We try to keep you updated on a regular basis but the further we dive into the episode's development the less spoiler-free content we have to share. We still try our best to give you tidbits of news now and then!
Story Progress (Spoiler-free)
The last couple of weeks we have been finalizing and tweaking the story for episode 2. We want it to be exciting, dramatic and suspenseful but also tying into the previous narrative. Even though we know what we want from each episode's story, there are so many fine nuances of how to get there. What are the character's desires? Their fears? How does everything play together? How does Episode 2 develop its own story while still feeding into the main story?
At this state, we're very happy with the story of Bear and Raven and we hope you will be, too! We have started to think about the key art and Paul has already worked on a composition and color draft of it that we really like and we'd like to share with you!
Three characters standing in a futuristic city alley, a menacing giant overshadowing the skyline
A while ago we announced that we combined two episodes in order to have a better story flow. This also led to a little change in the main characters. The agent Bear / Berhanu who was initially planned to be portrayed by Zein is being portrayed by the main character from the episode that got fused with the current one. We also now have a face for Raven. So meet our heroes for episode 2 (portraits not final):
Programming Hacking Game
A new mini game will be introduced in the next episode in which you will be able to program a cute little robot named Muffin in order to cross air shafts and reach rooms you otherwise couldn't. Don't worry! You don't need knowledge in programming in order to control Muffin. With simple lines of code you'll make the little robot move in different directions, push buttons and find the way out.
This mechanic ties together with Bear's stealth mechanic. You need to send Muffin through air shafts to reach rooms in which you can distract enemies. Sometimes you need to "park" Muffin in another room to access it without your partner being there.
Alex distracts a guard with sounds of a printer
Also the MiM hacking game gets expanded with switches and buttons. The message will sometimes only be triggered manually by the player so they have to time it right. This way the hacking games get a little trickier and tactical.
Event: Open Squares
We'll be on the Open Source Festival on July 14th in Düsseldorf, showcasing the game and the escape room hacking game that we showed at gamescom. A lot of people enjoyed it, so if you missed it: here's another chance to be a real-world hacker!
That's all for now! Don't hesitate to shoot us a question if you want to know anything about the game and don't forget to join our Discord Channel to get more frequent, little updates.
Your Kevin & Zein
Breathing life into New Berlin
Hello, hackers! How have you been? I hope you're having fun. We're busy working on Episode 2 and wanted to give you some peaks into development. In case you missed it, we're streaming a lot of it live on Twitch! You can watch all the archived videos on Youtube.
We have settled into our new office in Cologne, from which we can even see the Dome! With a bunch of other cool devs we're part of the so called Cologne Game Haus, some sort of shared office space with game developers in the heart of Cologne.
Not fully done yet, but this is our new cozy wolf's lair
We plan to invite other developers over into our stream and talk with them about their games and indiedev life. Our first guest was Utz Stauder from Ludopium, you can watch the full stream here.
Development
We've been working on the finer details of Episode 2's story and we're making good progress. You'll follow the adventures of the agents Bear, Raven (some of you might know one or two things about them from the gamescom booth!) and Geron.
We're working on a lot of gameplay mechanics, that evolve the ones from episode 2. They should feel new but also familiar at the same time. We've been prototyping a so called Binary Logic puzzle and tested around with it. In the end we decided to scrap it again, because it was too limited in terms of complexity and too easily solved by just trying (you can watch the progress in the twitch archive). Prototyping and scrapping mechanics is part of game development and very normal. It's good to know early if something just doesn't work the way you want it and stop working on it. Instead we will tweak gameplay with other means.
(minor gameplay spoilers ahead)
There will be different missions that you can do with each character and every character will have their own little addition to the gameplay. Following Bear will mean stealth levels in which you can distract guards with sounds (prototyped with flushing a toilet!), Raven is the mistress of disguise and if you give her enough information about a person she can turn into them. Geron will be able to use simulations to interrogate people, very similar to the Life is Strange dialogues in which you can rewind time after learning something.
(minor spoilers end)
Cyberpunk Cityby artursadlos
The Vibe of Episode 2
With this episode we want Code 7 to feel a lot more cyberpunk-y. With New Berlin you'll be visiting a crowded location for the first time with lots of interesting and weird places, like anon-clubs in which you enter with a holographic costume to keep your identity hidden.
We've researched a lot of art and music and even though Code 7 will not show most of it, we can still recreate the vibe and atmosphere of a cyberpunk hotspot through maps, animations and sound. Expect obnoxious advertisements to ring through your headphones... do you want to buy the new HexLab ImproVein Implant to run 25% faster? Probably not. It's experimental...
Antibiotics Challenge
If you have missed it on Twitter: We're doing a special challenge! The first 10 to complete the Antibiotic achievement in Code 7 - Episode 1 will be able to name a computer in Episode 2 after them and maybe also have some references in emails. Six brave hackers have already completed the challenge, four more chances are there! Send us a screenshot of the achievement with the unlock date, like this:
Don't forget to join us on Discord to stay in touch
and please follow us on Twitch to follow live-development!
Cheers,
Kevin & Zein
Code 7 Dev Stream
Kevin is now live on Twitch, streaming some Episode 2 Development. Join him!
https://www.twitch.tv/goodwolfstudio
The Cost of Blood Magic (aka CRUNCHING!!1)
Hello and belated happy new year everybody!
Time flies, doesn't it? We want to take the time to talk about the last months and what was / is going on with development. Let's start with some solid info:
Episode 2 is delayed and will most likely not launch before August 2018.
Now let us talk about why. We've been working on the game for almost two years now, full-time and with a lot of dedication. Since the Kickstarter campaign, we pushed ourselves even more. We wanted to make a great game and we wanted to make you, our players, and of course all future players, happy.
The last months before launch we worked a lot, like A LOT. 7 days a week, 90 hours a week. If you don't know, this is called crunching. It is the worst thing you can do to yourself, a game or a studio but still a lot of developers believe this is necessary to achieve a good game. But it's wrong. It's working on borrowed time and it destroys you physically and mentally. We learned that the hard way.
After pushing through gamescom, we saw that barely any news sites picked up the game and sales were quite mediocre. So all this work felt like it was almost in vain. Luckily, we received wonderful feedback from you all, which gave us hope for the future. But still, we ended up having a big fat burnout. And it was really rough.
We couldn't really come up with creative ideas, couldn't work on the easiest task. We somehow managed to finish and release the winter update but it took us longer than we had hoped. We decided that the only way out of this, was a long vacation so we both took the whole January off to recharge.
Now we're back! HA! RENEWED!!!
It's good to be back and now we have the creative juices flowing again. For the future, we promised ourselves to keep to human working hours, not work on weekends and also don't push ourselves too much with deadlines. Don't worry, we don't want to slack off and take like 2 years for one episode. We're aiming for Summer / Autumn this year for the next episode.
We want to thank you all for being so supportive the past year and all the kind words that you've sent us. We will continue to create the best game possible (just maybe without sacrificing our soul...?)
Special thanks to all who participated in / shared our Christmas Charity Sale. During that time, we earned roughly 1120 $. We will round this up to a donation of 120 $ to blista (in case you forgot: we said we'll donate 10% of our revenue, see the previous update).
Don't forget to join our Discord Channel , to stay up to date and chat with us!
Cheers,
Zein & Kevin
Winter Update and Charity Sale
Hi everyone,
we hope you're all doing well and are prepared for Christmas and the end of the year! We've been busy improving Episode 1 and adding features and are launching the big winter update, before logging off for the holidays.
German Version
We're happy to announce that with today's update the German translation is available. You can change the language in the main menu. Note, that the audio is still english, but all texts are now available in German.
Accessible Version
The accessible mode for blind and visually impaired players is now available and can be activated with CTRL + V. We hope you enjoy the game! We love to make games more accessible for everyone and are learning with every step. We're happy and thankful to have your support and feedback, it helped a lot!
On Steam, the update will download automatically. You'll have to re-download the DRM-free version. The update also includes a few minor tweaks and bug fixes. Also, the achievement Antibiotic is now possible to achieve as intended.
Charity Sale
To celebrate the accessible version, between Dec 13th and Dec 26th, we are donating 10% of Code 7's revenue to blista . blista is a competence center for blind and visually-impaired people and at the same time an open and lively education and meeting site for all ages.
Help us share this event and create awareness for accessibility in gaming. Spread the hashtag #gamingwithoutbarriers!
Thank you all for your support and patience. Have a wonderful Christmas and a great start into the year!
Yours,
Kevin and Zein
Patch #2
Patch Notes (Version 1.2.0.2)
Thanks for keeping reporting issues and sending us feedback. Here are the recent changes.
improved the usability of the ship puzzle in episode 0 and fixed a few bugs
fixed an issue in which a save game was damaged when looking at your episode 0 decisions
fixed an issue that made two of episode 1's achievements impossible (Matters of Security and Antibiotic)
minor fixes and tweaks
Meet us at gamescom 2017!
Are you attending gamescom this year? Then why not stop by the Indie Arena Booth and say hello? You'll find us in Hall 10.1 Booth A-020.
We will have a little hacking puzzle at the booth, where you can find clues hidden around. If you manage to crack the password you'll win a Code 7 Goodie Bag.
gamescom is happening from August 22nd to 26th in Cologne, Germany.
Find the full Indie Arena Booth Lineup here.
See you there, hackers!
Patch #1
Patch Notes (Version 1.2.0.1)
Hello, everyone! Thank you all who reported bugs and made it easier for us to fix them. For anyone who doesn't know where to report bugs, you can report them as tickets in our trello board: https://trello.com/b/FBNXZCCs/code-7-bugs
You have to comment on the card with the star to get added as a contributor.
Here are the changes:
<*>Performance improvements in Network and Man-in-the-Middle Modes
<*>Notes app now saves properly
<*>The audio logs on Jenna's tablet are now accessible and not [NULL]
<*>Fixed the issue where the Greenhouse dialogue would start from the beginning, although already completed
<*>Fixed a bug where NPHINEAS would be accessible from other rooms
<*>Fixed a bug where HKRAGER was accessible through network even though it was turned off physically
<*>Fixed the issue where some passwords showed in cryptic symbols after hack
<*>minor bugs fixes and some typos corrected
The current version number of the game is displayed in the bottom left corner of the settings screen.
