Woodle Deluxe is today available on Steam, you can grab it here!
Woodle Deluxe new edition is an old school 3D platformer game set in a super colorful world! You will find all the classical elements from the 90’s, venturing alone or in co-op with a friend. Travel across the Woodle Lands in a total of 8 wonderful worlds and save everyone bringing back peace and balance!
Features:
8 immersive different worlds to explore
Local Co-op Main Adventure — Play as Woodle Beaver!
New items and clothing to unlock for Woodle
Vast 3D environments presented in smooth 60 fps
Jump, Run and special Attacks are your abilities during the adventure
Hello my friends! Since is the start of a new year, we would like to take the time to write about all the things that happened during the last year and what’s next to come.
Despite the Covid situation we were able to continue all our projects remotely and were able to release our games :)
Moreover the large number of players this year resulted in an increase of over 200% in sales of our games compared to the previous year. This allowed us to increase the team size and work on even bigger projects!
This new edition of the game is highly optimized and enhanced for the next gen consoles.
Regarding the new games for 2021, we’re releasing our first Mobile game for iOS and Android on January 20th: “Suicide Guy”. Is our first Mobile game, so we’re excited since many of you asked for it!
Regarding our next Untitled game: we’re working hard on it and expect to release next year for all next gen consoles. Here a glimpse of it running on Nintendo Switch!
Since our Dev Kit for PlayStation 5 has finally arrived, We’re working to make it run on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X too, so stay tuned for an update for those!
One last update is regarding Woodle: a new game is coming in this series, so stay tuned! To follow the development of the game, you can join our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/chubbypixel
The game has been released on July 24th 2020 and sold pretty well considering is a VR game (10.000 copies in the first few months).
Must be said that this was our first big VR title released until now and we didn’t know the market in depth, so it was an interesting experiment for us. (our first game was Heaven Island VRMMOhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/400250/Heaven_Island__VR_MMO/)
Today Suicide Guy VR has 68 reviews with mixed reviews, but this is manly due to problems on certain VR hardware that we found out after the release (we didn’t know there were so many devices that gamers actually use, for example the Cosmos and the Microsoft Mixed Reality)
The game has been developed with the Valve Index and the Oculus Rift devices in mind, and we didn’t know so many gamers actually have many kinds of VR devices. Moreover these devices have all some different controls scheme and hardware characteristics that makes difficult to adjust! So a suggestion I would like to make if you’re approaching to VR development is to have all the necessary hardware development kits.
We’re still working hard on the game in order to make it perfectly compatible for all hardware (Cosmos and Mixed Reality included), so stay tuned for further updates!
Despite these problems, the game has been played by many Youtubers, here some examples!
An interesting thing I noticed is that many of them never played the first non-VR game, so this new edition indeed was a great incentive to try it out and get to know the game.
After all this feedback we’re planning to release the game on Oculus Quest Store and PlayStation VR since we found out that there is a very high interest in VR games, but the problem is that the market is pretty fragmented (check out how many active users has this subreddit for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/ )
A problem we already found during the PSVR port is that in order to play VR at its best you need 2 PS Moves (for hands control), but those are not included in the VR headset. This probably makes a lot VR gamers to not have the possibility to play the game at its best with the PS Moves.
November is here and I would like to take the time to let you know which are the new projects we’re working on!
Our latest game release (in July) with Suicide Guy VR (link) performed really well with over 10.000 copies sold on Steam in the first few months! This pushed us to port the game for PlayStation VR and Oculus Store.
The PSVR port is taking us more time than expected, but we’re trying to deliver the game to our fans for December/January, so stay tuned!
Regarding our new game in development, here a video update where you can see a glimpse of gameplay!
We’ll soon share more details, so stay tuned!
The full game will be released for the next Gen Consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X) + Nintendo Switch and Steam!
Another news for our Nintendo Switch releases: next month (in December), we’ll relese a new game! Stay tuned to find out what it is :)
After months of development, our latest game has finally been released for Steam (and Soon for Oculus Store and PlayStation VR): Link to the game
Experience Suicide Guy now in Virtual Reality for the greatest, most immersive snooze!
The Guy VR is our new Virtual Reality game out now for Steam (Soon on Oculus Store and PlayStation VR!)
Analysis of our game Woodle Tree Adventures and its sequel Woodle Tree 2: Deluxe+
Hello my friends! In this blog post I would like to analyze our first game, since I think could be an interesting read for the new game developers who are approaching to this world.
We developed our first full game “Woodle Tree Adventures” in 2013 (using the engine Unity3D), even though we were totally beginners we decided to try anyway and see what kind of game we would be able to develop. The game is now available on all platforms (Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox One and PS4)
Even though we were pretty satisfied of our game, the critics judged us very negatively, and this image is surely enough to show you what I mean:
A 28 on Metacritic is a score that could destroy your career (and can knock you down), but overall even if not perfect, the game sold hundreds of thousands of copies and a lot of gamers appreciated playing it. As an example here are some few images that can show you the appreciation of our fans:
70% on Steam reviews are positive with 1420 total reviews
That said, I’m not insinuating that you have to ignore the critics and reviewers. You surely have to listen to them, and this is what we did for the sequel of the game Woodle Tree 2: Deluxe; We took as lesson every little feedback that we gained from reviewers and tried to make something unique, this helped us infact to reach a 71 on Metacritic:https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/woodle-tree-2-deluxe+
During this time anyway I always wondered why the first game was so much appreciated by players but not by critics (I still receive messages everyday from fans saying that they loved Woodle Tree Adventures).
Probably the fact is that the game is very simple and many players likesimplicity and even though has bugs here and there, many players ignored them after a while.
Or could be the fact that being our first game and having many defects, many gamers were able to understand this while playing and even have fun thanks to thisfact.
Anyway what I wanted to tell you if you’re starting just now developing games is to not take critics to your game as something personal: try to take them for what they are (just opinions about your game and not about you) and learn from these. It’s not easy for developers to be able to judge their own game objectively after years of work, but it’s surely something that I think needs to be done.
Thankfully there are many gamers like these that surely will cheer you up and make you understand that your work was worth it:
I would like to write a post about the development and marketing of Suicide Guy and its new chapters. (link)
Even if is a game of 2017 (3 years ago), the game is still selling really well thanks to the constancy of our updates and the marketing we’re making to advertise the new chapters and content that we’re adding to the game.
The game has sold for now a total of over 150.000 copies on all platforms (notice that it includes all the chapters) and is still selling consistently like the previous year without major slowdowns.
You can check this in the pie chart below:
Here a graph taken directly from Steam with the copies sold starting from 2017 to 2020 (of course includes sales and deals). As you can see it seems that the curve goes even up and the interest in the game is still very high.
The curiosity about the game is still increasing probably due to the new VR edition that we’re going to release in few months. (You can join our Discord server here for updates: discord.gg/NZJk9Gr)
I noticed that the interest in VR has never been so high, that is why we’re porting the game for all VR devices and at the same time continuing to add content.
Since the game is still unknown by many players, I’m even testing new marketing strategies, for example posting video updates of the game on Reddit. You can check for example This Post
As you can see the interest in the VR edition of the game is incredibly high, with a lot of players that even played the first game and are eager to try this new VR edition!
This kind of marketing is both creating awareness on the upcoming VR game and helping actual sales of the game already released in 2017.
Here some other post examples that I made to create awareness on the upcoming release:
Personally I have to say that even after years after the first game, I’m still having fun to return to the project and continue it with new content.
Thanks to this, the team is constantly expanding, so you can expect new games of this and new series coming out soon!
Remember that you can grab a copy of the game here if you want:
And here a sneak peek of the logo of Suicide Guy VR coming soon
Given the times ahead of all of us, we’ve decided to write a blog post about remote game development, something that in the next months (or years?) will be necessary for all studios. Our team has always worked succesfully in remote during the last 10 years, so probably we have a tip or 2 for you.
We hope that this post will be useful for all the teams that are approaching this new kind of internal reorganization. our team is rather small (composed by 7 developers: 2 programmers, 1 game designer, 1 sound designer, 1 2D artist and 2 3D modellers), but I think this method can be applied even to larger teams of 20 or more.
Here are the 10 suggestions for Smart Working in game development:
1) PERIODICREMOTEMEETINGS:
Communication is obviously a must, and it’s something that has to be done in all forms: Email, Chat, Voice Chat and Video Chat are all essentials. Here some of the best softwares that we use for this:
Skype (mainly for chatting and voice) Discord (for chatting) Zoom (for video conferences) Slack (for chat with the whole team and team groups)
The project manager must ensure that everyone is updated on the game: is the key figure that must communicate continuously with everyone.
It’s important to communicate only the essentials during working hours in order not to make time wasted for every team member. 1 Voice chat with the whole team every 1 or 2 days is the right choice in order to keep everyone updated on the game project.
2) TASKTRACKING
the second most important thing is to keep track of everything that has been done by every team member. Depending on the team size I would suggest the following softwares:
Trello (for smaller teams from 2 to 10) Jira (for larger teams from 10 to 50) Monday (for large teams from 50 to 100)
The most important thing is to add deadlines other that tasks for every team member. Also I would suggest to add dependencies in order to keep track of what is best to give priority to: you have to avoid the case in which a team member has to wait for another to complete his task.
3) USEOFREPOSITORY
The use of repository is something that needs to be done always and is useful so that every team member can access the project and add his assets. Here some of the best softwares for this:
We mainly use SourceTree, but since it’s not meant for game development, it sometime has problems due to conflicting branches and files size. Probably with larger teams and projects, the best software to use is Perforce.
If a team member does not know how to use it well enough, or does not know the game engine, is always better to make him send his asset files to a specialized team member: he’ll be able to integrate with more efficiency the assets, without the risk to break the whole project.
4) FREQUENTFEEDBACK
Frequent and clear feedback from team member supervisors are indeed important, and must continue throughout the whole day. When working remotely, you do tend to work in a bit of a vacuum and it can feel like you have no idea whether you are doing a good job or not, unless you get lots of feedback.
Feedback can be provided directly with screens or mini videos that can help to understand what is the actual feedback referring to.
A useful software is Teamviewer, used to control directly a computer from another: we use it internally even when two programmers need to work on the same script file.
5) ORGANIZEDDOCUMENTATION
Documentation is important to be clear and precise, you can’t afford to have docs that are not understandable by the whole team. If this occurs, the project manager should improve the documentation or even rewrite it completely.
This includes both technical documentation, game design documentation and assets documentation.
The reality is that the single developer is going to make a lot of decisions in a vacuum without feedback most of the time, so having as much background as they can is necessary so that the decisions he takes are fairly good. Be sure that everyone is using the same software for writing documentation (Word and OpenOffice are the most common ones) since passing files from one user to another could create problems.
Writing documentation through cloud services is probably the best way to avoid any kind of problem: we usually use Google Docs since it includes even sheets and files for presentations. Everyone can edit the same file online in real time.
6) RESPECTTHEWORKINGHOURS
It’s easy to be distracted when you work at home, but is fundamental not to lose time or even work outside working hours.
Since you have your laptop at every hour of the day, it’s possible that you’ll sometimes work extra hours, but we would recommend not to do this: a lot of scientific papers found out that working too much hours without the right balance will inevitably cause a long-term lowering of productivity.
At the same time is easy to lose concentration due to the household chores you have to do: you have to find a room in your house that is sufficiently isolated in order to avoid this.
7) KEEPMORALEHIGH
Be distracted is as easy as losing the morale for a team member. Working remotely is never easy, so try not to be too pretentious with your team members: since you’re always distant, is easy to be offended or misunderstood.
You can try to use extra hours for external team activities like playing an online videogame! This can definitely improve team bonding.
8) KEEPTRACKOFYOURGAMEDESIGNDOCUMENT
You probably have a Game Design Document for your game, and everyone needs to follow it as much as possible.
One suggestion we have, is to write more than one GDD: in addition to the in-depth and long main document, other shorter and more concise docs needs to be written in order for every team member to easily access it.
The shorter docs could even be ad hoc for every team group (one for sound designers, one for 3D modelers etc).
Use always Google Docs so that everyone can easily access them without the need to download large files.
9) MARKETINGYOURGAME
Don’t forget to continue to market your game! Even if you can’t attend anymore to gaming events and conferences, this doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to reach millions of gamers.
Online social marketing is today probably the most efficient way to present your game to the public in relation to visibility and earnings.
Social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Ads, Reddit and Linkedin are probably the most efficient ones. So keeping your gamers updated and engaged on your games even in these difficult times is the key.
10) PERIODICREALLIFEMEETINGS
This is something that I would suggest in normal times, but of course is starting to be almost impossible to meet your team in real life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The real life meetings are essential and we think needs to be done at least one every two weeks: This helps to focus on the game direction and even to strengthen team union.
If real life reunions are impossible, we would suggest to at least make a video conference call using Skype or Zoom.
11) FINDTHEBESTWORKPLACE
It wouldn’t be a game development guide if it didn’t have some extra content :)
One last suggestion is to find your best workplace at home: if you have a notebook, you can work almost everywhere and will be tempted to work in the most unimaginable places (on your sofa or the toilet for example), but we would suggest to find the place where you will have in the most correct posture.
Your back will thank!
Here you can find other useful articles about remote development:
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