Uh, hi, hello, how are you? John here with another enthralling progress report, I don’t know why the f I’m calling it “A New Beginning” but anyways, I ditched the whole fancy-progress-report-compressed-in-a-image because that wasn’t a good idea at all, for many numerous reasons.

First of all I redid the studio site (I’m gonna update it after I post this), the logo and made a sweet banner up there. I tried to make the banner look similar to Zeal from Chrono Trigger because that was by far the best location in any game of all time ever. Seriously, check this:

I think the site looks okay, it’s p bright and cheerful, it has a sidebar and a few pages with info game studios tend to have, it’s got sweet social media buttons up there, posts are displayed simple enough with a share button for facebook/twitter/google. Someone told me to add a “Pin to Pinterest” button but I don’t know wtf pinterest is.

General Updates:

I really need to friggen make a Kickstarter update for some news and such since I don’t know how many of the backers are actually reading these updates plus it’s been a while. Also need to send out backer surveys before the end of this month because I said I would in the last update(!)

Got entirely fed up with web stuff so I went through a web design crash course. I read this entire site here and learned Adobe Muse. Tried getting help with it but that hasn’t worked out at all so I was like, “Bah, I’ll just do it myself, you have stood in my way for long enough web stuff!”

I was planning on doing a lot of different kinds of advertisements and updates but realized I can’t do that so much during development. It’s difficult to make updates and stuff when no one can play the game. Going to save all the stuff I have planned for after the game is done/close to being done.

Game Updates:

Check out the sweet new in-game Bear Arms #SweetBearArmsYo

The new Bear Arms are actually scientifically accurate in scale, shape and color. Because I only want the best bear arms in my bear game. Got all the animations for them done too, made a variety of anims for every occasion. #Hype4AnimatedBearArms

Oh Em Gee you guys, there’s DIVING. #OhEmGee

You can bear dive for how ever long you can hold your breath as determined by the DIVE bear stat. This makes adding secret areas all the more fun and made the Coast Region open to grander possibilities so I’m hella excite. (Yes I realize bears don’t usually dive but it’s fun so shush.)

I was trying to make it so when you look down when standing you can see your bear feet but can’t get it to look/work right. #SadNews

Progress:

Going to tell you some of what I actually have done thus far.

Got the bear control all done, you can crawl, run and walk around on 2 legs, all of which give allow for different abilities. Also there’s swimming, climbing, swiping and more.

Made a sweet new teaser trailer, I’ll premiere it when I put the game on Steam Greenlight and send out beta testing for beta testers. I was thinking about making a teaser of the teaser trailer but that might be too meta.

The game’s new promotional stuff like the title page and logo are done along with all the art for the physical rewards, stickers, bear card, etc. They’re all crazy high resolution too. Sneak peak of the new title:

The Hub Region, the Mountain Region, the Lake Region and the Caves are all done. (Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re playable, they’re still dependent on a bunch of other things that aren’t finished.)

Found a delicate balance between good graphics and good performance. That was crazy complicated. Friggen culling, colliders, all that jazz, y u gotta be so complicated.

Finished the “Backer List” for the game’s website which I’m relativity proud of. Going to post a teaser of it on muh twitter.

Conclusion:

At the moment I’m focused on making a playable version for Beta Testers, writing a Kickstarter update, sending out backer surveys to get backer info and putting the game on Steam Greenlight. Need to put it on there asap but I also have to finish the beta test so other people can play it and judge it first.

Another thing I’ve been concerned about with this whole thing is what if I end up making a sub par bear game? CAN YOU IMAGINE THE HUMILIATION AND SHAME IF I DID?! People will be like:

“Hey there’s the person who made that sub-par bear game. How embarrassing.”

SEE, I’M TAKING EVERY STEP TO AVOID THAT RIGHT THERE

- John