Hi folks, especially those recently joining us for the Steam Next Fest! Hope everyone is finding new titles and fun demos to try out!

I haven’t had time for game demos this week because we’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on Puzzle Spy International. A lot of work last week went into a bug that was preventing Mac users only from saving a game in mid-puzzle. That seems to be fixed but of course broke a handful of other things in the build. I think we’ve got everything under control now. I also recently got a lot of feedback on “Museo Photographs,” the first puzzle in the game (not a spoiler!) from both remote and in-person testers. We’ve been gently tweaking that one to make it a bit easier, as it’s the first puzzle that players will encounter. We also added some more detail to the hints for that puzzle to help out any players who are stuck. This puzzle involves identifying and labeling picture cards, and now there are some additional text clues per card available for whomever needs them.

The other big thing this past month has been finishing both the new Date Announcement Trailer and the as-yet-to-be-revealed Launch Trailer. I had never worked on any video editing before (aside from the PSI Gameplay Trailer) and while I’m reasonably happy with how that first trailer came out, it’s admittedly pretty slow. I wanted the new non-gameplay trailers to be more punchy and exciting, so I chose some faster-paced music that Alex Doty wrote for the game. The Date Announce trailer highlights Alex’s theme for the enemy base, and it’s got a real groove to it. It was so much fun synching up in-game animations to its driving guitar! And while I don’t have editing chops, I’ve been a game animator for years and a lot of those same skills and instincts came into play assembling this. I shared an earlier version with a friend who is a professional gameplay trailer editor and expected a ton of crits, but in the end he only pointed out a small handful of areas for improvement. I will confess to being unreasonably pleased with that result, so I hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t already.

Lastly, Puzzle Spy International (specifically, me, Mike) will be at the Game Developer Conference this year. So on the off chance that you’re there, please come find me! I’ll be giving out PSI postcards and stickers while I hang out in Yerba Buena Gardens for the week. The best place to reliably find me will be at the Thinky Game Devs Meet-Up in the park on Wednesday from 1-3. This is my second year co-organizing it, and as this year it’s officially co-sponsored by https://thinkygames.com/ and http://playmath.org, there should be snacks and maybe even signage! The last few years’ events have attracted developers behind some of your favorite thinky games (YMMV) so it’s always a blast to hang out, talk shop, and gush over some awesome puzzle games. Hope to see you there… Cheers!

We’re working away at completing Puzzle Spy International and it’s feeling like we’re in the last downhill stretch heading towards the finish line. And it’s not a wild, uncontrolled mad dash to get there but instead a nice measured pace. We have a number of people playing through the full game now and giving us notes, and we’re going through them one by one. Some are simple to fix like typos and awkward phrasing. Others involve changes with code or how we’ve designed puzzles and hinted at their solutions. After some brainstorming, we came up with a fun and efficient way to show more granular hints for the first puzzle in the game. And sadly, some suggestions are out of scope, or just things that RenPy cannot do as an engine. 

Another important necessity for launching is a trailer! I (Mike) have taken to learning DaVinci Resolve - a popular video editing application - and have been busy getting a trailer together: Recording footage of my playing, exporting custom pieces of art from the game, cutting and editing it together, and synching it all to one of Alex Doty’s more intense pieces of spy music from the game. I’m really excited about the result, which is a lot more punchy than the slow gameplay trailer that I produced earlier. Alex not only provided the music but he’s also quite adept at sound mixing in general, and it working on a final sound edit of the trailer this week. It came together really smoothly, so I may end up with enough time to produce a second trailer. If so, we’ll have one to announce the release and another to announce the launch.
One of the things we want the trailer in time for is the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which Puzzle Spy International will be participating in. As I’m writing this, tomorrow is the broadcast of the Thinky Awards sponsored by ThinkyGames.com. PSI is nominated for the most Anticipated Game of the year. But I’m super-excited to see who wins all of the awards! The week after the NextFest will be the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, USA. I’ll be there and hopefully giving out PSI stickers. I can’t say for sure where you’ll find me most of the time, but I am once again helping organize the Thinky Game Developers gathering in Yerba Buena Gardens so if you attend that - and you should, it’s a blast! - you should be able to find me there. And soon after all that is when we’re planning on launching the game! We’re looking forward to everyone getting to try it out… Cheers!