Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Adventure, IndieCrashlands
Crashlands makes Polygon and RPS's Games of 2016 Lists!
The title says it all, folks! We're sandwiched around things like Mighty No. 9, Terraria: Otherworld, and Hyper Light Drifter. Now that's some good company, we'd say.
If you want to check out the articles and see other games to watch for you can find the Polygon article here and the RPS one here.
We're waist deep in press contacts and getting everything sent out so the world hears about Crashlands. Thanks for journeying with us as we close in on the launch day!
19 Days to Go!
Heyo! Things have been quiet over here while we did some family wrangling for the holidays and ate so much we've all become human equivalents to BB-8... and we wrapped the beta just a few days ago!
During the Beta we crushed over 2,000 feedback and bug reports, added a fistful of brand new features (including difficulty modes, map markers, and that handy Salvage system), made hundreds of tweaks to the story, and tried to hone our language about just what genres Crashlands sits between.
We're now closing in on just 19 days before launch Crashlands and most of the work we're doing has become administrative and press related.
Want to help out before the game even launches? If you've got a favorite youtuber or streamer, tweet them the trailer of Crashlands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhlqG2sKa6A&feature=youtu.be so that when we email them in a few days they've had their eyes pre-slapped by the game.
Pre-slapping always helps.
Stay saucy!
The understory of Crashlands
Read it with your coffee this morning, and bring a tissue or other hyperabsorbant material with you - someone's going to start cutting onions.
Thanks to all of you for your interest in Crashlands and the support you've given the three of us. It gives us this strange, warm and fuzzy feeling... WHAT IS THIS?! BEES!??!?
AHHHHHH!
Crashlands - Launching January 21st, 2016!
WOOOOOO! January 21st it is. PREPARE YOURSELVES.
We're so excited. The next month and a half is polish, polish, polish as we approach launch. We'll also be drumming up tons of press and youtuber support in the next few weeks. As a small indie studio we live and die by PR and word of mouth, so if you're as excited as we are about this game launching then spread the word!
Hop on twitter with #Crashlands, grab a freakin' sweet Wallpaper (for phones, too), or if you've got a platform for spreading the word reach out to us on twitter or through the crashlands.net site!
The Beta continues to chug along as we do a big round of optimizations to the game to make it not suck down so much RAM, and we also somehow managed to cut the save file size IN HALF. Which will be great when you're fighting against those mobile 4g data cap limits. Pesky carriers.
Stay tuned for our podcast on Wednesday, and thanks for coming along for the ride! WOOHOHOHOOOOO!
CANCER FREE and LAUNCH DATE!
Sam, 1/3rd of our brotherly studio, got diagnosed with stage 4b lymphoma back in 2013. It's actually the reason we started Crashlands. After one failed treatment in 2014, he went back for two back-to-back stemcell treatments this year. At his appointment yesterday he got a PET scan, which came back TOTALLY CLEAN!
THE CANCER IS DEAD!
To say we're relieved, overjoyed, and happy beyond belief is an understatement. We took the morning to look to the future and picked the launch date for Crashlands, which we'll be announcing in just a few days.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this crazy journey - and for those of you just coming into the fold, be sure to Follow and Wishlist us as we approach launch. We're pumped to have you with us!
Polygon and TouchArcade both have great pieces on the story, if you're looking for some Thursday afternoon light, inspirational reading.
Until next time.
Love,
Adam, Seth, & Sam
100 Days of Playtime in a week!
HOLY MOLY! Our 160 strong Beta crew has poured over 100 days of human time into Crashlands since we launched a week ago, and submitted over 1600 points of feedback.
As a three brother team, that sort of support to get this game into its final, polished state is absolutely humbling. And mildly worrisome. TAKE SOME NAPS, EVERYONE! YOUR FAMILY MISSES YOU.
If you want more info on the beta and to hear about Adam's Hot Butt experience, checkout this week's podcast - and stay tuned for our end of the week update on the Beta's progress!
Beta Update - Gettin' to the Good Stuff
Be sure to Wishlist us so you don't miss the game's launch!
Now that the game's been in the hands of our lovely beta testers for more than a few days, some are starting to get seriously deep into all the content that it has to offer. We're pleased as PEACHES to see that there's no drastic changes needed to make anything sing, just tweaks here and there and the addition of one system to make the whole thing better.
Upcoming changes:
Salvage system in the equipment and build mode screens. Salvaging crafted items will give you back a random smattering of 50% of the resources. Salvaging an item that has no recipe will just destroy that item (can be used to remove clutter from your hotbars).
Overhaul of death When you die, you will lose 15-20 of your most recently picked up crafting components. But instead of being scattered about, the items will be vacuumed into a chest, which will be waiting for you to come back and open it up.
Ability to place a waypoint on your map A small arrow will be added to the map button pointing you toward the waypoint you placed.
Better final boss death - we took an hour and added a bunch of additional sassery to the final death scene to make it way more exciting and meaningful. (a piece of that is displayed above!)
We also completely overhauled the direction system the game offered players, changing it from a vague, verbal "GO SOUTHEAST!" to a map-ring system, where quest givers mark a large swathe of the map as the place where the next objective is located. This had the double-design power of reducing player burnout when trying to find a point of interest AND increasing meaningful exploration rates. We have a few graphical enhancements to it to make it not look like a terrible MS Paint project, but it's coming along.
This weekend we'll be polishing up the last of the crash-producing bugs and then it'll just be a task of refinement before we can set a launch date. GET EXCITED!
Love,
Adam, Seth, & Sam
Beta Progress Podcast!
Check out this week's podcast for the full story and to hear the three of us collectively losing our minds as we patch and modify Crashlands into a wonderfully polished state.
Closed Beta has begun!
Seth (1/3rd our studio and the games programmer) completed his playthrough of Crashlands in 40 hours and 7 minutes. A few frantic hours of patching later and the CLOSED BETA HAS BEGUN!
We are unbelievably excited! And terrified! We'll be working like crazy to patch the feedback notes up and get the game to a near-perfect state as we close in on a launch window.
If you're new to us as a studio, we're a 3 brother operation, totally bootstrapped pursuing the games we want to build. Every Follow on this page and our social media (found to the right) is huge for us to build momentum and make the launch of Crashlands the defining Indie moment of early 2016! Hop in the forums to introduce yourself and become a part of something big! https://forums.bscotch.net/viewforum.php?f=42
And if you're looking for other ways to get involved, hit up our blog post to see how you can help : http://www.butterscotch-shenanigans.com/2015/11/crashlands-closed-beta-has-landed.html
FOLLOW us as we hit Beta!
And if you're as hyped as we are, go grab a Wallpaper or social media icon from http://imgur.com/a/ybCM9 and show our 3 brother studio your support!
Together we'll make the launch a huge success!