It’s the middle of the year so it’s time for the Q2 2024 Courier Tale Dev Blog…

At the end of March I had finished up some early pre-production work for Studio Kraze’s second game. With that out of the way it was time to focus on finishing Studio Kraze’s first game… Courier Tale. With the base game sorted, I was able to start spending time on additional features. First up was sorting out the collector cards you can collect in the game. There’s 24 all up to collect and there’s a collection screen on your in-game phone menu so you can keep track of what you’ve found for all of those collectors and completionists out there.

Next up another feature for completionists is Steam achievements. There’s currently 10 achievements in the game and thus far they seem to be working, though beta testing on Steam will confirm if they feature in the final game. The Steam achievements will have different icons and names, I have just kept them generic for now to avoid story spoilers before release.

While Courier Tale’s controls are pretty minimal, it is easy to forget that people need to know how to control the game. Courier Tale supports Keyboard or Gamepad controls (sorry no mouse). While there are customizable controller settings in the options menus, I felt it was best to introduce the controls at the beginning of the game. So now when you start a new game, you will see this Default Controls splash screen. Keyboard actually has more key options like WASD for movement, but I wanted to keep this splash simplified and just show one option for Keyboard controls.

On 25 May 2024, I finally declared the game was in Beta. It was a major milestone after multiple years of development. June was spent doing internal beta testing (aka me playtesting the whole game and making any changes or fixes). This very dev blog was a bit later than usual partly because only a week ago I was transferring this website to new hosting, but also because I wanted to reach another huge milestone.

Yesterday the first external playtest happened (aka someone else played Courier Tale from start to finish). It was pretty nerve-racking, but the playthrough was mostly bug-free, with no soft locks/blockers that stopped the player from progressing through the game.

This is really promising, so while there’s more playthroughs to be done by other beta testers in July, if that testing goes well it’s hopefully looking more likely that Courier Tale is getting close to release. So when is Courier Tale releasing? Well I’m not quite ready to announce a release date yet, but hopefully it won’t be long now. I can say I am targeting a Q3 2024 release, so hopefully for the next Dev Blog I write in October, I can be talking about how Courier Tale has released.

But before then, Courier Tale will be featured in two upcoming Steam showcases, which I’ll announce in the coming weeks and also update the Steam demo with the latest tweaks in the lead-up to those events. I’ll also be working on launch marketing including the release date trailer. So yeah it really does feel like I’m coming to the “tail” end of Courier Tale development, and hopefully it will be “delivered” very soon…

As always don’t forget to wishlist the game on Steam and follow @couriertale or @studiokraze on your favourite social spam network.

A quarter of 2024 is already done? Wow, must be time for a Courier Tale dev blog…

The past few months have seen Courier Tale featured in some online Steam showcases. The first showcase was The Storyteller’s Festival 2024 at the end of January. It was great to be selected for this event. It’s actually run by another Australian developer called Two and a Half Studios. This was the perfect sort of showcase for Courier Tale to be part of, seeing it is a story-focused event. It was also the most successful event that Courier Tale has been part of, so I can only hope Courier Tale can be included in the Storyteller’s Festival in 2025.

The next online event Courier Tale participated in was RPG Maker Festival. Courier Tale was part of RPG Maker Festival last year as well, so it was good to be able to return to be involved in it again.

One thing I’ve been doing during these Steam showcases in the past 6 months or so has been live-streaming a video to the Steam page. This video was a demo tour where I detailed the features and influences of the game. Well, now you can watch that video more easily by checking it out on Youtube…

All this promo stuff aside, progress has definitely still been made on Courier Tale. I completed the soundtrack, so hopefully there shouldn’t any more music work to be done other than potentially some tweaks to the master. I have now been working on what I call the “tech polish” phase. There’s a lot to do to finish it off, so I’ve broken this phase into multiple stages. The first stage has been completed which included proofreading all of the dialogue. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an automated process, so it was a very manual task. The other thing completed in this stage was checking map transfers. While most of Courier Tale is a mini semi-open world structure, it is broken up into small single-screen maps, and there’s a lot of them! So making sure the player transfers to the right map and doesn’t break the game is important.

I’m now currently partway through the 2nd stage of the tech polish which has included making sure the right music and sound effects trigger when moving from one map to the next. This stage will also be a semi-playtest stage, checking collisions, graphics layers and once again double checking those map transfers are working properly.

There will be a couple more stages of tech polish after that before finally beginning Beta testing. That will truly be the major milestone once I reach it. How long will it take to get to Beta testing? How long will Beta testing take? When will the game release? I dunno. The usual “within 3-6 months” mantra comes to mind, but certainly with each tech polish stage that is completed, it starts feeling very close.

Granted I could have been a bit further along if it wasn’t for the fact I’ve also been doing some work on Studio Kraze’s next game. I hope to start proper pre-production for that in the 2nd half of 2024 once Courier Tale is released, however, there was some work I needed to do on it now. That work is now complete so I can focus fully on finishing Courier Tale for the coming months.

And speaking of months, that about covers the past few months of Courier Tale development. As always, if you want the latest Courier Tale news, make sure to follow @couriertale on your favourite social spam network, join the Studio Kraze discord and don’t forget to wishlist Courier Tale on Steam…

Another year has been and gone, so it’s time for the Q4 2023 Courier Tale Dev Blog…

This quarter’s blog is likely shorter than other ones for the simple fact that all I’ve been working on the past few months is finishing graphics. That’s ok though, because a major milestone was hit right at the end of the year. While I’m sure there will be some final tweaks before release, I think… the graphics for Courier Tale are complete!

As such I released a new screenshot. I’ve been hesitant to release new screenshots as I don’t want too many spoilers out there, and also, up until now, the graphics weren’t complete. I’ll likely release more screenshots closer to release, but it’s good to get some fresh visuals out there.

During this process I noticed the way I had been capturing both screenshots and video of Courier Tale had been showing the graphics desaturated. This is due to a colour profile issue on my main monitor with the playtest mode. I’m now using another computer with a 4K monitor for capturing, that represents the colours accurately. As such I’ve updated all of the screenshots, and future trailers will also look more vibrant colour wise and in 4K. Perhaps some people might prefer the desaturated versions, but the new versions are the accurate colour palette like in my original pixel art files.

The graphics took way longer than they should. This is due to the way I choose to approach graphics for the game early on. I could have changed course at some point, but that would have meant having to essentially re-do all of the graphics, which may have taken just as long. And the end result for the players would have been the same quality wise. So I committed to the way I originally chose to do the graphics and it was a slog, that may not show in the final product, but I’m happy it’s done and I can move onto other things now.

As to what’s next? In January I’m going to work on finishing the soundtrack. I was also going to work on finishing the sound effects, but instead I’m going do sound effects during the technical polish phase. It definitely is feeling close to release, but it really probably comes down to how long the technical polish phase goes. Will that take 1 month? Will it take 6 months? Hard to say. My latest target is for a Q2 2024 release date, but then again the game always feels 3-6 months away from finishing. At least at this time, I know it’s definitely closer than it was 3 months ago.

In the meantime though, Courier Tale has been selected for an online showcase on Steam, which I’ll announce later this month. Courier Tale could also be in more showcases in the coming months. Courier Tale is also now on Bluesky, so don’t forget to follow @couriertale on your favourite social media spamming network or join the newly transitioned Studio Kraze discord. And if ya haven’t already, make sure to wishlist Courier Tale on Steam…

It’s the end of September so it’s time for the Q3 2023 Courier Tale dev blog…

I’m calling Q3 “events season”. At least here in Western Australia, it’s when the 3 main gaming focused conventions happen, and I demo-ed Courier Tale at them all.

First up in July was XR:WA 2023. This was the second time I had done this event. I was in almost the same spot as last year underneath the skeleton of a whale (it’s at the WA Museum). It was good to see some familiar faces from last year as well as new ones. There was also the the Hovergarden international indie showcase there including great games like Mars First Logistics.

I wasn’t originally going to do the next event, Pixel Expo. At the start of the year I had an overly optimistic idea of releasing on 8th of August, which was a few days after Pixel Expo. As such I felt it best to skip that event as no doubt the few days before a release would be too hectic for a solo developer to do an event. However once it became apparent I wouldn’t be releasing in August, a last minute opportunity came up to be able to still exhibit at Pixel Expo.

Then in late September, it was time for the first ever WA Games Week. Courier Tale was actually featured in quite a bit of the WA Games Week promo including on the website, video trailer and Perth Games Festival poster. Courier Tale was also featured on the Yagan Square Digital Tower. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see it, but that has to be the biggest screen Courier Tale has been on.

WA Games Week featured a bunch of industry talks, the Level Her Up game jam for women developers, the Immerse VR/AR conference and of course finishing off with Perth Games Festival. This was the 3rd Perth Games Festival I have demo-ed Courier Tale at. My booth came with a banner which I used a new design for. People commented on that being one of the first times they had seen colour in my promo. There is a lot of grey in Courier Tale, but there is some colour as well!

But it wasn’t all just in-person events the past 3 months. Courier Tale was also featured in the Cat Awareness Sale, a digital online showcase on Steam. It was obviously a very niche showcase, but seeing Courier Tale has cats in, it was “purrfect” for the game. It also gave me a chance to share some of the cats the inspired characters in Courier Tale.

During this time, another thing that slowed down progress on Courier Tale was that I started working on my next game prototype. Things have been going well for that prototype so far, up until the news about Unity’s new pricing structure came out a few weeks ago. I had been prototyping the new game in Unity, and the change of pricing prompted me to try out other engines like Godot and Unreal last week. I may still end up using Unity for my next game, but I’ll keep testing other engines until I see what’s best for me and the game. Unlike Courier Tale where I started live streaming development straight away, I’ll probably keep my next project under wraps until the right time. I would like to start working on the next game as soon as Courier Tale is released (while still supporting Courier Tale for the months that follow).

So yeah it’s been a slow quarter for Courier Tale work because of all these other things. The Steam demo was updated to the same version being shown at this year’s conventions which includes things like the new menus and title screen. The focus continues to be finishing off the graphics for Courier Tale. It’s not done yet, but I’m getting close. After graphics are finished I’ll be moving on to sound effects and finalizing the soundtrack. I would like to have both the graphics and sound finished before the end of the year, but hopefully some of the final technical stuff too.

September 10 marked 3 years since I started developing Courier Tale. It should be a milestone, but I feel like such a long time in development doesn’t feel like something to celebrate. Sure a lot of games these days take 5 years to make, some even 10 years. And it hasn’t been 3 years full time, more so closer to 1.5 – 2 years full time. But still, it seems like a big chunk of time for what felt at first to be a small game.

That said, we’re on the homestretch here. After missing the August release, I was hoping for a Q4 release instead, but if I’m realistic about it, it is more likely to be a Q1 2024 release. That’s a shame as I had hoped to release it in 2023, but don’t want to rush it right at the end. With all the events for the year out of the way, it’s heads down finishing Courier Tale now. I may be more quiet over the coming months as I focus on getting the game done, but in the meantime don’t forget to follow @couriertale on your favourite social media spamming network and if ya haven’t already, make sure to wishlist Courier Tale on Steam…