Thief's Roulette

Quick Update
over 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 10:47:43 PM

This will be a very quick one, I don't have much more to say until release this summer. I started the last update saying the game was entering the QA phase. So far, things have gone very well. There's been no major bugs or issues whatsoever. In fact, every bug or error that was brought up I fixed the next day. So the game is pretty clean, I really haven't had to do many fixes at all.

The next date to watch for Thief's Roulette will be the 'Puzzle Fest' on Steam that starts April 24th. The demo I've put together has demo exclusive content and new content that wasn't shown in any previous demo or trailers. The demo also holds a secret. As does the full game, but I'll leave it at that.

Again, the game is set to release this summer, but we'll be closer to an exact date after the QA phase is officially complete.

That's going to be it for now. Things are going great on my end, and I can't wait to finally release the game to you all.

Quick plug of my Itch.io before I go: https://hiromu656.itch.io/ 

Several new projects will appear there before Thief's Roulette is out. I realized my best marketing ability is just making more stuff. I cannot do social media! Now that's actually all I got. Have a nice weekend.

Update
over 1 year ago – Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 11:26:05 AM

Sorry about the long gap between updates. I wanted to make an update once the work was complete, and now it is. The game is complete a second time now. I finished it yesterday and sent it over to the publisher to begin the QA phase once more. I made a ton of adjustments and improvements throughout the game, some of which I'll show here. I'll start with the visuals, then talk about what happens next.

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 With all of the environments I've been adding more details and depth. I've also made it a point to add movement wherever I can. Even subtle movements add a lot to the environments. I felt the game was a bit too static at first, and movement of course is a solution to that.

 Headed to face the Roulette after completing a challenge room.

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Like I said in the previous update, the game is slated to release in the summer of this year. I'll be ramping up my marketing efforts now, so that along with addressing anything that comes up during QA will be my job until the game releases.

There's a "Puzzle Fest" event happening on Steam (starting April 24th) where I'll be releasing a new updated demo to Thief's Roulette. If you've played the previous demos you'll get to see all of the changes I've made. More options and features, controller support is fully functional for instance. The visuals have all been improved, and I made changes to some puzzles. There will be some content unique to the demo as well. It's an additional puzzle that I had in mind, but had nowhere to put in the full game.

That's all for this update. Have a nice weekend.

Update
almost 2 years ago – Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 10:53:15 PM

I'm going to get right to what the current situation is. Interest in the game is not where it needs to be, and that's what's been holding it back. The Publisher and I have talked in depth about this, and that turned out to be the main issue. It's been hard for them to get interest from their platform partners, and the game just doesn't have enough eyes on it to lead to a successful launch right now. Timing, and other unknown  factors of course play a part, but the one thing that I can truly have an impact on is interest in the game. So the Publisher has decided to delay the game's release to Q2 this year (April, May, June). With that additional time we're going to try to do as much as we can to generate interest in the game. I'm going to improve the game, and do my part to spread the word along with the Publisher.

I was a little upset about this at first, but I think it'll be smarter to fully commit to this new plan and just make the game better. I've learned a lot from the time that Thief's Roulette was "finished" up till now. It's been a couple months after all. I'm going to use everything I know, and take advantage of this additional time. I think that's the best way to look at it for me, but for backers I know it's different story. I won't be working on the game for this entire chunk of time. I plan on putting in just a month and a half of additional work into the game so that there's still plenty of time left leading up to the release. That way there will be no setbacks on my end. When we figure out a date, the game will already be finished, and I'll just have to continue spreading the word.

So to start, this is what I'll be working on for Thief's Roulette:

• I'm going to go through every single in-game location and try to improve the visuals as best as I can without hurting the game's performance. I've got several new optimization methods up my sleeve, so I can push things a bit further visually.
• Small puzzle adjustments. Mostly QOL related, but there are some puzzles that could be improved to be much more fun to play.
• General visual aesthetic improvements. I want the game to be more appealing on first glance, and I feel I've got some good ideas to get it done.
• Aiming for 2 more CGs. There are some moments in the game that were meant to have a CG, but I decided to cut them for time. There are 2 that I really want to get in, and now I've officially got some more time to do it.
• Bringing back a couple small scenes that were cut. They were insignificant to the story which is why I decided not to finish them, but again, with the additional time I might as well put them back in.
• Scrapping the recent trailer that I teased, and using some of those new shots to flesh out what was going to be the Release Trailer. Since I still don't have an exact date, but really need to put out a new trailer, I'm just going to use that one. I'll settle for announcing the release date on its own at a later date.

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Outside of developing and spreading Thief's Roulette, I'll work to build up my status as a game developer. I said this in a previous update, but I haven't really made much progress thus far. I'm going to put more time into social media, and release several free/cheap games along the way. The more I work, the more attention I can bring to Thief's Roulette. Of course I also get to do what I love (social media not included), so it's a win-win.

For the next Update I'll show several before and after pictures for different in-game locations, along with other visual improvements I make. By then I'll also have released at least 1 free game, and way more social media activity. 

I'm going to make sure that this delay ends up being good news.

Update
almost 2 years ago – Sat, Dec 03, 2022 at 09:19:05 PM

I'm still working on the new trailer (not the already finished release trailer). I wanted to have it done sooner, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what to put in and what to leave out. Since I didn't think I'd be making this trailer, I have to be smart with what I put in it. There's great stuff that is already in the release trailer, so I can't use any of that. There's also so much I want to keep under wraps for players. Still, I need to put something out so I will.

I'm going to share the current WIP of that trailer here (unlisted). It reuses Trailer 3's song, so I will be replacing that.

That's the current state of the new trailer. No updates on the console end.

Another update with not much to say, but I'll keep making them so you guys know I'm not MIA. I'm really thinking of doing something Thief's Roulette related that you guys can play during this stagnation. Like a small prologue campaign with unique content. Seems like a fun thing for me to make, and a fun thing to play. I had a weird idea of making that a mobile game, but maybe that's doing too much. Anyway, that's all I have for now. 

Update, Plans, and Phrixothrix
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 10:44:29 PM

This will be a quick off-schedule update. It won't take the place of Saturday's update, though. 

I'm in a weird spot where I've been sitting on not only the game, but also the release trailer. That would be really cool to show off right now if I actually had a release date. So for Saturday I'm putting out a smaller scale trailer with new footage and remade footage from older trailers. I need a new trailer at this point, as the last one I made is very outdated. Saturday I'll release that, and let you guys know what the state of things are at that time.

The first part of my current plans is the new Thief's Roulette trailer. After that I keep working on Thief's Roulette's free dlc campaign. I've made a lot of progress on that during this downtime, and at this rate it will come out very quickly after TR's launch. So there will be even more content when the game actually does release.

I spoke on this a bit in the last update, but I do believe it's not exclusively my Publisher's fault or Sony/Nintendo etc. at this point. I think I failed when it came to making the game attractive after all this time. I appreciate you guys for supporting and sticking with me, but I can't say that it's reached as far as it could have, had I been more actively putting the game out there. Sometimes games make it through with ease, but in general, indie developers will need to do a bit extra if they want to get on consoles. I'm fully realizing that now, so I'm going to step it up on my end. The trailer will help, but it's possible that it won't be enough. So I've got to keep making myself known, and be less anxious about posting on social media. One of these days I'll build up the resume that would let me go back into my cave, but for now I need to put in more effort. That's the plan!

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I previously mentioned that I was working on a "horror" game that I would release in October. Since then, I've put a bit more time into it and turned it into a small commercial project. Given the state of Thief's Roulette, it would be nice to put something out. So here is a link to the game called Phrixothrix:  https://hiromu656.itch.io/phrixothrix 

I wasn't going to make this update at first, because releasing a game while not releasing Thief's Roulette just felt bad. Still, this game is out, and maybe it would be even worse to not say anything at all. If you're interested in the game, it's $5.

That's all for now. Have a nice week.