What’s in this post?
Holy cow we have some updates for you today. Here’s what’s in store:
1. Team Status
2: String Tyrant v.102 Released
3: String Tyrant picked up by IndieGala / Steam Update
4: String Tyrant Stuff on HypnoHub!
5: Starlight Budget Report for April 2020
6: The Triumphant Return of the OSX Build!!!
7: Last Week’s Poll Results
8: Curious Cat Cuestions
9: Links and Crap
Team Status
Salty is coding and begins the Big Balance Patch right after the next Adventure Mode release (see section 4 below). Chicken is still working her way through the art update. Hund has completed setting up our Steam page for String Tyrant’s release. Urimas finished the dance thing I wanted him to do (more on that in a future post). Koops is currently busy petting her cats. MarioneTTe is too tired to do anything. Pyxxis is getting us footage for a trailer.
String Tyrant will be getting a crude trailer (Steam requires a trailer on its launch page) courtesy of longtime favourite contributor CocoMint. Thanks, Coco!
String Tyrant 1.02 Released
A changelog is below. Most importantly, this includes the Linux/OSX builds. You can get it wherever you got it the first time, links are updated. If you haven’t played it yet, see this page, or buy it on the itch.io page (a free demo is available!)
*Fixed Jessie not having dialogue when spoken to while in the main hall as you go to find Lauren.
*Fixed the map piece in the chapel showing the wrong area.
*Fixed several typos.
*Fixed storybooks not costing a turn to drop.
*Fixed incorrect door highlighting with mouseover for west/east doors in some rooms.
*Fullscreen, Dark Mode, and Large Text size options are now saved between playthroughs.
*You can now set doll type/color preference from the options menu after getting any game-over.
*Options are now split into their own configuration files.
*Added OSX/Linux ports.
String Tyrant has been picked up by IndieGala / Steam Stuff
In the next week or so, IndieGala will be issuing a bundle of indie games, and String Tyrant is included! I will do a post as soon as it’s live with a link, in case you were holding off for some reason.
The Steam version of the game will be available in early May. This is because Steam requires a minimum of 30 days after the sign-up fee is paid before the game goes live. We already have most of the page ready and I’ve shipped a build to Steam, we’re just waiting on that 30 days to time out.
Pandemonium will make it onto Steam sometime later, it needs to receive the Big Balance Patch and be cleaned of any possible copyrighted material (a deep scrub is necessary, it is not worth the risk!) before it can be put up.
String Tyrant stuff on HypnoHub!
For promotional purposes, I made a little sequence.You can find it on HypnoHub (very NSFW!!!). It’s an original bit of writing with images from the game, and it drove some traffic towards the game, which means sales, which means sequels!
If you want to make fan art of any Starlight Studios stuff, let us know because we love free promotion and will boost the hell out of it. Promotion means sales means sequels, people!
Starlight Studios Budget Report for April 2020
People sure do love those periodic budget reports we do!
Please note that String Tyrant’s sales are not included in the April report. I will do a retrospective sometime after the Steam release and things have calmed down.
Apple is BACK, BABY
That’s right, I got the OSX build working again. How? Well I found GLAD, a program which generates opengl header files. I didn’t even use it, instead I downloaded some generated headers to my mac to see if I could get them to work. But I lost them because OSX sometimes just downloads something to a location and doesn’t tell you where (yes, really). So I did a search.
And I found a lot of opengl headers. Turns out that when Apple removed the headers from the framework, it left a whole bunch of SDK backups on my hard drive. So now I have the original headers again!
String Tyrant has already been compiled for OSX and version 1.02 is available. Pandemonium will be getting an OSX build early this week (I have to make sure the shaders still work with some upgrades I made) so that Mac players can finally play it again! Hooray!
Public Feedback for String Tyrant
Didn’t fill out the poll? It will remain open in perpetuity. We will still take a look at it in the future before making decisions. These are the results as of today.
Please leave us a damn rating, it really helps the game’s visibility.
And: People like the game. Maybe it actually is a good game.
Pretty good cross section of recommendations from the general public. Still has a very obvious kink crowd, but that’s okay. Let’s work together to make kink games socially acceptable!
Seems the whole “free demo” thing is really effective. Any future Starlight Studios games will definitely have demos. Getting people to play your game is a good form of advertising, who would have thought?
So most people think 5$ is about right for a game of this size. Good to know. We could probably charge a bit more for a larger, deeper game.
The last-minute turn-based-combat upgrade turned out to be the right call, it’s receiving much better feedback than the action combat did. A possible sequel to String Tyrant will definitely be expanding upon the combat system, we already have a lot of great ideas.
It’s a fairly short game, so the fact that a lot of people finished it is not surprising. I expect the people who stopped at the ritual altar are the ones who are playing the demo, as that’s where the demo ends.
If any of you who did not complete the whole game are reading this: Why did you stop where you did? Do you intend to pick it back up? Email us!
(Google forms sucks and I had to edit this a bunch. Get used to that.)
So the big one is people want more monsters and TFs. Monsters, bad ends, TFs – yeah that’s the kind of game we make isn’t it? Luckily, that’s thing #1 a sequel or expansion would get.
More monsters, tfs, and bad ends! Okay! But, people also really want to see what happens next in the story (whether that is a thematic sequel, a crossover, or what? Well, that depends on how the game does).
The fourth crystal not appearing on the map is actually a bug and was fixed in v1.02, so hopefully that should help.
As for how to solve getting hit during an attack setup – that’s kind of the point. Strategize your moves and make sure you’ve got shields ready for the hit.
The scenario presented in the third statement is a little confused (by ‘them’ do you mean Jessie and Lauren?) but is an interesting idea to take into account for a sequel. I’m not adding more major content to String Tyrant immediately, but may do a small content patch in the future.
5$ Patrol Pal Poll
This one is exclusive for 5$ patrons, and has a lot more impact on what the team’s plans are for the future.
Patrons are very receptive to a sequel if the game sells well! It’s doing pretty good so far. Our current goal is 2000$ to consider a sequel, with a budget of 6000$ (if we assume Salty would need to actually be paid this time). 10000$ in sales would guarantee a sequel.
Damn. Moody and spooky wins, but not by enough that a more adventure-themed game is out of the question. We have ideas for both types of games, and given this result, a sequel would likely be a horror game.
A dead goddamn split! That means its up to us what you get. People want a new story and new characters but a continuation and – you’ll get something good. Trust us. We make good games.
Once again, a majority wants the current tile-based movement system, but it doesn’t win by enough to fully throw out an Adventure-Mode style of movement.
Making a sequel use Adventure Mode’s movement but String Tyrant’s combat is an idea I’ve been toying with. Still, a majority wants the current system so that’s very likely to be what happens.
This is a pretty hard majority in favour of the card combat, though with some upgrades. Good, I really like how the card combat turned out and would love to expand it.
This is an update of the previous one with some “Other” added so people can vote for Pandemonium’s monsters.
As before, dolls did well, as did rubber goop. People want more mind-control stuff like possessive masks and book hypnosis, and good ol’ corruption.
Golems come out in a lot of the Pandemonium votes, but not enough to warrant getting their own sequel. Maybe a one-off expansion with golems could be fun, something quick to make (and by quick I mean four months again -_-)
Let’s Get Curious
Ask us questions anonymously over on Curious Cat, and I might just outright insult one of the team members for no reason!
I Need the linkiest link you have. No, that’s too linky.
Pandemonium Development 