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…

It’s the middle of the year, so it is time for another Courier Tale dev blog…

Since the last blog, I’ve tested a full playthrough of the game. It was missing one side quest and one ending, but overall fully playable. As expected, the game is looking to be about 3-5 hours long depending on if you mainline the game or do a completionist playthrough. Having been the only one to playtest the full game so far, it’s hard to know how accurate that time is, but seeing it is what I originally estimated, while I’m sure some people will take less time and maybe some will take longer, I think on average that will probably be the playtime.

Once the game was a fully playable alpha, focus shifted to polishing and improving the demo. The reason for this is Courier Tale took part in the June 2022 edition of Steam Next Fest. There were over 1000 demos featured in this edition, so it was hard to stand out. Still, it saw Courier Tale almost double its wishlists and a massive increase in demo players (compared to when the demo launched a couple of weeks prior to Next Fest). It’s debatable whether the June edition was the best one to be part of, especially as it was during Summer Games Fest, so media was being flooded with game announcements all over the show, but I’m not sure that it would have made much difference waiting til the October edition.

Now that Steam Next Fest is done, we are officially moving into the polish/beta phase of Courier Tale. The first focus has been controls. I normally test the game with controller or keys, and the demo at Perth Games Festival 2021 was played with a controller. Turns out the game engine I use has pretty bad mouse controls by default, which became apparent to me from feedback after the release of the demo online. I’ve also discovered from researching, that games made in this engine seem to mostly remove mouse control because of how hard it is to get it to work as good as controller or keyboard. I would like to keep mouse control if I can. Not only from an accessibility point of view, but also that more and more I feel like the game has similarities to a point and click adventure, so it would be weird to not have mouse support for a game like that. I’ve managed to solve many of the mouse problems so far with various plugins. A big one was allowing the player to walk with a single click and dash with a double click (thanks to Gimmer for this custom plugin). I think I have everything fixed except one thing now. It’s a major thing so if I can’t get that fixed, I may have to do the same as other similar games and remove mouse controls. Hopefully that won’t be the case, but consistency will be paramount.

While there will be tweaks to be made all throughout the game during the polish phase, the main work will be graphics. It’s hard to know for sure how long this polish phase will take, but at this stage I think it could be anywhere between 3-9 months.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already check out the demo on Steam, wishlist the game and keep an eye out for upcoming events…

We’re already a quarter way through 2022 so feels like time for a bit of an update on Courier Tale…

The past few months have been slower progress wise than I would have expected. Most of Courier Tale has flowed out naturally, but these last parts have been a very slow trickle. Maybe it’s because I’m working on the final quests (known as Jobs in the Courier Tale) and also the endings. Perhaps these parts I’m working on currently feel more important than other parts so there’s an element of overthinking it.

Because I’ve been working on the end of the game, I’ve felt like it was too spoilery at this point, so I stopped streaming game development throughout February and most of March. I’ve recently started doing some streams again, focusing on what was going to be the next phase (the beta/polish phase), starting with improving graphics. For now I’ve been streaming Tuesday and Thursday afternoons AWST, mainly focused on improving the left and right side graphics and animations of the characters. I’ve gone with more of a sidescroller side profile look which I think looks much better than the old flat side-on profile.

Quest/Job wise, all of the main deliveries are now complete. All but one of the side jobs are done. This past week I’ve been working on the first ending. That ending is almost complete. It’s pretty satisfying seeing an ending then watching the credits roll after. While the game probably still has 6-12 months of polish ahead, it does help make it feel closer to the end. I said the “first ending” as I’m hoping to have multiple endings. I’ll anticipate starting on the 2nd ending later this coming week.

For my 2021 wrap up I had hoped to have Courier Tale fully playable as an alpha sometime in February, worst case scenario March. That was based on the previous pace of development. With these last sections taking longer than expected, I’m now thinking the end of April is more realistic. Once fully playable, alpha testing will begin as well as the beta/polish phase. While alpha testing won’t be available to the public, you should be able to play a portion of Courier Tale in the near future…

Events both physical and digital are starting to pop up submissions wise, so I’ve been planning what events Courier Tale might be involved in. At this stage I expect the Courier Tale demo to be available online on Steam around mid 2022. The demo will likely also be showcased at some physical events in Australia in the 2nd half of 2022. The demo will at this stage be the same as shown at Perth Games Festival 2021, but with some updated graphics, new music and other tweaks.

And so that wraps up the Quarter 1 2022 of Courier Tale game development! If you want to keep up with the development of Courier Tale make sure to follow @couriertale on your favourite social spamming platform, join the email list, join the ZedKraze discord (it has a Courier Tale channel!) and watch the Courier Tale be developed live on Twitch!

And the best way you can support Courier Tale right now is by wishlisting it on Steam!

It’s the end of 2021 so it’s time for a wrap up dev blog. 2021 saw a lot of progress for the game. Here are some of the key highlights from this past year…

• The Courier Tale steam page was launched https://store.steampowered.com/app/1632100/Courier_Tale/
• The Courier Tale website was launched www.couriertale.com
• Courier Tale reached it’s 1 year development anniversary on 10 September 2021
• Courier Tale was demo-ed for the first time at Perth Games Festival 2021
• I was interviewed on the One Storey Building podcast about Courier Tale and game development/writing
• The prologue and first 2 chapters (of 3) are fully playable in Alpha form as of the end of November 2021
• I’ve continued to regularly stream delevopment of the game at www.twitch.tv/zedkraze

So that’s 2021 done and dusted. So what’s coming up for Courier Tale in 2022?

• ETA for the game to be fully playable in Alpha form by around Feb/Mar 2022
• Once Alpha is complete, the polishing phase is estimated to take 3-12 months
• I’ll continue to stream development of the game on Twitch, but may stream less to avoid spoilers
• The Courier Tale Demo should hopefully be released on Steam sometime in 2022
• Hoping to demo the game at more physical and online events in 2022
• The game may be released sometime in 2022 or 2023 depending on how long polishing takes

Here’s a bit more of a breakdown of the current development progress for Courier Tale as of now…

Graphics

Basically, all of the main Alpha graphics are done as of the end of 2021. The full colour palette is locked in at 28 colours, but never more than 14 colours on screen at one time, which hopefully helps give Courier Tale an unique look. There’s much polishing to be done like animations, extra details and upgrading existing graphics, so once the gameplay is complete, this will be a focus in 2022.

Audio

The soundtrack has finally been started on after debating how to approach it. I considered chiptune or a more cinematic soundtrack but decided to go back to my roots in hip hop and make a lo-fi hip hop/chill hop soundtrack. I haven’t really made sample-based music in the past which is crazy to think that considering my hip hop background. My previous music was always more experimental and synth-based. The Courier Tale soundtrack has forced me to take a different music production approach compared to usual and I’m pretty happy with the results so far. Progress is going well with many music loops already created that I’m testing out in different areas of the game. It’s def got a vibe quite different to my usual music, and makes me excited about the idea of maybe releasing a soundtrack as well. I hope to start implementing sound effects soon as well.

Story

The demo playtest at Perth Games Festival showed me that people are liking the characters and dialogue, and are finding it funny and intriguing, so I think it’s on the right path. The game might have multiple endings, up to 3 at this stage, however, if just having one ending works best, I will roll with that. I will be working on the ending/s in early 2022, with some ideas already on what direction they will take.

Gameplay

While the “jobs” (aka quests) in the game are theoretically similar in their nature, the main challenge is making sure each one is different, unique and interesting. Thus far I think that has been achieved. I will start working on the final chapter jobs in January 2022. At this stage of development from my playtesting, the game is looking to be on track to be up to 3 – 5 hours long depending on if the player does “side jobs” (side quests) or not, which matches my predictions. This playtime could change by the time the game is finished and of course, someone could speed run it in less time if they just did main jobs, but I want to keep the side jobs optional so you can play the game how you want to play it.

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That wraps up the Courier Tale 2021 wrap up! There’s a heap more work to be done before Courier Tale is completed and released. If you want to keep up with the development of Courier Tale make sure to follow @couriertale on your favourite social spamming platform, join the email list, join the ZedKraze discord (it has a Courier Tale channel!) and watch the Courier Tale be developed live on Twitch!

And the best way you can support Courier Tale right now is by wishlisting it on Steam!

CHECKYA IN 2022!