March Stuff

Ok, we're gonna change how the Patreon works for a few months, because I'm really heads-down on shipping the game now. But I got some ideas! So let's start with what I've been doing, then scroll down for what I'm thinking I'll do for Patreon rewards (which hopefully folks think are cool).

General Update Stuff

So! Last month we did the big demo, and that went great! Using wishlists as the metric always feels weird, but comparing this festival VS our last one,  it seems like folks really dug it. Seems like we're hitting the bar we  need to for release. WHICH IS GOOD, because gosh we're getting close.

Anywho, what's been happening... if you want SkateBIRD in your Animal Crossing, you can use that code (thanks kai!). We added balloons, because of course we did. Also quail, with the lil dingle-bopper, and we started experimenting with cute bird-toy grindables.  You won't see these in the first bedroom though, we're saving 'em for  the last level. Speaking of levels, much of not-working-on-the-demo time  here has been working on the first level. It's very different from the Bedroom we demoed before, though we incorporated a lot of what made it cool.  Just had to clean it up a lot, make sense of what was there (ping-pong  table instead of Weird Giant Wooden Floor Table Thing), etc. The rest of  the time was working on the last level, which has a KITCHEN. Yes you can skate that sink, and the rest of the counter, and a bunch more that isn't shown yet. The level got uh. Fancy.

Once I finish this, I'm going to start putting the missions into the  first level, and the next week I should be mission'ing the last level,  and then:

WE'RE CONTENT COMPLETE.

Doesn't mean the game will be done then, but so close. So very, very close.

Patreon Reward Stuff

So, I'm thinking that instead of doing systems breakdowns, I'm gonna share some builds of the game from a few really early checkpoints. They're total garbage, but INTERESTING garbage, and I figure it might be fun for folks to see where all this started.

The Very First Prototype

This isn't the first build ever, but I think it's one of the first public builds. It also makes me immediately motion sick! https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tu0hdbkcpfxobu/2019-05-11%20-%20SkateBIRD%20alpha%20v3.zip?dl=0 

Read the instructions, have fun with it. Notice how the camera FOV is weirdly tight? It took me a LONG time to realize that was a problem. You can see that present in, what, everything through the Kickstarter trailer even. I think this demo was a modified version of the one that we funded the Kickstarter with, that addressed some of the feedback from the KS period. Which is to say, the KS demo was even worse. In retrospect, everyone was very kind and I have no idea how I thought I was gonna ship it this way. At least it was still cute and decently pretty. Next time, I'll scrounge up an earlier build I think, see if I can't find one of the weirdo ones before it was pretty.