв, Water Room by ~HarrisoN~ and 氧化汞HgOlivere's excellent Binary System - it's very clever.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936776886
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914130805
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2912467032
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947284492

"Very Positive" Reviews

As of writing, Steam player reviews are at 93% positive, out of 78 customer reviews (and 95% of 143 overall) which is amazing as far as I'm concerned. Sure, this bizarre mix of rhythm/metroidvania/realtime-puzzle game isn't going to be to everyone's taste, but I'm really grateful for all the positive reviews and kind words players have given. If you enjoy Temple of Snek and haven't left a review yet, please do! Don't feel that you have to write a lot of words, but it really helps in a big way to get Steam to show the game to more new players. It's still a long way to the 95% of 500 reviews you need for "Overwhelmingly Positive" ... but you never know! Every 👍 helps!

Thank you for checking out this post, and for checking out Snek!
Remember to wishlist, review, tell a friend, and if you don't own a copy buy it while it's 50% off, between 3rd-10th August!

Aug 2, 2023

The colossus mod update

Battle Talent - adimeadozen

Hello, talent fighters! Here we go, second update for Battle Talent! We've added and optimized more content for this update than we did last time, and we've taken on board a lot of the feedback we've received from our players!
New Content

This time, 3 new weapons with different forms as well as functions have been added:
Whip Sword: Can switch from a sword to a whip form.

Blaster Hammer: Strike the ground will unleash a blaster

TwinBlade Of Slash: Not just a double-ended blade, you can also split the blade down the middle as a two-handed weapons. You can also release an air slash from the blade which freezes in place for 2 seconds before going forward, to skip the duration, combine or separate the blades.

Pull up the cheat menu and you'll be able to summon our three new legacy enemies: Robots！ (still a bit janky, just for fun)

You can also practice on our tutorial levels to use the skills more smoothly. We've added two new tutorial levels in this update:

C2-T: will let you practice how to deflect, charge attack, and charge deflect.
C3-T2: will let you practice using spells.

Many players wanted more rooms, let us introduced ten new rooms in this update!

New Features

Inspired by our player video, SelfieCam now can get blood stains! Get ready to make videos with even more stunning visuals!

Sandboxes have always been the most popular for players, and now you can replace any scene module for your sandbox!

For hidden weapons, we have added a new hint message board. It will help you find the weapon you want faster!

In addition to the neck snap feature, we've added grab and push away!

Now! Body parts can be exploded! Wich allows you to blow away any type of enemy if you use a shotgun or a fireball.etc (Bosses too, lol) We've also added destructible environment, get start to smash around!

Optimize

Avatar 2.1 version is now available! Models of different scales are now supported.

Improved skeleton revive effect
Blackhole spell is more powerful
Chest may contain more weapons

Known Issues

Thanks for the player feedback, the following issues have been found and the development team is now working on it:

May lag on laptop
May lose save file when battery runs out

Thank you all for the support and love of Battle Talent! For now, the current state of our game is not that perfect enough, but our development team will continue to work harder to update the game with more interesting and playable content every month. Thank you to all the players who have provided us with great suggestions, bug and feedback. If you have any other suggestions or ideas, please feel free to leave them on our Discord community or other social media platforms.

--Dev&Moderator team

Aug 2, 2023

Devlog #16: Answers and Questions

In Stars And Time - insertdisc5

Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog!

If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, a timeloop RPG, which is also the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!). You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!!

LET’S GET TO IT. This month is Q&A: Cohost edition!

“A Q&A again?” Heheh well I don’t have anything to talk about this month ✨ We’re working hard on finalizing the localization! And on porting to consoles! And on secret stuff! You know, the usual!!! Get excited!!! So, Q&A again 💖 And see, I asked questions for Q&As on Twitter. On Tumblr. On Discord. But some new social media platforms have entered the fray. SO.

Welcome to Q&A: Cohost edition. (Follow me on cohost and/or read this post I wrote about why I think cohost is neat teehee) (and follow me on bluesky if you want. I like it way less though. Sorry bluesky)

@ItsMeLilyV asks:

One of the bits of advice that gets tossed around by indie devs is to avoid making RPGs, especially for your first few games, because they tend to be large in scope, difficult to prototype, and easy to underestimate.

Was this ever a fear for you in making START AGAIN, or In Stars and Time? Did you take any special precaution to keep these games within a scope you could handle, and did you learn tricks from START AGAIN that carried over to ISAT when in came to keeping things manageable? Thank you!! ✨

I had no idea that was a piece of advice given, but yep, that makes a lot of sense! Since I didn’t know, I went in blissfully aware, teehee.

I will say that I am familiar with working on big projects from working on comics, and with seeing big webcomic artists always mention to never start with your magnum opus… And I could tell ISAT had the potential to be way bigger than I imagined, which is why I decided to start with creating the prologue to get used to RPGMaker as well as making games. Kind of a pilot of sorts!

Again, thanks to comics, I know to keep my scope pretty small, because even if you keep it small it WILL balloon into something way bigger than you thought. Just for the prologue, I imagined it’d be a 20mn game, and it’s easily a 2-3h one! Keep your scope small!!!

As for tricks, when I catch myself thinking “wow what if I added this cool thing”, I try to always keep in mind those two things: 1. How long will it take to implement (including bug testing), and 2. Does it add something important to the game. I know we always want to add a fishing game, or a fun minigame, but do you Need It. Does it add something substantial to the story, to the Themes. Or are you just adding it because you like fishing games. Which is a valid reason, but also, maybe just make a fishing game instead. You are not the Yakuza series!!!! You are a small indie gamedev!!!! Think about you in 4 months who has to fix all the fishing game bugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@stem asks:

how is it to have a piece of art that's basically done (as far as i understand) that you can't share yet? like how do you personally bide the time until it's finally ready to release, or is it not really a challenge to wait? :0c

It’s so weird!!! The game has been done for so long!!! I’m very glad I asked some friends to playtest the game, so I could at least get some feedback before the game is out… In some ways it feels like the game will be done twice: once back when I finished making the game, and once when the game actually comes out. It’s just a very strange experience. Sometimes people tell me they’re excited to find out more about this story beat, or about this character, and a part of me is like… Wait, haven't you played the game? Oh, yeah, it’s not actually out. Guess you’ll find out later.

EDIT: My god. I just checked on my private devlog for when I completed the Alpha of ISAT. It was in August of last year (I lay down on the floor and look at the ceiling) (I still had to finish all the illustrations so really the game was Done Donezo in October but still…)

anon asked:

What role did Armor Games play in creating the final product?

SO MANY THINGS. Here are some of them: support when it comes to porting/marketing/social media/localization, feedback on the game and how to make it better, community guidance, testing support, QA/internal testing… The game couldn’t be the way it is without them.

For more small details, I have a weekly meeting with my producer, Dora! We talk about the game and how everything is going. A couple months back, I also was checking in with the internal QA team fairly often to fix any remaining bugs. They also helped me find ISAT’s additional programmer, Isabella, and she is a godsend because coding is hard. They also take care of communicating with press, finding more opportunities to showcase the game in conventions, talking with the localization/porting teams… I am probably forgetting a thousand little things they did to help out!!! THEY’RE SO GOOD OK

Anon asked:

So obviously the skills/spells/what have you are based off of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Did you design each "type" to be like a certain style? Rock being heavy damage and defense buffs, scissors being speed and quick attacks, like that?

Absolutely! I just went with the obvious. Rock is physical damage, defense focused, Scissors is swords, attack focused, and Paper is magic, mind focused. It was fun to develop a spell system around those! I’m excited for people to find out more about Craft…

@nickshutter asks:

I really loved START AGAIN (streamed it for a small handful of friends) and was super happy to hear about a follow-up! The cast is so much fun and their personalities are really well-balanced—did any of the characters change pretty drastically from their initial conception during development of the game?

I’m so glad you streamed it with friends… I hope you had a good fun time…

And for sure! Isabeau and Mirabelle were pretty set from the get go (himbo and shy wallflower), but Odile started as more of a gentle teacher type, even if I very quickly went the snarky old lady route. Siffrin and Bonnie were harder to pin down– I wasn’t sure how to portray Siffrin’s despair in the prologue, and started showing them more overtly depressed, but I thought it’d be Very Yummy to have them show a happy facade to their friends. And then, for ISAT, I had to figure out what a non-depressed Siffrin would be like, for the first couple acts of the game before the despair sets in. As for Bonnie, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what they’d be like, what kind of kid they were, what their relationship with everyone else would be like, and then I thought about what their past would be like and then their characterization was set in stone. Sometimes you need to figure out One Thing to unlock a character’s brain. I’m very excited for everyone to find out more about each character in ISAT!

@SuperBiasedGary asks:

What games (or other media) lit a fire under you to create your own?
It could be stuff you liked so much it inspired, something you found frustrating because you felt an itch to do it differently, or something that made you realise humans make things and you could be one of them.

I found a lot of indie games inspiring, but I think Umineko might’ve been the one that made me go… Oh, anyone can just make a massive video game narrative. And you can make it very simple, with kinda goofy sprites, and still manage to make an incredibly touching story!

As for frustrating games that lit a fire under me, I think I’d say in general, I found issue with the classic trope of the “main character helps people and doesn’t get anything back”. What often happens in some games is that you help NPCs with their problems, sometimes helping them with very intense, complicated problems! For a very long time! And, in exchange, you get… A cool item? A nice new skill? And that’s it?

I know this might be complicated to implement on a narrative perspective, but I remember playing Persona 5, and your character just went through a very harrowing experience (like, oh, being INTERROGATED AND TORTURED BY THE POLICE) and you help your friends during social links, and they go “thanks for your help! Bye~” like WHAT ABOUT ME. WHAT ABOUT MY PROBLEMS. CAN YOU GIVE ME A HUG

So on a certain level, I wanted a game where instead of the characters around you having problems, the main character also has problems. And is subconsciously screaming “CAN YOU PLEASE NOTICE I HAVE PROBLEMS AND GIVE ME A HUG.” And hopefully, the characters notice. Winks

Hm. I do want to say I wrote most of the prologue/ISAT during the pandemic, and I felt very lonely and not supported. But then guess what. I told my friends about how I felt. And most of them told me they had no idea, and vowed to support me more. And now I’m closer to them. So the moral of this answer is, yeah, it’d be nice if people noticed, but also, you need to tell people when you’re feeling bad. LOOKS AT SIFFRIN

Anon asked:

Is there a song you listen to in order to put yourself in the sasasa/ISAT mindset?

I have a whole playlist baybee. Before you ask: there aren’t any hidden meanings behind those song choices. It’s about the Mood, and also my personal tastes in music I listen to when I need to concentrate. I like songs that go WUB WUB

In no particular order, here are five random songs I played on repeat when making the prologue:

Future Club (Arcade Version) by Perturbator (in bold because this was THE song I listened to on repeat. I believe I gave it to Lindar for inspiration lol)
Arcades by C2C
Wake Me Up by Para One
The First Wish by DROELOE
Les Enfants du Paradis by World’s End Girlfriend

And here are five random songs I played on repeat for In Stars and Time:

Down by Chloe x Halle
Nonsense Bungaku by Eve
Non-Breathe Oblige by PinocchioP
Gentle Heart by Jamie Paige
Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip

It’s interesting, the songs I listened to for the prologue are generally more heavy and frenetic, while the ones for ISAT are more hopeful… I made sure to listen to more lively songs for ISAT, since that’s the feeling I wanted to give off…

That’s all the answers I have! Thank you to everyone that sent in a question!!!

In other, non related ISAT news, I have started a new project and having a lot of fun. It’s a visual novel this time. I’m hoping to get some screenshots ready in the next few months, but also I’m taking it easy on this one. If it takes years with many breaks in between to get it done, it’s fine. What matters to me right now is the process!

That’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!
AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!