Cosmo's Quickstop
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Cosmo's Quickstop State of the Game 2020
Well itâs that time of year again. Holidays? No! The annual game status update!
First of all, it may come to no surprise but the game ainât coming out this year. As Iâm sure you are used to hearing from everywhere, the current world state has slowed down production. Trust us when I say we want the game to be done just as much as you do. We are certainly disappointed that we are missing our 2020 deadline but this year has been a hard one to predict. That doesnât mean we didnât make a lot of awesome progress throughout the year on Cosmoâs, so there is still plenty to get excited about!
Almost all of our time this year has been working on tweaking the campaign, with our attention focused on the systems between each day of active quickstop duty. This includes things like revising the story progression with a ton of new cutscenes, testing many different campaign checkpoints and difficulties, a new pass on the upgrade system, and a focus on more simple transparency of gameplay mechanics. We even added in amenity fatigue, which gives bonuses and penalties for using under and overused amenities respectively. With a new focus on player flexibility the game has become far more interesting and fun to play, which has been our goal from the start!
To test all these changes we have been doing a lot of playtesting, both internally and externally. However, this is harder than it normally is with our inability to do external playtesting in person (both in small scale and in conventions). Luckily, a lot of people stepped up to the challenge of virtual testing, recording themselves playing and providing lots of written feedback. All this info takes a lot of time to analyze and distill. This did slow down production some but this process is 100% necessary to make an awesome game which we are very much on track to do.
So, let's get to the main question. When is the game coming out if not now? When it's done is all I can say. We thought we were getting close to done this summer. However, after a large round of external playtesting we found the game just wasnât quite ready yet. Too many small things in the game were stuck being at good enough instead of great. The main game is super fun and awesome but our playtesting was showing that the in between moments werenât quite matching that level of quality and polish that we were striving for. So we committed ourselves to bringing everything up to the level of quality that we thought you folks deserved.
The entire fall has had us focused on analyzing the data, implementing revisions, and completing internal testing. And the good news is that we are about done with this process, which means that we are about ready for another round of external testing! And if that goes well, we actually might be kind of close to being done!
So all I can say is keep your fingers crossed for us. Things are looking up. And just maybe there will be a quickstop opening near you sometime soon.
Ian Beckman
Director
Big Sir Games
A spooky surprise! Halloween event live now! đť
The station doesnât seem itself recently. The air is colder, and you may find yourself walking into bats, tombstones and smiling pumpkins. Is this Cosmoâs Quickstop, or some strange, different dimension? Youâll have to find out by playing our new Halloween event!
Roam the station in two new outfits that make you look devilishly handsome -- or if that isnât your fancy, a member of the undead, DIY edition!
Weâve also included some extra sweet treats such as the Recharge, which is a kinetic potato recharger to get you into the spooktacular season! And if you get hungry there is plenty of candy to go around, just try not to eat the batsâŚ
Thatâs not all, a dark fog lingers on the station, and youâve got a limited amount of time to find the customers and recharge their batteries, be careful though as we donât know what lies in wait in the shadows.
If your brave go solo, or grab a friend and play through this new free Halloween event available now! đ
Our free demo is now available with Remote Play!đŽ
Oh boy...Things arenât looking too great down there. And, if thereâs one thing Cosmo doesnât like, itâs unhappy customers! Even if they only have two eyes.
That is why we extend to you an offer! Two one-way flights off of that melting blue rock to Cosmoâs Quickstop!
From today you can access our demo through Steam! And with the power of Steamâs Remote Play you can play with anyone from around the world!
Pretty nifty, huh?
Our little dev humans will continue to work hard on improvements, making the full campaign even bigger than imagined, and let me tell you -- we have a LOT in store for you to experience!
*Demo Note* - While singleplayer can be played with mouse and keyboard or Xbox style controller, multiplayer requires both parties to be using an Xbox style controller!
****SPOILER WARNING****
This post talks about parts of the game later in the campaign. If you want to stay away from that information, stop reading now!!!
Spoiler!
As part of the campaign in Cosmoâs, we wanted to create crazy epic moments for the player to experience while trying to design unique explorations of the gameâs ruleset. One of the ways we approached this was to have boss fights, which is something you rarely see in other games like ours. These fights help us explore ways to play our game which are super fun and crazy, but are most likely too much to be part of the main game. The final boss, obviously, is the craziest and most fun of all the ideas. However, this did not come easy.
Our biggest problem with designing the final boss was one of our own creation. We gave the player too many ways to play the game! The variety of different amenities and upgrades are drastic enough that they make many different playstyles possible. Some choices make the game easier, some make it harder, some make things make more money, some add more time to each day, some reduce variance, some add variance, etc etc etc. If we make any of these decisions not matter during this boss we start invalidating the players choices and setting them up for failure. Because of this we knew we had to make an exciting design without drastically changing the base ruleset of the game, which makes designing unique things hard!
Our first design revolved around having three distinct phases of boss, which each phase focused on different aspects of the game, such as combos, money, and speed. The thought was that we could validate different player choices in different phases which would let us get away with craziers designs. This sounded like a great idea until we realized that it meant that we had to design three fun boss fights instead of one! On first pass of this we ended up with 1 fun phase, 1 boring phase, and 1 interesting phase. The fun phase revolved around a predetermined customer setup that led to a very specific choreographed dance the player had to complete. This phase was too fun to just throw away, so many elements were saved and implemented into an earlier boss. The second phase was about overloading the station with many more aliens then normal and letting them run wild. While in theory more aliens equals more tasks which equals more fun, it actually led to boring days with certain layouts and computer performance concerns, so we scrapped it.
That second phase maybe had a couple too many aliens in itâŚ
The third phase ended up being too complicated as part of a many phase thing, so we decided to try just making it a standalone boss! The idea was based on the concept of man vs machine, a general theme that runs throughout the game. It requires the player to âbeatâ the boss by reducing its health to 0 by undocking ships. To promote the idea that you were fighting a machine, there was also a short timer that repeatedly counted down. If the player did not undock at least one ship in the span of the timer they would be heavily penalized. As the boss went on, the timer would get faster, the boss would restore its health bar multiple times, and the game would get harder and harder. We created a version that was fun and beatable with many different layouts and called it a day.
We were very happy with it until we played it about two months later in context with the rest of the campaign. As we make big production milestones in the campaign, we have everyone stop what they are doing and play through it in its entirety. One of the biggest sticking points that everyone came across was the final boss and the fact it didnât feel like a good end to the game. There was no victory moment for the player, no triumphant âI beat youâ emotion. The boss felt very binary, either you were fast enough to complete the tasks or you werenât. No back and forth, no overwhelmed vs in control, no variety of game play besides play faster, which is what the player is always trying to do anyways. And when you did win, the game just ended. The player felt very detached from the bossâ gameplay, so much so they might not even realize they were delivering a knockout punch until after they beat it. So we scrapped it.
Going back to the drawing board, we knew we needed a triumphant moment for the player. We needed the player to feel connected to whatâs going on, for it to have ups and downs, for it to have escalating non-linear difficulty, and for it to work with the millions of different combinations of amenities and upgrades the player could currently have equipped. Easy!
So we ended up looking at the competitive world of puzzle games, with our biggest influence coming from a game called Puyo Puyo (some might know it as Kirbyâs Avalanche). With random elements, escalating difficulty, fail states, speed requirements, and a back and forth caused by player decisions, these games sound a lot like what we were looking for! So we brought them into our boss fight and ended up with something really fun.
Puyo Puyo!
Framed as a fight between you and your rival Dr. Quazar, this challenge revolves around player decisions. Completing and undocking ships in quick succession sends over attacks, with power based on the amount of ships you undock and total money earned. The boss does the same to you, which then can be defended from by undocking more ships. If attacks do hit, they break parts of your station which then have to be fixed through player input. So now we have the player playing the game normally, but then making extra decisions about attacking, defending, fixing docks, saving up for bigger combos, or clearing space to earn extra money.
Your rivalâs station, the Convenience Cube!
All these extra decisions create gameplay that feel markedly different from normal while not deviating too far from the already established rules in the campaign. It also directly connects the player to the outcome, which creates these triumphant moments we have been searching for.
Challenges that come with this design are mostly based around balance and pacing. We have to make the boss difficult enough to create interesting decisions for the player, but it also needs to be adaptable to how much trouble the player is in. If the player fails, it should feel like itâs the players fault and not because the boss simply overwhelmed them. But if the player is in control the whole time, all excitement is lost. To try to make these interesting moments, we overload certain parts of the boss to basically force the player to take damage, and then ease up to allow them to recover from it. This back and forth becomes more dramatic as the boss goes on, with the final exchange forcing the player to come back from the almost failure to smash the boss with a final attack. Spread throughout this are mini cutscenes that give the player a small respite, help mark increases of difficulty, and give some extra flavor to the whole fight.
The boss is still getting tweaked a bit, but in general we are super happy with the direction it ended up going. Now we just got to finish the rest of the game so you can try it out!
Progress Report
I am writing a little recap for the year and talking about the future of Cosmoâs Quickstop. First of all, I just gotta say that we arenât going to make the 2019 deadline. You might have guessed that considering that there are only 19 days left. But have no fear, while I can understand the disappointment of having to wait for the game longer, I can honestly say that these delays are worth it.
So why are we pushing back the deadline? Well, mainly because this last year we have added lots of additional content to the game. I mean a lot. For example, changing the game from being a fun little arcade-style score attack to being focused on a 13+ hour campaign with 12+ cutscenes, 4 amazing bosses, 19 different station minigames, 75+ upgrades, and over 30+ million combinations of how to set up your station. Some of my personal favorite new things are the Galactic Lotto, The All-Seeing Zarlak Mechanical Oracle, the Drive-Thru Wedding Chapels, our just finished Health Inspector Boss, and the new arch-rival of Cosmo, Dr. Quazar.
The campaign was always the plan (although we ended up with a lot more than we first imagined) and I can say two months ago we made a version of the game that was playable from start to finish. Which is a really big deal in the life of any game project. And that version of the game is a ton of fun. But it's definitely not perfect yet. And while we donât need it to be perfect, we want it to be pretty dang close. So we are adding some stuff, removing some stuff, tweaking balance, fixing bugs, etc, etc, etc. But it all takes time, and it's taking a little longer than expected to get everything just right.
Some people might say to just release it anyways, in early access or something of that nature, and fix the bugs along the way. While I canât speak for anyone but myself, Iâm pretty tired of buying games that arenât done yet, so we arenât going to do that. Others might say to crunch as hard as you can and get the game done as fast as you can. While Iâm a hard worker, no one should sacrifice their life to get a project done, so we arenât going to do that either. This leaves us only one option: delay the game.
So we are going to delay, and right now we are looking for a spring release. But things can still change, and who knows what the future holds. There are a couple of possible avenues that might make it take even longer for the game to come out, and thatâs okay. If that does end up happening, it will only lead to more features and more people being able to play the game in more places, so it seems like it would be worth it.
And for anyone saying âThat sucks, I really want some Cosmoâs Quickstop action right now!â, I have some good news for you. This last year also had us focus a lot more on you, the community. So we hired a community manager, who has been blasting out tweets, newsletters, Instagrams, and more. We released a free score attack demo which can be found on our Discord! https://discord.gg/nHjWNdC. We have started streaming game development, both programming and 3D Art, which can be found here https://www.twitch.tv/bigsirgames. We are even about to run a giveaway for some newly designed T-Shirts! Sheesh, thatâs a lot of stuff!
So that's basically all the news for now. All in all, it has been a great year for us. From going to conventions from coast to coast to meeting new fans, to challenging ourselves to create the best thing we can, I have no complaints. So please keep coming along with us, checking out all that we are doing. And thank you for waiting so patiently for us to get this done. We appreciate it. And trust me, we want this game done just as much as you.
-Ian Beckman
Director, Big Sir Games
Weâve been hijacked!
It is I, Cosmo, your favorite extraterrestrial entrepreneur. And it is with heavy hearts that I must give you disturbing news. It seems that a human has been sneaking in and out of my establishment, rent-free, without paying so much as a single coin for parking!
Seriously, who does that? What the â ââââââââ is wrong with you primates?
Now, the staff is working double shifts just to hide that âhumanâ smell before the customers notice it. Worse yet, on further inspection, we noticed something even more alarming. This human has been hacking our systems and uploading footage to a live communication system called Twitch. Disgraceful!
Using my incredibly oversized brain, I captured some of his transmissions. We do not tolerate piracy and hackers on our space station! Not unless Iâm getting a piece of the action. We havenât caught him yet, but Iâm posting his image around the station along with this holographic footage I obtained.
This isnât the first time heâs hacked us. Iâve found that he does this quite often, and tells his audience by hacking my invention Discord! Iâm the only one who steals great ideas around here!
I urge you all to keep a close eye on him, and Iâve got a live feed that will update you when this scoundrel goes live on my space station: https://www.twitch.tv/bigsirgames!
If youâre interested in tracking him more closely, he posts here on my invention Discord when he starts his transmission: https://discord.gg/vDj6hrh.
This is a very serious matter, and to show you how very, very serious I am, Iâm giving a reward of three space coins for his capture. Be on the lookout for this interloper, and let me know if you see him.
Demo Release Party!
The time has arrived! Our shiny new demo is out and accessible through our Discord! Join us now to get your free copy!
https://discord.gg/vDj6hrhÂ
đOne step beyondđ˝
Big Sir Games is a nominee this year at IndieCade!
We're incredibly excited to be nominated for a spotlight award in the category of cooperative design at the IndieCade festival. Crafting a game is a very personal journey -- day by day, you put your heart and soul into code and pixels, and it's amazing when other people recognize what you're doing.
It's a privilege to be a part of IndieCade. If you donât know what IndieCade is, hereâs a little backstory: it's an international festival of independent games, hosted on 10-12 October in Santa Monica, CA. IndieCade is known as âthe video game industryâs Sundanceâ and it is their mission to bring visibility to and facilitate the production of new works within the independent game movement. For more information, weâve included their official website. If anyone is in the Santa Monica area on these dates, come and say hello to Cosmo and the team! https://www.indiecade.com/
But wait! Thatâs not the only announcement we have!
Mark this date in your calendars because itâs about to get epic! We are releasing the demo of Cosmoâs Quickstop on October 11th! At long last, youâll be able to get your hands on your very own space gas station, and meet some of our onboard alien customers!
To celebrate the demo release, we are also launching a special Discord server on the same date! On our Discord, youâll be able to share your unique Cosmoâs experiences, use exclusive emojis and be entered into exciting future giveaways!
An interview with the brains behind Cosmoâs Quickstop!
This week at Big Sir Games, I got the chance to sit down with the âBossmanâ Ian Beckman himself. Before we get into the meaty questions and secrets of Cosmoâs Quickstop, letâs get to know Ian a bit more!
Ian graduated with a BS in 3D character animation and then educated himself in the art of coding. Programmers are expensive and he had big plans to make a video game. After getting to grips with code back to front, he has since taken the role of director/programmer on Cosmoâs Quickstop.
His main tasks include creating an intergalactic world that not only looks amazing but also runs smoothly with NO BUGS. Except for our business bugs that youâll get to meet later in the game.
Without further ado letâs dive into the interview!
Q: Every game has its start, and I wanted to know if you had any struggles at the beginning of production?
A: We came into this project quickly and I did a very poor job of laying base organizational code for everything. Having not started many big projects, I approached things more in a game jam way of just getting stuff working fast. Because of that, the code quickly became disorganized and all spaghettied up! Since I was the only one working in the codebase I was at least able to keep things straight in my mind, but going back to some of the earliest code in the game now reminds me of how messy it truly is.
Q: How did you overcome this production issue?
A: Once the game went from a short-term project to a long-term project in my mind, I started trying to keep things more organized. As we created more and more amenities and upgrades, I applied more of a formulaic style to them so it was easier to go from oneâs code to another. Also, due to having more amenities, we were forced to create a system that instantiates prefabs on level creation. This allows us not to have to worry about the placement of each object in each position at each level, our system just handles it for us.
Q: What are the main elements of the game youâve been working on this month?
A: Iâve mainly been working on getting the campaign 100% content complete. This means designing and programming the final upgrades for different amenities, converting the last two bosses from prototypes to 1st passes, and hooking up the rest of the goals and cutscenes into the campaign story.
Q: What have you had the most fun with this month?
A: Getting the upgrades done always feels great. The way we set them in the codebase makes it simple to add more and iterate on them, so you get a lot of stuff done really quickly. It is also a great design challenge to come up with these upgrades. We want them to be meaningful choices for the player, but the early upgrades canât be too game-changing. But the capstones for each amenity or chore are the exact opposite. These upgrades often drastically change how the player should approach these tasks, giving them more in the moment decision making power on what they should do.
Q: Whatâs the hardest task youâve had to face this month in terms of production?
A: Creating the final boss has been very tough. It is important that the player can equip their station with whatever amenities and upgrades they want, so the challenge the boss presents has to be universal. It is important that it feels different from the main game, otherwise, it just feels like a harder level opposed to a dramatic final moment. Creating something that doesnât demand specific needs from the station layouts but also creates new gameplay challenges has been something weâve had to iterate a lot on, but I think we have found an interesting sweet spot.
Q: What are you going to be focussing on in September?
A: Balance! Once we have the campaign stuff in and itâs working, the next step is balancing all the income vs difficulty of the various amenities and upgrades. Making sure the player feels that different options are viable whilst rewarding more skilled gameplay. This is a sweet spot that we will aim for in Cosmoâs Quickstop.
Thatâs all for now!