AT&T Unlocked Final Winner Reveal is this Tuesday!
about 4 years ago – Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 02:13:35 AM

In the previous update, I mentioned that Lori (and Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly's Tale) is a finalist in the AT&T Unlocked Games competition for women game developers.

The live winner reveal and gamer's choice vote are tomorrow night (Tuesday, March 7) starting at 5 pm PST. I hope many of you will join us for the stream and vote for the Tilly of your choice. :-) The stream will be on AT&T's Twitch channel at Twitch.tv/ATT .

We're pushing our "regular" stream back a week to Saturday, March 19 at 2 pm PDT (note that Daylight Savings Time starts on Sunday, March 13 in most of the U.S.). That will be on our usual channel - https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames . Please join us as I muddle through another day of the AGD remake of Quest for Glory 2: Trial By Fire.

Well, we did name it "Summer Daze"
about 4 years ago – Sun, Feb 13, 2022 at 08:16:13 PM

Release Schedule for Tilly's Tale

I just looked at our Sept. 30, 2021 update because a backer posted a comment on it. In it, I mentioned that we would be doing Early Access and backer copies of Tilly's Tale "very soon."

Well, here we are more than four months later, and we haven't done that yet. The status is still "real soon now," but we've done a lot more with the game in the meantime. The critical improvement was adding Mr. Terk's angry voice. We also added a second Credits screen accessible from the main menu, listing all of the developers and voice acting talent.

The current holdup is our card mini game, La Boomba! In my previous playthroughs, I hadn't taken a path that led to the game, and it turned out to have some "soft locks" that prevented finishing the game. I want to make sure that players can get through the main paths before I'm willing to do even an Early Access launch. We're probably going to push that back to late March.

Well, we did call the new game series "Summer Daze at Hero-U." I mention that because it will now likely be May or June before we do the official game launch. Support for phones, tablets, and Nintendo Switch might take even longer.

Upcoming Streams

Tomorrow as I write this (probably today as you read it), on Saturday, Feb. 12 at 2 pm PST, we're doing a livestream in the usual place: https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames. We'll run about two hours, or possibly longer. Lori and I plan to play the AGDI remake of Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire. This is a point & click version of the game (with a typed command option) made by the fan group that later became Himalaya Games. The stream title is "A Katta's Tail of Two Cities."

Sunday night, Feb. 13, starting at 5 pm PST, I plan to stream a World of Warcraft event I'm doing with my guild. We'll be chain-running Mythic+ dungeons starting from a single level 13 key, and trying to see how high we can build it in three hours. The stream is subject to whether I can get some technical details to work. I'll be playing Maramacci, a Dwarf Shadow Priest (ranged damage class).

We will not do a stream on Feb. 26 because we'll be on vacation with our son's family. The next regular livestream will be on Saturday, March 12 at the usual 2 pm time.

There will be another special stream on Tuesday, March 8. I'll post more about this very exciting event when it's publicly announced. It will be on a different Twitch channel than our usual, and we will want as many fans to come as possible, for reasons we'll make clear in the next post.

Tilly's Tale is almost there... and Nintendo Switch adventure game sale
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 12:02:18 AM

Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly's Tale Ready Soon!

Build 0.0.13 is up on Steam for Alpha and Beta testers. For the rest of you who have been waiting to play Summer Daze at Hero-U, great news! I plan to put the next build into Early Access and provide Steam, GOG.com, or itch.io game keys to all Summer Daze at Hero-U backers!

I'm billing it as early access because we plan to call Zehra, and possibly other voice actors, back to the studio to add additional voice lines to the game. And of course we continue to fix issues and fine tune Summer Daze at Hero-U. But Tilly's Tale is now fully playable, and we're starting the long development journey towards creating Ifeyo's Adventure and Sami's Story.

Meanwhile, if you or a friend owns a Nintendo Switch, you'll want to know about...

Awesome Indie Adventure Game Sale for Nintendo Switch

We're joining Ron Gilbert, Dave Gilbert, and other great adventure game developers for a point & click adventure game sale on the Nintendo Switch store! Click the link below for full details on our original Hero-U Kickstarter page, or click the image to go straight to the sale.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/3316826

New Year, New Release, New Resolve - 2022
about 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 06, 2022 at 12:51:22 PM

Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly's Tale is coming soon! Yes, truly! We're still adding Terk's voice lines, without which it just isn't the same. Then just a bit of refinement, and done. We're shooting for February or March 2022 for the full release, with an Early Access and all backer release in January.

Happy New Year, friends!

Let’s start this year off with some fun and games. We’re doing an extended livestream this Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022 from 1 pm to 5 pm PST. As usual, we’ll be on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames.

Our plan is to play a bit of Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption from the beginning, talking about some of the design and development decisions we made, and things that went right and wrong with the game. Join us to ring in the new year and comment about what worked for you, and what didn’t!

The past few years have been rough for all of us. We’ve all been faced with different challenges and scary conditions. In our case, it’s involved extended illness, unexpected caregiving responsibilities, and more. For much of the time, our game development efforts have taken a back seat to other tasks and distractions.

We’re making some resolutions for 2022.  I’m rededicating myself to playing a bigger role in design, development, and promotion of our games. I’ll have fun too; I’m just not going to let the distractions take over my entire life as they have for the last few years. We’ll release Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale by Spring.

Lori is similarly committed to completing the dialogue for Ifeyo’s Adventure in 2022. JP and Al have already created the art for Ifeyo’s game. The game takes place at Hero-U in the Summer after Tilly’s Tale (and after the events of Rogue to Redemption). Strange things are happening at the school, but the Harvest Festival must go on - This time, Ifeyo is in charge. He needs to balance making new friends and helpers for the festival, dealing with an invasion of Konks, and learning a ritual to summon his very own Familiar.

The next game we are developing in the Summer Daze series is Sami’s Story.  JP has created some wonderful art for this adventure tale of a Doggie who wants to be a Hero. We even have some preliminary artwork for Puzzleworthy. It’s just a Simple Matter of designing, writing, creating music, and developing the games. ;-) No problem… But it will take time.

Mac, Linux, and Mobile Testing Needed

We promised that Summer Daze at Hero-U would run on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, but so far we've only tested the Windows version.

As we have no Linux testing ability currently, and limited bandwidth for any testing, we’d appreciate it if some of our backers can help. If you plan to play Summer Daze under Mac or Linux, please let us know at [email protected] whether you see these issues.

We’d also like to line up some iOS  and Android testers for Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale. I need to do some research on making the latter two versions available. Possibly we’ll initially launch just for PC systems, with Switch and mobile versions a few months later. Our Switch version will once again be converted and published by Silesia Games.

About That New Year

Our plan is for 2022 to be a much better year than either of the last two. We’ll release Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale early in the year. Then we will focus on Summer Daze at Hero-U: Ifeyo’s Adventure for a 2023 release. In Lori’s copious free time, she’ll start writing Sami’s Story. And I’m going to start designing puzzles for our puzzle adventure game, Puzzleworthy.

We’ll continue to host Live Streams with games and prizes. Our new game is AlphaBot-ticelli. Like Botticelli, it’s a two-part game - Stumping and guessing. We come up with a name, tell you the first letter, and you try to guess it. But first you have to stump us. Each player is assigned the next letter of the alphabet, and challenges us to find a name or word starting with that letter that answers their challenge.

As an example, “My letter is Z. It’s a place you go to see animals.” An obvious answer is “zoo,” so probably too easy a challenge. But we might say, “zoetrope,” and that works if we can justify it. (We saw a zoetrope in Culver City that showed animated animals.)

If we get stumped, or if stream participants think our answer sucks, the challenger gets to ask a yes or no question about our secret name. If we answer “Yes,” they can go again or guess the name.

If the game turns out to be fun, it can become one of our staples for future streams.

We hope all of you have a magnificent - but also fun and challenging - 2022. After all, it’s human nature to love to be challenged; if the game (of life) is too easy, it’s hardly worth playing.

May your 2022 real-life games be worthy and fun adventures!

Thanks for Everything!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 08:21:39 PM

Lori and I are incredibly grateful for the love and understanding of our backers, friends, and fans throughout the years!

Left to myself, I'm a "capital p" Procrastinator. I'm quite capable of accomplishing nothing for long periods of time. Some of the few things that get me to actually do something occasionally are promises and commitments that I make to fans. That includes our Patreon, answering questions on Discord, doing our livestreams, and of course making games with Kickstarter funding.

(If you aren't already on our Discord, please search for Transolar Games and join the conversations!)

The next stream is tomorrow, Nov. 20, 2021 starting at 2 pm PST for about two hours. As usual, it will be on our Twitch channel, https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames.

One thing I just realized is that I never finished posting videos of Lori reading her (with Mishell Baker) book, How To Be A Hero: By the Book. I've just added chapter 18 on YouTube at https://youtu.be/m8gl9g4fewY. I also have chapter 19 "in the can," but we'll probably have to rerecord the last few chapters before we can post them. I suspect we'll start having Lori read them again during our livestreams.

For patrons only, the full list of published chapters is in this post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/by-book-live-31497316.

Lori is working on a new "Thank You" video for our backers. She previously posted one in December 2019, when this Patreon was only six months old. Here's a link to that post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32483144. Many of you have been our patrons all that time!

Lori is also making some wallpaper images that we'll make available to patrons here. Last year we posted a mix of Halloween and Thanksgiving images together: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44189492.

Note the prevalence of "Lori" in all this. My role is mostly sharing her work with you, and occasionally writing a few words. Of those, the most important are, "Thank you!" We really appreciate everyone who enjoys our work and helps us make more. Here's to many more years of us (slowly) creating new games and images because you've asked for them. :-)