So as the title suggests, this will probably be my final post on IndieDB for a bit... That might be a bit misleading though, it doesn't mean Tower 57 is dead, quite the contrary.

In fact it's been a crazy month, we signed a publishing deal with 11 bit studios, we got a new trailer, we demo'ed the game at Gamescom, but most importantly we gained console ports and online multiplayer in the process!

That was something we had aimed for from the start as stretch goals in the KS campaign but didn't quite achieve (no complaints there though, I honestly could not handle myself when we reached the base goal, it's mind blowing on so many levels I'm not even sure I'm over it yet), so you can imagine how thrilled I am ^_^#

Thing is though, writing news posts takes a lot of time (as I'm sure most of you already know, this being an indie dev community and all...), and I had already been falling behind on updates : point in case, last update is from June 11 ...

Now with the added workload of console ports and online multiplayer, and deadlines so tight you could crack a walnut, I realistically don't know how much time I will be able to put into updates, especially with 11 bit taking over the marketing side (I mean, that's what publishers do, right ^_^#?)

On one hand this breaks my heart, as imo this is by far the best indie community, certainly the one where I got most comments and most chances to interact with other devs and gamers...

On the other hand, holy shit I just signed a piece of paper that actually says consoles and online will be in by ... date X (I can't spoil it, sorry ^_^#) ... so I better get cracking!

If anybody reading this is actually interested in following the last leg of development, I'm still keeping our website up for now, although I'm going to close the forums soon and migrate everything to steam.

And now for the obligatory parting gifs:





You can now lose your legs, although you can still crawl around very slowly, and of course shoot if you have any arms left ;) The plan is to allow the other player to carry you on his / her back while you keep shooting stuff, although that's technically not in yet ^_^#





We also added some nice "cinematic bars" for cut-scenes and transitions (basically as a visual cue to whenever you lose control of your character).





That's right, we have cut-scenes now :) (if you wanna call'em that...).





Another thing I'm really happy with is "companions", that is to say, you can now recruit npcs to follow you around and act as additional muscle.





And some features are even reaching the "polished" stage, like having bullets actually bounce off your shield!





Plus I get to have fun adding cool stuff like a Paradroid clone as the hacking mini-game ^_^ (ok this one is *not* polished, don't mind the graphics!)

So that's basically it for now... I'm buckling down and strapping up for the last leg of development, which will involve a lot of salty tears shed over online multiplayer bugs, and probably many evenings of burning effigies of console dev-kits, but ultimately out the other end of the tunnel will come a released game.

And no matter how well or terrible that goes, I can confidently say the journey alone will have made the entire effort well worth it.

Thank you IndieDB, and thank YOU, who followed these posts and actually cared enough to check out this news post :)

Cheers,

Marco