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If you’ve ever played Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale, you’ll feel right at home in the old school Black Geyser. Developed by a small indie studio in Budapest, Hungary, it’s a love letter to those titans of the genre, with plenty of its own twists. Developed since 2015, backed on KickStarter and having entered into Early Access in August 2021, its launch is today.



Black Geyser is set in Yerengal, a world where dark gods have brought nothing but venality and greed. For centuries, the Devil-god Rothgor has spread fear and terror, waging war upon the mortal races. Eventually banished, the nation of Isilmerald has enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity. Yet discontent has begun to fester once more, and a bloody civil war is brewing between the capital Isilbright and the wealthy mining town of Deron-Guld.



Like any classic isometric CRPG, life starts out at the character creator. There’s 5 playable races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Feldegug and Rillow) and 13 unique classes, from 4 unique class groups (Priest, Outlaw, Warrior, and Wizard). Each plays completely different from the other and there’s enough here to suit all styles. After tinkering on the attribute screen (time to panic over those points!), you’re dropped into a world that’s plagued by pestilence and mysterious abductions. Without wishing to spoil the story, it’s your job to uncover the hidden legacy of your birth, across a world you’re free to explore.

Since its Early Access and over the last seven months, Black Geyser has taken the time to improve almost all areas of its game. The entire purpose of getting the game into the hands of players as soon as possible was clearly to refine its vision, identify problem areas and put them right. Having delivered over 20 huge updates, including Mac and Linux support, Black Geyser has made sweeping changes. From vastly improved loading times, to clearer player tutorials, improved crafting, new zones, enemies and questlines, the small development team have ensured they've focused on addressing and reacting to key player feedback.



As a CRPG with a large open world with dozens of unique locations, exploring, interacting with NPC’s and managing Black Geyser’s tactical-combat-with pause is key. Just like most party-based titles of old, you’ll need to recruit key allies, discover their motivations, choose your formations and deck them out in any weapons and armor you can lay your hands on, whether that’s from taking on epic bosses, or stealing from a nearby inn (just don’t get caught by the guards).

Black Geyser is undoubtedly a challenging experience, but first and foremost it puts its story and unique greed mechanic at the center. The choices you make will either advance the cause of the Goddess of Greed, or maintain the flame of hope to impact directly on the game world. Yerengal is brimming with content to discover, with varied grim biomes that have plenty of atmosphere that are filled with dangers. If you camp for the night, there’s every chance you’ll be ambushed. If you stray too far from the beaten track, don’t be surprised if you encounter enemies waiting to smash you to a pulp.

With a branching narrative spanning more than 300,000 lines of text and multiple endings, there’s more than 60 hours of content available here, not including all the side quests and secrets to uncover. Scratching that old school itch is the name of Black Geyser’s game, and with future launch plans set to bring pets, strongholds and additional content, its launch this week is only the beginning.

Black Geyser is available now on Steam at a discounted price before it launches into 1.0 later today for the slightly higher price of $29.99.

Are you ready to be corrupted by Black Geyser’s greed?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1374930/Black_Geyser_Couriers_of_Darkness/

The long-awaited day has arrived…
Today I'm excited to get to announce that My Beautiful Paper Smile has left Early Access, and you can play all four chapters right now! It’s been a long time coming and I hope it has been worth it. I’m thrilled to get it out to you all and conclude this story.

By the time you’re reading this, the game should have automatically installed the chapter 4 update, or have at least started installing it for your gaming pleasure. Enjoy!


Discord: https://discord.gg/FHrT6za
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBeautifulPaperSmile/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBPSmile
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybeautifulpapersmile/

Hey everyone!

Have you ever wondered if there’s a deeper meaning to all the “My Beautiful Paper Smile” world? Well technically there isn’t, but there is. Let me explain.



I think many stories in movies and games are hampered by an underlying message, and that pins writers into a very small corner. It doesn’t leave as much room for an engaging story, because you’re being constantly berated by a fourth wall-breaking call for change. I certainly don’t think morals and other messages are inherently bad in stories, I just believe that they are inherently difficult to do well, and because of that, I decided to avoid weaving any messages too heavily through the game.

When I was coming up with ideas for MBPS and structuring the story, I enjoyed the idea of adding some sort of moral, deeper message within the game. Ultimately, I was inspired by one “deeper meaning” (which I’ll talk about in a minute) that did have some influence over the story and characters, even though it’s not clearly presented at any point.

So, what was the theme that did end up influencing the game? As I was planning the worlds and characters, I thought it would be fitting to add some hints to the idea of social expectations. If you’ve played the game yourself, you might have noticed some connections to the idea. During my incredibly deep, thought-provoking, and philosophical high school years, I thought it interesting how everyone is raised to recognize and respond in specific ways, to specific social cues (some grasp these a little worse than others, myself included). These interactions and acceptable responses change vastly depending on the scenario, but appearing happy is always a crucial social response. Hence the weird world of MBPS that forces happiness.

If you play through the game with that in mind, you’ll probably notice some interesting connections between the story and that theme. Hopefully, you found it interesting!

Until next time! Keep smiling :)
Discord: https://discord.gg/FHrT6za
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBeautifulPaperSmile/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBPSmile
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybeautifulpapersmile/

It’s been some time since I gave any info on the fourth and final chapter of My Beautiful Paper Smile, so today I’ll be getting you all caught up.

On June 11th I did my first full playthrough test of the entire game, and luckily nothing blew up! For the rest of that month, I did a bit more testing, fixed some bugs, and added the main text translations to the chapter. The original plan was to release the game earlier in the summer, but due to some delays, we had to push the release date back a bit, so we apologize for the wait. It’s certainly been longer than I hoped for, but hopefully, you all can hang in there a little longer.

At the time of writing this, I’m just waiting on some playtesting results, that way I can get as many bugs fixed as possible and eliminate any goofy mistakes I might have made during development. Once I get these results all I need to do is make a few changes, fixes, and optimizations, and then it’ll be ready to launch.

In the meantime, I’ve been spending time researching some more of the interworking of the indie game industry, and have been experimenting with some different game ideas that I might develop fully after My Beautiful Paper Smile has been fully launched. While MBPS has been in limbo for a few months, I’ve certainly been staying busy and I can’t wait to share more about my upcoming projects soon (follow @TwoStarGames on Twitter for updates!).

Now that I’ve got all the status update stuff out of the way, here are some cool screenshots from chapter 4.





Hope you all are excited to play the conclusion to this game because I can’t wait to get it out there for you.

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

Today I’m going to be sharing some interesting (hopefully) facts about the My Beautiful Paper Smile world, and its development. These are just five somewhat random things that don’t really fit well into posts of their own, so I’m compiling them all into one post here. Also, here’s a very heavy spoiler warning, because this post is full of spoilery stuff. For those of you who have played the first three chapters already, or for those who dare to venture onward anyway, enjoy!


At the very beginning of the game, after you exit your daily chambers, I had built a whole other area of the facility that players were going to need to navigate through to get back to their cell. Unfortunately, at some point, I was optimizing levels and deleting unnecessary objects, and during this process, I deleted this whole section of the facility. About a month later, it came time to program that part of the game, and I realized that it was completely gone. I didn’t have any backups of that level, and after some contemplating, I decided not to rebuild it. That whole part of the game was meant to be about 3-5 minutes of walking back to the player's cell, and during that time the Lost Child would talk with the Joyous as a way to get players up to speed on the story of the game. I figured that it would be best to just tell the story in a more organic way, rather than shoving it in people's faces for 3 minutes, so I left the whole section out. I actually have a video that shows this part of the facility before it met its demise, and you can take a look at it here.




The earliest version of the MBPS timeline would have Vincit escape the facility in the first chapter, then escape the village which was going to surround the facility in the second chapter, then cross a large haunted forest in the third chapter, and finally reach the castle and explore it in the fourth chapter. This was the plan for the timeline until the first chapter was almost entirely completed. Once I got close to finishing it, I thought it would be a lot more fun to make a forest, as opposed to a village for the next chapter… So I just swapped them! I feel like this decision makes more sense anyway. Having the village surrounding the king's castle, as opposed to a random facility just seems more logical right?



In the second chapter, you find a cave that is the home of the spider king and his son. These guys are the boss fight at the end of the second chapter, but I had an idea for another boss that I ultimately scrapped. The boss would have been a large, angry, sentient tree… Yes indeed. This evil wood monster would have been placed in Eden, the area full of mystic fountains that you find right before entering the spider cave. That was about all I had planned for this guy, but since the idea of evil spider people seemed so much more frightening, I threw out my Ent friend in an effort to keep things a bit more simple and focused.



In writing the game's lore, I had the intention that there were many islands all in relatively close proximity to one another. I wanted to make this apparent in the game itself, but I never found a natural way of mentioning it, so I decided not to put any focus on it at all. Each island would be largely inhabited by one prevailing species, like goats, spiders, or whatever the heck the Authorities are (I’m still not sure about them). Some islands are at peace, but some are definitely not.



Some people might be sad to hear that this could have happened, so I’m a little hesitant to add this, but I thought it was interesting. When the decision was made to make a free spinoff game that took place in the MBPS universe but focused on a character other than Vincit, I had a few different ideas in mind. The first idea was to make a game about what happened to the Hunter before he met Vincit (which I did make, and you can play it here!), but I also thought it could be interesting to follow the story of Vincit’s friend, and show what happened when he was captured by the Authorities in the first chapter. It would cover his capture, interrogation, and brief escape before being apprehended once again by the Authorities. I’m sure it could have been an interesting little side game, but ultimately I’m happy I decided to make a spinoff centered on the Hunter instead (he’s one of my favorite characters, so I just had to).


Well, there you have it, folks. A little peek into some of the things that almost were, could have been, and that just went unspoken. Hopefully, you found that interesting.

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

Discord: https://discord.gg/FHrT6za
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBeautifulPaperSmile/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBPSmile
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybeautifulpapersmile/

It’s been a little while since I did a post like this and since chapter four's release is getting a little closer, it’s time to start reminding everyone that My Beautiful Paper Smile still exists by talking about it here. In this post, I’ll be talking about some of the things and characters that inspired the characters you see in my game.



I have to start with the king since this was the very first character that I designed for the game. Many months before I even had the idea for My Beautiful Paper Smile, I had been sketching some random pictures while bored in school. One of the characters was this creepy smiling goat character with a crown. Why? Because goats are weird, smiling goats are weirder, and a smiling goat king just takes the cake. Basically just a strange idea from the mind of a painfully bored student. Months after that when I was trying to get some good game ideas I found that drawing while doing some cleaning and decided it would make a great horror game character.

The Joyous were designed to have some resemblance to the king. I knew I wanted the king to be self-obsessed, and thought it might make him a creepier character if he wanted everyone to look like him. I also had recently learned about the game Sally Face and liked the mystery of Sally always wearing a mask, and never getting to see this character's face. This is where the inspiration of the eternal horned masks comes from. The king wants all his people to look like him. The kids also have goat hooves, but that gets a little more complicated.

When writing the game's story...



I’m making a horror game. People are scared of spiders. Add spiders to a horror game. Seems like a no-brainer to me.



This character was added because of certain events that occur in the first chapter of the game, so if you haven’t played the game short Night in Riverager yet I have very kindly blacked out the rest of this character's origins due to spoilers. You’re very welcome.

Alright, for those of you who have already played through the first chapter and know about the capture of our Joyous friend, this is why the hunter was added.
In the first chapter, I used the friend character as a way to add discussion between characters to help tell the story of the game in a more natural way and to help drive player motivation when he’s captured. But in the second chapter, I needed to somehow keep telling the story and give the player more world context. I figured the best way to do this would be by adding a new companion character to help drive the story and give a little more guidance to how the game's lore is presented. I made the hunter a deer, simply because of the irony that deer aren’t predatory animals. I also liked the idea of having more animal-based characters to give the world a bit of a fantasy vibe.

Early in the writing phase of development, I knew I wanted the king to be a more mysterious character during the first few chapters. But I still needed a way to show the king's influence on the game's world and characters. Plus, every evil king needs a handful of maniacal henchmen to do their bidding. The Authorities are not goats but I did design their horns and facial features to resemble those of the king and the Joyous. I gave them hooded cloaks to make them more mysterious and creepy. The whole goal with these guys was to create characters that feel threatening and unsettling (MBPS is a horror game after all), so smiles, stitched eyes, as well as a tall and broad stature fit the design I was aiming for.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is the game that inspired me to start making horror games, and in the FNAF series, there are a lot of very ambiguous characters. If you’re familiar with these games you might know about Golden Freddy. This character was mysterious, unexplained, and quite threatening. I really liked the idea of adding some sort of obscure enemy with strange intentions to My Beautiful Paper Smile. The Body of the Faceless is ghostly, has strange abilities, and even the Authorities fear him. Maybe he used to be a kid from Facility 12? Could he have been a weapon from another island? An alien? A glitch in the matrix?? If you look for the answers, there’s a lot to learn about this character in-game that I don’t plan on spoiling here ;)

That ended up being a little longer than expected, but there were a lot of characters to talk about
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

I hope you all found that interesting, and enjoyed getting a peek into the “Why?” behind how these characters came to be, and why they are the way they are. If you want to talk more drop into the discord.

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

Discord: https://discord.gg/FHrT6za
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBeautifulPaperSmile/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBPSmile
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybeautifulpapersmile/

We're excited to do a quick live stream of My Beautiful Paper Smile tomorrow July 31st at 2PM EDT as part of our DreamHack participation.

Join MrIronHam (Devin) from V Publishing as he showcases some gameplay and answers some questions you may have.

Also, expect some additional blogs and content to show soon. Time is winding down and Chapter 4's release is coming.

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

So this chapter spent more time in pre-production than any other chapter. I started about last November but was delayed by Night in Riverager, my spinoff game that also takes place in the MBPS universe. After that game was done, I was able to get back to work on writing and planning this last chapter. I knew from the start how the game would end, but I still had to fill in the fourth chapter with other meaningful information and lore to help explain the universe a bit better. Since this is the last part of the game I spent a bit of extra time making sure everything tied together as well as possible, and ultimately I’m pretty pleased with how this chapter will play out.



Alright, so that stuff might have been a little bland, but here’s some cooler stuff for you. As of now, the chapter is approximately 50% completed, and I’m on track to be able to release it late summer of this year! Here’s some cool stuff from that first 50%...





That’s about all I have for you at the moment, but there should be some more blog posts in the coming months to look forward to.

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

Discord: https://discord.gg/FHrT6za
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBeautifulPaperSmile/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MBPSmile
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybeautifulpapersmile/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1036700/My_Beautiful_Paper_Smile/

Hey everyone!

Today I get to announce a little project that I’m really excited to share with you all. I introduce to you Night in Riverager.



Night in Riverager is a prequel and takes place in the same world and time as the events of My Beautiful Paper Smile. It’s a short story that helps give more context to the MBPS world. This is a story I wanted to be able to tell, but just couldn’t within the confines of the original storyline.



The game follows the journey of a hunter named Lasciva, who lives with some of his family in Riverager, which is a remote corner of his country. They live in hiding, hoping to evade the King and his Authorities, but on occasion, someone must leave the small precinct to gather supplies. This is one of those nights.



Night in Riverager is now available and free to play on Steam, itch.io, and Gamejolt, and I hope you’re all excited about it!

Additionally, Chapter IV is still underway and continues to be on schedule for its Summer release at this time. Currently in the writing phase of the Chapter and once moved into the visual phase you can expect to see more frequent visual updates at hand.

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1500380/Night_in_Riverager/

All you need to do is download the latest update in your Steam library, and hop into the game. If you haven’t picked up the game for yourself yet, the third chapter will be available as soon as you buy it, and you’ll get the fourth chapter later next year, as soon as it’s finished.

It feels so crazy that this day is here already. Looking back at the Early Access launch, I feel like it’s just been a few weeks. Hope it hasn’t felt too long for you all, and I hope you enjoy it!

Delve into Chapter 3 Now!

Until next time! Keep smiling :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1036700/My_Beautiful_Paper_Smile/