Funding

Unfortunately, we received news that we missed out on a $50,000 Interactive Development Fund, which would have been a game-changer for us. While we wouldn't have been able to work on the game full-time, we would have had more resources to take time away from our day jobs and focus on game development. However, we're not letting this setback deter us, and we're continuing to work on our games as usual. We remain optimistic that there will be more opportunities to secure funding later this year. 

In the meantime, we want to congratulate the studios that did receive funding, including our friends at Stormcloak Games who are working on their game Adaptory. We're really excited to see their progress over the coming months. 👏

Streaming

Brogan has now built up the courage to start streaming on Twitch. Our goal is to expand our reach and promote our games, while also providing an opportunity for viewers to engage with us and learn about game design.

Please Subscribe to wineanddev and come hang out for a bit! 

TikTok streams will come shortly once we work out how to stream to both platforms at once.

Rebranding

You may have noticed a recent update to our company logo. As we embark on the development of two new games, each with unique genres and styles, we felt it was important to refresh our branding to better reflect our company's overall vibe. In doing so, we've moved away from the serious-looking and hard-edged sci-fi aesthetic of our original logo and font and shifted towards a more rounded, bold, and versatile look that we believe better represents who we are as a company.

Out of Sight

We're excited to participate in Steam's Stealth Fest in July and are working hard to make our demo content even better. We're focusing on polishing the core systems and making improvements to provide a more engaging experience for players.

Our current focus is on finalizing the next set of rooms leading up to the second boss. This phase involves obtaining new abilities and gadgets, such as invisibility and a gravity trap. We want to ensure that players have a fun and challenging experience during the demo, so we're also incorporating a way to eliminate enemies using a non-violent taser gadget within melee range. However, some enemies will be immune to it.

Since we want to release Out of Sight by the end of this year this next set of rooms may be our minimal viable product for an early access release. We do intend on having a third stage and boss for the final game which we can continue to work on after an early access release.

We've also made a new design decision to have a way of eliminating enemies. This will align closely with one of the most fun parts of stealth games as well as help make it easier for the player as the levels are becoming more challenging and populated with enemies. We're still keeping true to our non-violent solutions to overcoming enemies so we've decided to add a taser gadget which can be used once in the melee range of an enemy. Some, however, will be immune to it.

Buy My Snake Oil

Buy My Snake Oil has undergone a drastic facelift. After a lot of experimenting and figuring out the technical hurdles, we've brought Snake Oil into 2.5D space. This means that we can take advantage of Unity's 3D rendering engine. Doing so has improved the dynamic shadows needed for a realistic day-night cycle. 

Speed Golf Royale

Wishlist

Firstly, the Speed Golf Royale Steam page is live! Please go and Wishlist it!

Most of this month was spent getting drivable golf carts working in the game and syncing over the network, which is now completed! If you've been following our TikTok you'd have a good idea of how tricky these kinds of things are 🙈. 

Gameplay

The next phase is to iron out all the kinks. The game is feeling pretty clunky, especially on the client side. This is to be expected as this has been a very rapid prototype. We hope to be able to show off some gameplay footage in next month's newsletter.

Holes

Currently, we only have two holes available to play, which are primarily used for testing purposes. However, over the next month, we plan to revamp these existing holes and introduce a brand new one. To complete the game loop, we need a total of three holes: Hole 1, where 20 people tee off; Hole 2, where 10 people tee off; and Hole 3, where 5 people tee off, and the winner is announced. While we plan to incorporate more holes with various themes into the final game, these three holes will serve as a minimal viable product to gather player feedback.