Thief's Roulette

Thief's Roulette is Releasing in November
9 days ago – Sun, Oct 06, 2024 at 07:20:18 PM

Sorry this isn't the official-official announcement I wanted it to be. I'm waiting on some more information from the Publisher. They had just been very busy with Tokyo Game Show, so our planned October announcement is just a little bit off schedule. They have some more things left to do on their end, and when it's all settled we will have an exact date and give a real announcement. For now we'll go with 'not late November.'

Sorry again. Another update will follow this one very soon!

Very Small Update
about 1 month ago – Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 06:39:21 PM

Unfortunately this is more of an announcement of an announcement, but it's been a long time and I think that's better than nothing. The publisher and I have done enough to feel comfortable saying that we will have a release date to share by the first week of October. For now I can only say that it will release this year.

There's a couple more small things that we want to have done and to get right, but we can make an announcement for sure at that time. The game and QA is complete, so come October this can all be made official. I'll also present that final Release Trailer then as well, which I've been sitting on for quite some time.

That's all for now. Next update in two weeks or sooner.

Simple short update
3 months ago – Fri, Jul 26, 2024 at 12:52:34 AM

There's been another long gap with no updates, so here's a quick one.

The last update ended with me saying how close we were to wrapping up QA testing. It clearly has lasted a bit longer than I thought, otherwise I would have made this update sooner. Still, the things that we're testing is not related to the game's content, it's purely bugs and improvements.

Most notably, the improvements I've been making are all in relation to the controller support. This game was initially going to be PC and Switch only, and I wasn't even totally sure how I'd go about getting the Switch port done myself. Because of that, a good deal of the game was designed with mouse and keyboard in mind. Many of the puzzles feel great with the mouse, but when you're controlling a cursor with an analog stick things get a bit clunky. I've been going through every part of the game to make it feel better for controller, without making it worse for keyboard and mouse.

Again this is one of those things that will ultimately make the game better, but I am just about ready to call it a day on QA. I've got no serious NDAs or anything in place, so I'm comfortable being upfront about this. I sent a new build in on the 19th, and am waiting to receive another batch (hopefully a small batch) of notes. After this, unless there's something gamebreaking, I think it's time to just get this thing out the door.

I was talking to a friend earlier about this aspect of games/game development but it really applies to all forms of creation. Eventually you just need to release what you have so you can blow it out the water with the next release. That's not to say I'm not proud of Thief's Roulette, but with all the additional hours I've spent with it post completion, I just know how much better I could have done every aspect of the game. This is an exciting feeling, but that excitement is a little bittersweet since the game is still not out lol. Still very excited for the future.

All is well, and I should have some better news soon.

A Brief but Promising Update
4 months ago – Sat, Jun 08, 2024 at 10:00:15 AM

First of all, thank you to the ones who use the "request an update" feature on Kickstarter. It's not that I forget to make updates, it's just that new news is slow, and I feel like I'd rather just wait for a better time to do one. Still, it's been too long so I needed the nudge. Here's a short update for what's going on on my end.

The most pressing matter all this time has been QA and bug fixing. At this time, the game has been combed through many many times, and every urgent issue has been addressed. All that remains now is testing for all controller issues, which is not going to take much longer.

So for the "promising" part of the update's title, the game will absolutely be out this year. It's practically bug free and been literally complete for at least a year. This final stretch of QA will be complete in 2 weeks or less, and there will be nothing else to do. I should make it clear that I haven't just been sitting and waiting during this QA time. I have been making minor additions to the game, improving art, improving environments, things like that. So as the game becomes more bug free I've also been making it a better overall experience.

This is update #131, so I've officially run out of things I'm willing to show in the game, so yet another image-less update. The next time you'll see new footage is the release trailer, followed by the game's release. There's still a whole lot I haven't shown so I hope the game can still be exciting after all this time. That's all I have for now. Have a nice weekend.

A Lengthy Recap and Clarification of Past Updates
6 months ago – Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 11:00:58 PM

I've decided to go through every Kickstarter update starting from the very first on September 9, 2018. I would like to appreciate how far the project has come, and to clear up some possible confusion caused by just how many things have changed from the start of the campaign. Many ideas introduced through these updates have been scrapped or replaced for example. So this is something I feel I need to do before the game releases. There is no release date at the end of this update, this is more about clearing everything up before I announce it.

This probably could have made for a nice YouTube video, so I guess I can start with the fact that I never did anything for YouTube after saying so often that I would. With that out of the way, let's get to those updates.

Starting out with a pretty major pivot in the game's structure. In Update #2 I describe the game's structure and mention the "Tokens" concept that has unfortunately been scrapped. 

This is the old visual I made to represent the game's structure. Teams are still scrambled and head into their challenge rooms, but all spots where a "Token Can be Used" and "Awarded" is totally gone. You can see more information on the tokens on the campaign's main page. They would have led to an absurd amount of variety and branching paths and I quickly realized it wouldn't be doable in time. Ironically, the game still ended up taking a very long time to complete, but imagine how long it could have been. Yikes.

The token system was really cool though. That idea went out the window maybe a year into development, but I kept looking for ways to keep it in spirit but ultimately decided to do without. If that idea isn't ripped from my slow moving hands I will bring it back for the sequel. 

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In Update #5 I introduce Lillian (whose art has changed, but that's old news) and discuss the game's "Randomness" or lack thereof. This has more to do with the game's planned branching paths and how player choice would impact the roulette in a way that felt like randomness but really wasn't. The game only has 2 endings in its final state, so looking back at all of these promises is difficult, but all of this experience assures me that I can make a game even grander than that initial pitch in the future.

In Update #18 Roland is introduced, and I talk about more of the game structure. Apparently I had the idea that during Break Time you could check your "standing" with individual characters to see if they were your rivals or allies. Rivals and allies is sadly also axed. Going through these updates is showing me just how naïve I was going into this project, but again, it also shows me that these are all things that I could do with my current skill level. Foreshadowing.

OntoUpdate #23. There's some old concept art and old promo art. Looks like I cleared some things up in that post already, but I wanted to share this old art again anyway because I like it. Just like the update says, the middle was the old look of the main character, and the girl on the right became Lillian. I really like this visual and would have loved to expand on that prisoner aesthetic looking back on it now.

In Update #37 there's a quick word said about the player dorm room during "Break Time." You were initially going to use it as a sort of home base, and be able to use a computer in your room that had some unique functions attached to it. Those functions became unnecessary over time, and others outright removed. Now the dorm room still exists, but it's just to initiate the transition to the next day. There are still some special events that will happen in the dorm, though.

After this update I kind of just went over new art and game screenshots. Not too many things to clarify after that point. One thing I did see was I spoke about a companion game for Thief's Roulette. That of course never came out, but it will be a thing after TR finally releases. I hope this isn't considered too out there, but it will be a free mobile only puzzle game in the Thief's Roulette world. With a small cast of new characters and a new story. It'll be a more traditional "death game" than Thief's Roulette is. But very compact and fun.

That's nothing to think about right now, but with things feeling like they're finally wrapping up I'm back to being excited about the future of the series.

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With the updates covered, let's look through those 3 trailers:

There's not much there with trailer 1. Of course character designs and environments have changed, but nothing major that needs to be addressed. At the 40 second mark, Ice mentions a "Mark on your head." That is a carryover from the original game ideas. When you or other characters were marked by the roulette, things got tense and characters would respond to it. Now that things are much more linear, that is the kind of interaction that won't appear as much anymore. I do regret having to remove those things, but... Thief's Roulette 2.

This trailer has something I definitely need to address. Sadly it's more cut content. At the 43 second mark, you open a bathroom stall and find a device that leads to an alert that you've found a 'Secondary Puzzle.' The 7th of them at that. First of all, that bathroom is no longer in the game at all. More importantly, the secondary puzzles have been cut too. Calling it the 7th puzzle was just some trailer flair to hype up the idea I had. I did want to have several puzzles like this, and even made designs for a few of them. Ultimately I decided to get rid of the idea all together and just use the ideas I already came up with for Challenge Room puzzles instead. It was the start of development, so I was running with every idea that crossed my mind. The game is definitely not lacking in puzzles, so although even more would be cool, there's enough already. And the true ending is a puzzle of it's own, so maybe that's the ultimate secondary puzzle.

Right off the bat, the puzzle at 12 seconds is not in the game. There are scrapped puzzles in the previous trailers too, but they were repurposed in some way. That particular puzzle just looked cool in my head, so I made it without actually having a plan for it, or even any true functionality. From there you see some environments that have changed dramatically, but nothing else of note. Well other than there being no more Vita release, but that was an episode of its own.

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This ended up being not nearly as long as I thought it'd be. It's a strange feeling going back through all of this and seeing all of the delays, failed release dates, and major changes. Those make me feel a little upset, but all of the art updates and seeing how drastically everything has improved since the beginning makes up for it. The Thief's Roulette that will release is not the same that was promised day 1, and I don't know how to feel about that. I just hope that it can still be something that you all can enjoy. 

I've been teasing what comes next all throughout the update because going through this all again reassures me that the sequel will be much closer to the dream I had for this game. And it won't take anywhere near 6 years to make. I guess I haven't technically hit the 6 year mark since the Kickstarter launched in September of 2018, but we're cutting it close. I've released 5 games (1 commercial) on my Itch.io since then, and turned Thief's Roulette into something that I feel proud about. I feel really good about the future and hope Thief's Roulette will convince you to stick with me when you finally get a chance to play it.

I had to make sure to state there would be no release date down here so no one got their hopes up. That's all I got for this one. Have a nice rest of your weekends.