The Q3 2024 Courier Tale Dev Blog is here. It may be a couple of weeks late, but that’s because as you may have heard, Courier Tale has finally been released!

Leading up to the release of the game a few things happened. Courier Tale was featured in the first-ever PixElated Adventures showcase on Steam. This was a great one to be a part of, being that it was an event focused on pixel art games. Courier Tale also returned to the Cat Awareness Sale for the 2nd year in a row.

Soon after, the time had finally come not only for a new Courier Tale trailer, but the announcement of the release date… 10 September 2024. This date had some significance. I say Courier Tale started development on 10 September 2020, so when deciding a date to release once the game was finished, going for the development anniversary date seems like as good an idea as any. Choosing a release date is hard these days. There probably used to be good times to release a smaller game like Courier Tale, but now I don’t think that exists. Last year there were about 14,000 games released on Steam and there are already about another 14,000 games released in the first 9 months of 2024. With this many games coming out, there’s no week where there isn’t a few hundred games coming out. There’s isn’t a day where probably about 50 games are coming out. So at the end of the day you just gotta pick a date and hope for the best.

Making the trailer was hard. With a short narrative game like Courier Tale, the biggest challenge was how to market it without spoiling the whole game. I want players to experience the best parts from the first time they play the game, not through some other means. That’s much easier with a 100-hour RPG like a Final Fantasy game, than it is with a 2 – 4 hour walkin’ n talkin’ adventure like Courier Tale. Hopefully I got the balance right. I think the release date trailer does hint at some mystery in the game, but perhaps it doesn’t portray the satire side as well as the teaser trailer might have.

Once the trailer was dropped, it was time to prepare for the launch. Continued playtesting and fixing. Preparing marketing. Luckily I felt like the game was already finished before the release date was announced, so most of the work on the game from then on was minor tweaks like fixing typos.

Then the release day arrived. I’m based in Western Australia. I went for an 8PM AWST release date time, as that meant almost all of the world would technically be 10 September at that time. I expected to be up all night after pressing the big green release button on Steam, but it was in fact pretty anti-climatic. Four years working on this game. Four years talking about this game. And then you just press a button and it’s out there in the world.

Turns out all the playtesting was worth it, because to this day, one month after release, I’ve pretty much had no bugs reported. If you do come across any, report them on the Studio Kraze discord or Courier Tale Steam forum. It seemed naive to think you could release a game with little to no bugs these days, when some games can be complete disasters on launch. But I’ve not yet had a major need to update the game since release. There are a few typos to fix and a dialogue that can be triggered to replay more than once, but nothing game breaking. I might do a small update in October or November just to tick those minor things off.

The game received some media reviews. Here’s a couple of quotes:

“I really enjoyed the ironic and humorous commentary, which went well with the story that unfolded. Without giving away any spoilers, it is really worth investigating the story, which all starts falling into place.”
8/10 – Comic Buzz

“Courier Tale is a short but sweet narrative adventure game, with a decent dose of exploration. The story is one full of intrigue and the dialogue is funny and interesting. If you love a good exploration game, it’s definitely one to add to your wishlist.”
The Indie Brew

Speaking of reviews, if you have played Courier Tale, it would be great if you could leave a review on Steam. Doesn’t have to be long. Could be just one sentence. Steam reviews are really important for indie games. It’s been great reading players’ feedback so far. People seem to be enjoying the satirical dialogue, the characters, collecting the cards and the mystery of the game.

You can get the game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1632100/Courier_Tale/

The soundtrack which features 27 lofi beats is available on Steam, including in the Lofi Beats Edition bundle which saves you 10%. You can also get the soundtrack on Bandcamp:
https://zedkraze.bandcamp.com/album/courier-tale-lofi-beats-to-deliver-to

One thing to note if you purchase the soundtrack is you also get a bonus 8-page digital manual that you can print out on a A4 double sided page and fold into a retro console inspired manual.

So what’s next? Well Courier Tale is a one and done game. There’s no plans for a sequel or DLC and if you play the game to the end you’ll probably see why. Courier Tale might pop up in future showcases though.

I don’t know if it’s because I knew the game was finished, but a week after the release of Courier Tale, I came up with a Courier Tale card game idea which I started working on straight away. It’s early days for that project, and who knows if it will one day release, but I may do a public playtest of the prototype soon, to see if it’s got potential.

But I’m not just working on a card game. I’m also working on my next video game. We’ll just refer to it as “Studio Kraze Game 2” for now. Unlike Courier Tale which I started to live stream development of basically right from the start, this next game may not be revealed for 6-12 months, maybe even longer. Basically I won’t be announcing this one until there’s at least a trailer, preferably a demo. The next game is pixel art and it is a narrative game, but it’s a bit of a different type of game to Courier Tale.

I’m hoping the next game won’t take 4 years to make like Courier Tale did. I learnt a lot from making Courier Tale, and I’m really happy with the end result, even if it took longer than I would have liked.

I hope you like Courier Tale. I hope you enjoyed these dev blogs. This potentially is the last Courier Tale game dev blog, though maybe I’ll do another one to wrap up 2024 at the end of the year.

While I always say follow @couriertale on your favourite social spam platform, might I suggest you also follow @studiokraze for future Studio Kraze game news.

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…