Hey all, I hope you all are having a wonderful March. I personally have never been so busy. With Sony’s Develop India event last week to fixing bugs and testing for the release, it has been really busy.
Sad News
There have not been any live broadcast on the steam store page in the past 2 days. This is because there was a power surge at my place and my windows machine is busted. I use this device for developing Brocula for Windows, Steam Deck and XBox.
I am not sure how long this fix will take. My computer repair guy says it might take a few days. He will need to get a few parts from other city which adds up to the repair time.
This is going to delay the game and the demo updates that I promised in the discord group. So for now I am removing the release dates from the store page.
I am trying to get a temporary laptop for now to at lease restart the live broadcast of gameplay. But I will let everyone know when my laptop is back in working condition.
Good News
Brocula just surpassed 17k in Wishlists. Just a few months ago this number was 8k. This is just crazy. Thank you all so much for supporting the game.
I feel like a lot of the people wishlisted the game because of cozyteagames’ TikTok and Instagram Reel. So they have my heartfelt gratitude.
Thank you once again for all the love and support.
- Prateek
Brocula Releases in March
Hi Guys!! I know I have been MIA trying to finish the game. And I have a good news today. This morning I submitted the game for review and certification on Steam. Once that is approved, it will make the release process easier. While this review process is happening, I will continue to playtest the game and fix bugs.
Regarding the XBox build, porting process is complete, which helps me test the game on the dev kit without any major bugs/issues.
If you are a streamer / YouTuber, who plays games like Brocula, you can now request a game key on KeyMailer.
That's it for now. - Prateek
13,000+ Wishlists and XBox Updates
Hope you all are doing good. I have a few small updates regarding the game.
13k Wishlists
Thank You all who have wishlisted the game. We have now reached 13000 wishlists. As an indie game, wishlists help push the steam algorithm and this helps the game in return. I can't thank you all enough.
XBox Updates
I have been working on porting the game onto XBox, and made some good progress. I was finally able to make achievements [YouTube Shorts] and cloud saves [YouTube Shorts] work and test them successfully. I guess in the coming days, I will be play testing the game to see if everything works fine.
Thank you once again for making videos on YouTube. Your support for the game means alot to me.
Thats it for now. - Prateek
Demo 1.4v is out now!
Going to keep this one quick
Demo Updates in 1.4
Updated Farming - Animations and waiting reduced
NPC List - Changed progress bar to Hearts
Church Sermons - Changed probability calculation to use Pillars, Number of times Sermons have been performed and items deposited on the table outside the church
Coffee shop final ratings will be based on number instead of previous ratings. Example, In previous versions, If your old rating was say 4.5 and new was 4.1, it used to say “Bad Job” indicating that the ratings fell. In the new version, if ratings are above 4.0, it will say “Good Job”, if ratings are below 3.0, it will say “Bad Job” and if the ratings are between 3.0 and 4.0, it will say “Needs More Work”
Videos on Youtube
Thank you so much for making videos on Brocula. Your videos give me both feedback and an idea of what people may like about the game, which is really really helpful.
Thank you once again for all the love and support for this game. - Prateek
Speed Run Results are here
Today is a special day for me. As a developer, being able to finish the playthrough your own game is like its own achievement. For a few days now, I have been speed running the game on the hopes to finish it as fast as possible. And here are the results from that.
Gameplay time: 40.7 hours Achievements: 75/98 Devices Played on: Windows Machine + Macbook Air Satisfaction of Grinding: 98/100 Most notable achievement (An achievement that I personally felt satisfied after getting): Served 500 Customers
I hope this gives an idea of how long the game is. When the game comes out, I would love to see if someone can speed run it in less amount of time.
That's it for now. - Prateek
Game Updates - Jan 2024
Hello Everyone! Hope you all are having a good January! I have a few updates regarding the game and its future. So here it goes.
Destroyer Doggo
Last year, Brocula was lucky enough to receive a grant from XBox under the Developer Acceleration Program. This grant has help me as a developer to quit my day job and start my own game dev studio under the name Destroyer Doggo. I can finally remove my personal name from the Developer and Publisher section and replace it with Destroyer Doggo.
New Gameplay Video
I finally had some time to record a new gameplay video and put it on youtube. This video is recorded after 30 hours of speed run. And no, I have not finished the gameplay yet.
I am also uploading the video to steam store page for easier access. You can see the video either here or on the Brocula Store page.
12K Wishlists
Brocula recently participated in Capitalism and Economy Fest. Steam was kind enough to help the game with its wishlists, and we have now 12k+ in wishlists. For a small indie game, wishlists matter a lot in determining its success. And you guys made it happen. I would like to thank you all for this achievement.
Demo Updates
I have been listening to your feedback. A lot of people have told me how the farming mechanics are a little janky. I am updating the farming mechanics to be more responsive. I am hoping people will like it now.
Church is also an important part of the core gameplay loop. Updating the amount of people helps the player get more Blood of Faith for other purposes. And I have added a new probability calculation that will help player get more blood out of people.
These updates will be pushed out to people in the coming days. Your feedback matters alot to me. Thank you so much for all the help and support.
XBox Porting Update
Few days ago I posted video of Brocula running on the XBox Dev Kit. This was the first build to ever run on the Xbox. While I do need to test it more, it is still progress. I received a lot of help from Akshat, from the Indian Gamedev Community, to help me understand the porting process.
Videos of People playing the game
I love it when people play Brocula. So here are recent videos on Brocula I found.
Thank you once again for all the love and support for this game. - Prateek
Game Delayed and I am Sad
As a solo dev, sometimes testing can take a lot of time., especially if the game takes more than 40 hours to complete. Yesterday I found a few game breaking bugs towards the later part of the game. This means One of the NPCs not working as expected, and achievement system being broken. Fixing and testing those bugs will take me 1-2 weeks, which will make me miss the certification date (this is a part of the Steam process).
Missing the release date for Steam will also push the game closer to the Xbox release date, which is why I am now planning to release both on Xbox and Steam, which should be around End of Feb or Early March. For some people, this news is going to be disappointing. I understand that. A lot of people make their schedule around release of a game, including me. I would like to apologize for the delay. But I would like to give this community a good game in working condition than a broken game.
As for the new release date, I will be updating this community in the coming days.
- Prateek
Demo 1.3 is out now
Thank you all who suggested improvements to the demo. These suggestions not just help the demo but also trickle down to the base game.
Some of the changes coming to Demo 1.3 are as follows
Coffee shop tutorial now tells the player to deposit with the help of a marker, thus removing the guess work.
Bats now tell the player when they have finished the demo, this tells the player that they are free to roam around or work again at the coffee shop, thus removing confusion.
Minor Bug Fixes
I hope this improves the quality of the gameplay. Thank you once again for the support.
Brocula's wishlist count on Steam just surpassed 10k. I never imagined I will get to see this tbh.
Thank you all for the love and support!!
Demo 1.2 is out now!
It is not even second week, and I am already writing my third post of this year. As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I am updating the demo to a newer version, that means bug fixes!!! So without wasting any more time, let’s get on to the major change in this version.
Spanish Localisation
To be honest, Spanish localisation was not part of my initial release. I wanted to wait for a few months, see if there was anyone who was interested in the Spanish version. But thankfully Javier Argüeso reached out to me and was kind enough to offer his services of Spanish translations for the game. Because of him and his fast translations, we will now be able to play Brocula in Spanish as well. If you are one of those cool people, who like to play games in Spanish, please feel free to thank him. And if you a game developer or a studio looking for Spanish translations, you can always hire Javier.
Other Minor changes
Thank you all the people who have reached out to me on Discord and Steam Community to provide feedback. Here are the list of changes that are happening because of your feedback.
Fixed localisation on Map
Added Church on the Map
Sucking blood from people can be done from all sides now, making it more fluid
Farming Changes - Harvesting uses different key than Sowing.
Fixed Work button auto pressed bug
Other News
This section is going to be an interesting one. Over the past few weeks I have been seeing videos about Brocula popping up on the internet. I just wanted to give a shout out to the people who were kind enough to make videos about it. Thank you so much for the help and support.
Apologies if I have missed out any of the videos, please feel free to ping me, I will add it next time I have some thing to announce.
