Courier Tale returns to Perth Games Festival for a 3rd round! I’ve probably said this before, but this will likely be the last event before the release of Courier Tale (though there’s still much work to be done).
Perth Games Festival is a bit different this year. It’s happening at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle. Tickets are $10, kids are free. It goes down on Saturday 23 September 2023 from 10am – 4pm. Not only can you check out Courier Tale, but there will also be a heap of Western Australian video games, tabletop games and VR experiences to check out.
It is part of the first ever WA Games week which runs from 17-23 September and features the Level Her Up game jam, industry talks, Immerse Connect Conference, and of course Perth Games Festival. You might even find Courier Tale featured on the WA Games Week website and promo video…
Courier Tale will return to Pixel Expo this weekend on the 5 & 6 of August, 9:00am – 5pm each day. You will find the Courier Tale demo in the Lets Make Games room on the 2nd floor…
Pixel Expo is an animation and gaming convention featuring cosplay, traders, gaming and more. It is a ticketed event and it sold out last year, so if you’re planning to head there, best to pre-book your tickets.
This SaturdayandSunday 22 and 23 of July will see Courier Tale return to demo at the WA Museum Boola Bardip as part of XR:WA 2023. The event is free and from 10:30am – 5:00pm each day you’ll be able to of course check out the Courier Tale demo as well as a bunch of other Western Australian developed games and VR/AR experiences. There will also be an international games showcase by Hovergarden as well as workshops and panels.
2023 has been 50% completed, so it’s time for the Q2 2023 Courier Tale Dev Blog…
Since the last blog the new in-game menu has been finished. There was various iterations, but the one I settled on both feels stable and also matches the visual style of Courier Tale. The new menu looks like a mobile phone which seems suitable for a game about a gig economy courier. This new menu has also introduced a new sub-menu which shows what collector cards you’ve collected. I’ve had people say the demo doesn’t feature any collectables, but the demo does have one collector card in it.
Made a new look mobile phone style in-game menu for Courier Tale, to go along with the theme of working in the gig economy. Also added a new gallery to the menu that shows what cards you've collected…
Once the new UI was finished, it was onto graphics polishing. This maybe unsurprisingly has been a slow process. I’m hoping the work I’m doing right now is the final versions of things. While the demo is pretty representative of the final graphics, when the full game went alpha last year, there was actually quite a bit of placeholder graphics in it that I knew I was going to have to update later on. The graphics as of writing is not finished yet, but I’m hoping I’m not too far off finishing the visuals.
Speaking of visuals, if you follow @couriertale on social media, you may have noticed the pixel art tribute series I’ve been doing roughly monthly over the past year. These have been tributes to things that have influenced Courier Tale, or are similar, or just things I like. They’ve been done up in Courier Tale art style. The last one was in May, and that will likely be the last one as I focus on finishing the game. The good news though is you can now purchase Netflix approved merch of my Stranger Things design from Redbubble https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/140088776 . You can of course also purchase Courier Tale merch from the merch tab on this website.
Remember the Stranger Things Courier Tale style pixel art tribute I created last year? Well now ya can officially purchase clothes, cups, covers & more featuring this design via the Netflix approved fan art program on Redbubble!https://t.co/Yp0c7osa2N#strangerthings#pixelartpic.twitter.com/TU7AlhHLY2
Earlier this year I said it was unlikely I’d be showcasing Courier Tale at any more events before launch, but things change and Q3 could possibly see Courier Tale part of a few events, both physical and digital events. Once confirmed these events will be announced here on this website, on social media, email list and the Steam page, so keep an eye out. In the lead-up to the next upcoming event, the demo on Steam will likely be updated with the latest UI and graphics updates. This won’t radically change how the demo plays, so if you’ve already played the demo, there’s no need to again.
So why will Courier Tale be at events prior to launch? I started off today’s blog talking about percentages and there’s an old saying that the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time. Well that’s certainly seeming somewhat true. Earlier in the year I was aiming for an unannounced August release date, but that won’t be happening. So now Courier Tale is targeting a Q4 2023 release. Hopefully by the time of the next blog in October, I might have a release date to announce.
Until then, I have a bunch more graphics, sound and testing to do, so while I do that, 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…
January, February and March have been completed for 2023, so that means it’s time for the Q1 2023 Courier Tale Dev Blog…
The start of the year was more so focused on behind-the-scenes work. This culminated in Courier Tale being featured in the RPG Maker Festival 2023 on Steam in February. For this digital event, I made a video talking about the game and its influences. This video was streamed on Steam throughout the week of the event. Eventually, this video will be released on Youtube in case you missed it and wanted a greater insight into Courier Tale. Overall RPG Maker Festival was a success and saw a significant increase in wishlists for Courier Tale.
After RPG Maker Festival, it was back to polishing the game. The focus of the past month or so has been working on UI and menus, which is tricky in this game engine. In the process, a new title screen was created with an animated background. A new in-game menu is in the works, currently iterating on different versions, but should be finished soon. A long-standing visual glitch after selecting a dialogue choice may have finally been solved. I’ve previously mentioned mouse support not being up to the same standard as keyboard or controller, and now I’m more leaning towards removing mouse support. Successful games made in the same game engine don’t have mouse support, so I think it’s just a fact that mouse in this engine is not the best. For now I’ve disabled mouse, but perhaps it could be something re-looked at after the release of the game.
It is hoped this UI work is making the final versions of these menus. These updates haven’t been added to the demo yet. They might not make it into the demo until near the full release of the game, but may be updated if Courier Tale takes part in future digital events before release.
Speaking of events, last blog I said there probably wouldn’t be any more physical events that Courier Tale will exhibit at before release. That is mostly the truth as I try to focus on finishing the game in what is hopefully the homestretch of development. At this stage the only physical event before release that Courier Tale will likely be at is in July.
Speaking of release, the goal/motto of “Delivery in 2023” continues. If all goes well Courier Tale will release in the 2nd half of 2023. Until then, there’s plenty more polishing to do, so while I do that, 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…
If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Courier Tale prologue demo, what better time than now?
Also on the Courier Tale Steam page and occasionally on the RPG Maker Festival page, you might catch a Courier Tale Demo Tour video broadcast where I talk about the game’s influences, art style and what the game is all about.
As always, if you dig the demo or what you see, don’t forget to wishlist the game!
The end of 2022 has been and gone, so it’s now time for another Courier Tale developer blog…
The last quarter of the year was a bit quieter than the previous quarter. However, Courier Tale did exhibit at one event, returning to Perth Games Festival for 2022. Weirdly enough, I was setup in the same spot as last year, but this time with the big Courier Tale banner and wearing a Max shirt. Perth Games Festival is organized by Let’s Make Games, who also organize the Perth edition of Global Game Jam which I used to do in the years leading up to starting developing Courier Tale, so it’s always awesome to return to Perth Games Festival.
As the Perth Games Festival demo had various graphical tweaks, I updated to Steam demo to the same version. If you’ve already played the demo, there’s no need to play again, but if you haven’t played the demo yet, the best version is now available to download on Steam now.
The graphical updates were part of the graphics polishing phase. There’s still a bunch more polishing of the visuals to be done, but it’s good to already see some improvements. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s not another polish pass at some point before the game’s release, but the current tweaks are adding to the visual cohesiveness and populating the world more so.
My last blog’s estimations for release were of course optimistic. I now think Courier Tale’s release is likely to be in the 2nd half of 2023. That’s a good thing as it means more time to polish and test, as well as avoid what could possibly be the most busiest first half of the year for game releases I’ve seen in recent memory. I’m pretty confident in my motto “Delivery in 2023” for Courier Tale, at least for the Windows version. The current plan is to launch on Windows first, then look into Linux, Mac and possibly mobile releases.
At this stage, there are no plans to exhibit Courier Tale at any physical events until after its release later this year. So until then, follow Courier Tale on your favourite spamming social network, play the demo if you haven’t, deliver the Courier Tale news to people you know, and of course, if you haven’t already, wishlist Courier Tale on Steam…
Courier Tale returns to Perth Games Festival on Saturday 19 November 2022. The event is free entry and runs from 10am – 4pm at the Perth Town Hall.
The Courier Tale demo will be the same available on Steam right now, but with a few tweaks. There will be a heap of other Western Australian indie games to try out including video games, tabletop games and VR.
This will likely be the last event Courier Tale is demo-ing at before release sometime in 2023, so it would be awesome to see you at Perth Games Festival 2022!
It’s 3/4 time for 2022, so here’s a new Courier Tale Dev Blog…
September saw Courier Tale exhibiting at two events, so polishing the demo and preparing for those events was a focus of the months leading up to that month. Most changes to the demo were unlikely to be noticed by most people, but the Steam demo was updated to match the version shown at these events.
One part of preparing for these events was sorting some marketing elements. I finally printed a big pull-up banner. It’s pretty cool. It features a 1.3 metre Max, which between the large, almost life-size Max and the greyscale nature of the artwork, I think it’s bold and stands out at an event.
The other marketing side of things was doing up some merchandise. There’s Courier Tale shirts because hey, I needed shirts to wear at events. There’s postcards (and greeting cards) because hey, Courier Tale seems like a game that has something in common with postcards. There were also Max stickers and character sticker sheets. I wasn’t 100% happy with the printing of the stickers. When I was looking into merchandise options, I was looking into what would be environmentally friendly avenues. I decided to give print-on-demand a go. While that seemed to be fine for the shirts and cards, the stickers had a few issues. So I decided to remove the stickers from sale online. The stickers still look cool, so I will be selling the remaining stickers from the batch I ordered at future events for cheap. You can order the shirt and cards online still from the merch page on the Courier Tale website.
The first event was a new one called Pixel Expo, an animation and gaming convention at Perth Convention Centre. The shirts didn’t arrive in time, but the banner did. The event was sold out, so I tried out a two-computer demo setup for this event…
The next event was only two weeks later, an AR and VR focused gaming conference/festival called XRWA at WA Museum. While the event has a mixed reality focus, there were traditional video games including a showcase that featured big Australian indie games like Cult of The Lamb as well as international games like A Short Hike, which is one of the influences for Courier Tale. This was a free, two day event and seemed to draw a lot of audience from the visitors of the museum. Pretty unique venue to demo the game in, and my Courier Tale shirt did arrive in time for XRWA..
There’s one more event coming up that Courier Tale will be at in November. That will be the last event for the year, and possibly the last event before the release of Courier Tale. Being in the polish phase right now, the current focus is on graphics, but there are also a bunch of other things to do like sound fx and such. Ideally, the polishing would be finished by the end of the year, with playtesting and release in Q1 2023. Time is not always ideal though, so we’ll see how we go, but that is the target for now.
As usual, if you haven’t already, check out the demo on Steam, wishlist the game and keep an eye out for future Courier Tale news…
