February 2025 Progress Update

Wow January just flew right on by! Let’s go over what we were up to and where we’re going!

Minigame Prototype

This past month we focused on adding NPCs and animals to Myranova, and although we aren’t just ready to show that off just yet – in the process of that work we talked about adding a minigame.

See Myranova is a big tourist area and in big tourist areas there’s always people looking to scam play some games with visitors. One thing we wanted to add was little carnival games you could play to get scammed make some money. Originally we wanted to add a custom minigame, but that requires a lot of work and- oh. It seems a game jam is right around the corner. Well let’s see what the theme is maybe it’ll give us ideas- Oh. Well. We have a minigame now.

Oops.

We’ll be working on polishing up the mechanics for the game over the next year here and there, but we welcome everyone to try it out and provide feedback. We’ve also been asked before what our Game Design Documents for Gataela look like. Great news! This one has one. And for even more bonus behind the scenes – we streamed about half the development! (VODs will be uploaded during this week)

So enjoy playing! We’ll be adding this to the game closer to completion as it’s technically scope creep. At least it’s in the same engine so porting should be straight forward.

Kickstarter Rewards

We’ve been talking about it for a while and it’s finally here – the shop is now live with leftover Kickstarter Rewards! We’ll be keeping the shop up until April or so after which we will temporarily close it until the Fall. We’ll remind you all before the closure but keep the dates in mind in case there’s something you’re interested in!

What’s Next?

Next month is some work, some prep and some upgrades. We’ll be:

  • Finishing Myranova NPCs
  • Starting on Ziacia NPCs
  • Upgrading Gamemaker Version
  • Preparing for additional SFX and VFX work

January 2025 Progress Update

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a good holiday season! Let’s talk about what we were up to in December, go over 2024 and talk about our plans for 2025!

December 2024

December was a very busy month! To give a brief idea, we added a good chunk of Kickstarter backer rewards, added a lot of NPCs and passive animals, and fixed a bug here and there. Here’s some of the NPCs we added:

2024 in Review

Well, this year was quite a strange one. If you remember the plan – we were going to focus on adding content and putting everything together and- to some degree- we did succeed! BUT we were heavily impacted by layoffs. Other than just personally being out of a job – we could not pay other members of the team for remaining work – putting a standstill on certain parts of the project (ex. SFX). Another impact was that we could not spend more than a set number of hours per week on the project or we might lose employment insurance. So the project itself was also pretty heavily affected. That being said, we were able to get a few things done so let’s take a quick look!

We finished:

We also:

    2025 Plans

    2025 is going to be our year! Maybe. Probably. Hopefully. And why? That’s right! We’re employed!

    Not to get too much into the details, but the job search this time around was by far the worst experience. To everyone else still busy looking we wish you the best.

    As for what this means for the project, to put it broadly, we’ll be unchained from money and time restrictions and be able to get back into it. It should be expected though that this first quarter is going to be very, very rough as we get back into the swing of things. That being said, because of 2024 we want to put a lot of effort into 2025. This means:

    • Finish adding all the Kickstarter rewards
    • Finish adding NPCs, animals, treasure, etc. to the maps
    • Finish the TTBattle SFXs
    • Rebalancing Debate battles & related facts/evidence/side quests etc.
    • Add debate battles & side quests
    • Map visual upgrades (ex. the water shader)
    • Performance and bug fixes as needed
    • Demo updates as needed

    We will also be launching the shop with the old Kickstarter physical rewards mid-late January (keep an eye out).

    Thank you for all the support and we wish you all a great start to the new year!

    December 2024 Progress Update

    Happy December! The snow is starting and so has the holiday season so let’s go over what we’ve been up to over the past two months!

    Demo Update

    In case you missed it, we put out a small demo patch last month fixing a crash and providing a small performance update. A number of other non-critical bugs were logged (thank you!) and those have since been fixed on our end.

    NPCs & Animals

    We’ve been working on adding NPCs and Animals to some of the newer maps. Let’s look at a couple locations!

    Storefront Shenanigans

    We mentioned before that we were working on setting up a shop for older merch we’ve made… and it’s here! Except… well… have you heard of Canada Post strikes? They started when we were hoping to launch the shop. So the shop is ready but we can’t ship anything yet and we’re certain no one is interested in paying 50CAD for shipping. So instead please take some time to peruse the photos and if there’s anything of interest take note – we’ll be launching officially sometime in the new year once the strike is over.

    What’s Next?

    As we are entering into the holiday season and things are slowing down, we’ll be trying to get as much as we can get done before the end of the year. It’s been a roller coaster and we’ll be trying to cross off at least a few goals from earlier this year:

    • Kickstarter Rewards – We’ll be trying to add all of the interiors and NPCs this month
    • NPCs & Animals – Focusing on the remaining towns and cities before revisiting older maps
    • Balancing Planning – Now that most of the battle upgrades are in we need to rebalance them. This means research!

    We hope everyone has a relaxing holiday season and we’ll see you in the new year!

    0.7.3 Release Notes

    Summary

    This is a small update to fix a crash some users have reported.

    It is available to download on Itch, Gamejolt and Steam.

    If you come across any issues, please log them here. For more dedicated support feel free to send us a Tweet or DM, message on the Discord Server, or email us.

    Change Log

    Improvements

    • Ignore transparent tiles while perform tile-checking for VFX/SFX

    Fixed

    • Fixed a crash during cutscenes when a character moves backwards

    October 2024 Progress Update

    Hello Chilly October! Here’s what we were up to in the last month!

    Making Olvia Come Alive

    Our main focus for the month was adding NPCs to the world and we decided to start with Olvia!

    Olvia is the first city with the new animals added to them – so there was a little bit of trial and error to get them working for the first time and well integrated – but we think it worked out! Let’s go over some highlights of some of the NPCs you can meet here!

    Let’s start with the obvious – there’s a dog on the loose and his name is Buddy and oh boy will he never be caught. It seems it’s a Wednesday.

    Wow look at all those birds! It sure would be a shame if someone ran through them!

    Huh… that’s strange… Oh look! Birds!

    Nothing suspicious here at all. Not at all. Huh? Did you hear something?

    Yes, You Can Pet Them

    A small little feature we added was for- you guessed it- to pet the dog! And the cat. And the horse. And the cow. And the sheep. And the chicken. And the- You get the point. You can show the animals love. Just don’t pet the snake.

    Old Merch New Merch

    While we were tidying up we stumbled upon a box filled with Gataela merch we made for the Kickstarter. The photo above is from when they were originally produced (we’ll take better ones). There’s some buttons/pins, some art books, and even some wood charms we made for Otakuthon pre-lockdown. If you’re interested we’ll be putting them up for sale sometime within the next month or so.

    What’s Next?

    Next month we’ll actually be taking a little bit of a break from Gataela. As a reminder, layoffs hit us in May and we haven’t gotten employed yet. It’s quite difficult as you can imagine. On top of that the seasonal sickness has hit (which is why this post was late). All in all – it seems like some rest is in order. So next month’s post will likely either be very short or non-existent. Thank you for your understanding.