Platformers, let's get horn-y: Hell Pie is OUT NOW! 😈
Oi lovers of the pie,
The time has finally come. Yeah, I know, unbelievable but true: Hell Pie is finally released! Nate and Nugget took five years off our lives, brought us a lot of gray hair and wrinkles as deep as the Mariana Trench. But ey, it was damn well worth it!
We're really super happy and proud that you all finally get to swing through Hell Pie yourselves with Nate and Nugget to make sure Satan's birthday pie comes out of the oven on time. Hell Pie is Sluggerfly's third game, but again it was a hell of a ride - I can tell you that. Covid in particular has once again presented a whole new set of challenges for development.
But we did it! Yeah! And hope you all will have a lot of fun with Nate and Nugget. And of course we'd love to hear your feedback on Hell Pie! So check out our Discord channel or post your feedback into the Steam community!
And thank you so much for the ongoing interest and feedback for Hell Pie over the last years. You guys are just awesome, each and everyone of you! ❤️
Have a great time swinging with Nate and Nugget! Sluggerfly out
Verified for Steam Deck: Play Hell Pie wherever you want! 😈
Happy pie day platformers,
Some awesome news for all you beloved cake bakers out there (in case you are one of the lucky fellas that own a Steam Deck): Right in time for the release in a few hours, Hell Pie was reviewed and got verified for the Steam Deck, woohoo!
What does that mean? It's simple, you can swing with Nate and Nugget in all their glory on the Steam Deck wherever you want: at home on the couch, on top of the highest mountain, on the toilet (if it takes a little longer again...) - just about anywhere!
Not long now until you can swing with us. So awesome! Your Sluggerfly Team
😈 Facts, figures and more: What the hell is Hell Pie?!? 😈
Hey swingers and platformers!
Tomorrow is the official unofficial pie day! Tomorrow afternoon from 5pm CEST/8am PDT Hell Pie will be available after five long, exhausting (and awesome) years, woohoo! Until now, we have been very busy polishing the game even more, but slowly we realize how little time is left until the release. And now, slowly but surely, the nervousness is building up...
And that's why we can't get a straight sentence out today anyway. But we would like to take this opportunity to give you all the important facts and figures about Hell Pie and its release tomorrow. So...
Hell Pie:
3D platformer, focussed on a swing/grapling hook mechanic
Developed by 4-6 peeps here at Sluggerfly in around 5 years
5 large hub worlds
13 additional sub worlds
6 different horns for Nate, offering varying skills
64 outfits overall (30 Nugget, 34 Nate)
4 official banging Electric Callboy outfits (Hypa Hypa, We Got The Moves, Pump It, Spaceman)
A skilltree with overall 18 unlockable (unbelievable) skills
23 disgusting ingredients to make Satan's birthday cake unforgettable
A rough playtime of about 6-8 hours (depending on your own playstyle of course!)
There is more in the game of course, but we don't want to spoil too much. Tomorrow you can check out for yourselves what there is to do and to discover in Hell Pie.
Till tomorrow and cake care everyone! Dominik & the Sluggerfly Team
Nate, Nugget & Ray: Hell Pie swings with Ray Tracing & Nvidia DLSS for Release!
Greetings techy platformers!
I'm not quite sure if we subconsciously foreshadowed the following five years when we came up with the name Hell Pie for our latest project. Because any developer will agree that the word "hell" is probably the most apt description of the time in which a game is made. Actually, according to the planning, a development should always take two years less, and offer at least 50% more content, which fell into the gutter somewhere in all the mess. Washed away by all the blood, sweat and tears of disillusioned developers.
Or in short: developing games is awesome, but you need a thick skin. Hell Pie is our third game, so we knew (more or less) what we were getting into. But what would the developer's life be boring if there weren't new challenges waiting somewhere to be heroically worked on?!? And so one fine day a year ago Tim (the PC tech & gaming enthusiast from Headup) came around the corner with an idea: "The look and style of Hell Pie would look even more awesome with Ray Tracing than it already does! What do you guys think of the that?"
To be honest: Not much at this moment. And perhaps that is why we agreed. Later I thought a bit about whether it makes sense for Hell Pie to include Ray Tracing in a cartoony game at all. Doesn't that only look good in games that are as realistic as possible? I adressed that question with Tim, and he related me to Pumpkin Jack so that I should take a look on the Ray Tracing implementation of it. And what can I say, Pumpkin Jack clearly benefits from Ray Tracing, and so we (meaning mainly me) got started together with Nvidia.
Since the beginning of 2021, I started actively working on adding Ray Tracing to Hell Pie. And as always in the life of a developer, the theory sounds quite simple at first. The implementation then went more like this: "So, let's get started. Well, seems to be easy going... But, nope. Not at all. F*ck... Maybe? Hm... No. Noooooo!!! F*ck. F*ck. F*CK F*CK F*CK!!! WHY?!? ... Well, at least it looks good. But where are my FPS? Dammit! Let's add DLSS... It works! Yes! I LOVE IT!!! That was worth it."
Ray Tracing does not turn Hell Pie inside out. We use Ray Tracing partially so as not to break the style of the game, but to highlight some aspects. Ray Traced Reflections reflect in real time the environments, character, etc. in surfaces such as windows, water, mirrors, etc. And Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion causes a more realistic overall look in the levels when it comes to ... ambient occlusion. But (moving) pictures say more than a thousand words:
Personally, I like such gimmicks very much. RT Reflections, RT Ambient Occlusion, DLSS, etc. And that's why I put it in. Internally at Sluggerfly, however, not all are fans, because additional techniques like Ray Tracing also bring technical hurdles: suddenly some effects in the game don't work anymore, a workaround must be found, etc. It's been some back and forth, but we've added some cool gimmicks to Hell Pie. I'm proud of it in any case!
And hey, exactly two weeks from tomorrow Hell Pie will be released! Then you can see for yourself - with the appropriate hardware, of course - that a brightly colored, stylized 3D platformer like Hell Pie works wonderfully with ray tracing. It doesn't always have to be realism. Life is already realistic enough.
See you soon, dear friends! Christian & The Sluggerfly Team
Hell Pie proudly presents: "The most hellish System Specs (from Hell)!" 😈
Hey there lovers of hellish pies!
We put Hell Pie in the oven a couple of weeks ago and are waiting for it to be well done. All strictly according to grandmother's very best recipe, of course. Well, hopefully something will have come of it by July 21st...
And so that you can all enjoy our delicious Hell Pie in the best possible way, we have the official system requirements for you here:
MINIMUM
OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 64-bit (latest Service Pack)
Processor: Intel Core i3-3225
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 5 GB available space
RECOMMENDED
OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 64-bit (latest Service Pack)
🔥 Nate and Nugget got the Moves: Hell Pie Hooks Up with Electric Callboy! 🔥
Hypa Hypa, platformers!
At 6 o'clock on a beautiful sunny Monday winter morning we sat in our bathrobes on the spacious terrace of the Sluggerfly mansion and had a few beers. Could have been a few more - I can't really remember. A typical meeting between developer and publisher. Nothing special. The theme of the meeting was, "How the hell do we market Hell Pie without busting our asses?".
Someone came up with the idea "Yo, let's just shamelessly exploit some known artist's notoriety!". And what can I say... Everyone liked the idea. But who would be the best choice to support Hell Pie with his fame? After all, you can't just let Hans and Franz do it! It takes a certain level to keep up with our duo from hell. Not everyone can stand this very special humor. You need really tough peeps for that. With joggers. And bowl cuts. Ey, they need to have the moves!
Well, okay. Maybe the whole thing might have happened a little different. There actually was a meeting with the Sluggerfly devs about some marketing possibilities, but we got off topic. As usual. Because that’s how typical meetings between developer and publisher really look like. That was back at the time when a music video was making its rounds on YouTube that nearly everyone had seen: Bowl cuts, weird glasses, nodding folks, and total escalation: Electric Callboy’s “We Got The Moves”. And that's exactly what became the topic of conversation.
That was when I thought: "Ey, a collaboration between those guys and Hell Pie would be fire!". All their songs are so pumped with energy, they are catchy as fuck and - which I personally find very sympatico - they take their music seriously, but themselves not that much, because they just want to have a good time. And that’s exactly our approach for Hell Pie: A colorful platformer with totally over the top humor, but a serious approach on catchy gameplay mechanics. I threw the idea around - and it was well received: "If that worked out, that would be damn awesome!". Idea accepted!
I then tried to get in touch with Electric Callboy, which finally worked after a few detours. And luckily they were totally up for a collaboration for Hell Pie. The following weeks we juggled ideas of what would be feasible, because Hell Pie was no longer infinitely far away from the release, and the Callboys had video shoots and finally a packed schedule of concerts and festivals on the agenda. Since the music videos for "Hypa Hypa", "We Got The Moves", "Pump It", and "Spaceman" have a very unique style (and very unique costumes), we came up with the idea: why don't we do a costume combo for Nate and Nugget per song?
No sooner said than done. Aren’t those real pumped-up beauties? To round off the total package, Nico and Kevin did an awesome performance in front of the camera so that we could prepare this banger of an announcement video:
Oh, and in case that you might have asked yourself this question: NO! No, the four Electric Callboy costumes are not an additional DLC. And no, the costumes are not associated with any additional costs. We want you ALL to swing with style. The costumes are part of the game from the beginning - no updates, no paid DLCs, no bullshit! Two suitcases are parked in each of the four hub worlds, which contain the Electric Callboy dresses for Nate and Nugget.
And that's the whole story. Mission complete, friends! Tim & The Sluggerfly Team
SLUGGERFLY DIRECTLY #04: The announcement, you all have been waiting for! 😈
Hey there pretty platformers,
sorry that it took a bit longer to bring you the fourth installment of our fabulous "Sluggerfly Directly"! As you can see in the following video there were some ... uhm ... misunderstandings which we had to make unrecognizable in the video:
Dominik has since calmed down somewhat and can now be sedated with only one Valium per hour. But that won't detract from the phenomenal quality of Hell Pie, because - just between us - Dominik never worked anyway...
So, no time for more sensless bla bla! We have a game to fini... polish!
Till then and take care everyone! Your Sluggerfly Team
Swingers of the World unite: Hell Pie will release July 21st 2022! 📅
Beloved swingers,
The time has finally come! We have been working on Hell Pie for about five years, which is a insane long time... (but not because the game is so big or polished, but because we are untalented and don't want to do any "real" work... Sorry!)
... Let's start over new... The time has finally come! Folks, after about five years of insanely hard work we have a release date for Hell Pie! Yes, we know - unbelievable, but true. And it won't be that long anymore. Not another five years. Not even one more year. But just a little more than a month!
*drum rolls*
HELL PIE WILL RELEASE JULY 21st 2022!!!
And that's it. Dammit... That means that now we have to think about what we're going to do after the Hell Pie release... We said we'd never ever clean deposit bottles again! Please people, help us! Please wishlisted Hell Pie so that the game will be successful and we don't have to actually start working. Please! 😘
We'll work on the game a little bit after all. So that it becomes really really good! Promise! 🤞
Till then and take care everyone! Your Sluggerfly Team
SLUGGERFLY DIRECTLY #03: "Don't mess with the Steam Wishlist!"
Happy Friday to all of you!
We just can't do anything else but thank you all out there! ❤️
We did it. We all did it together! One of the goals that was particularly close to our hearts was achieved a few days ago. ːsteamhappyː I don't want to say much more - take a look at the video. It says so much more than 1000 words:
Till then and take care everyone! The Sluggerfly Team
SLUGGERFLY DIRECTLY #02: "And this Hell Pie Feature will blow your Socks off!"
Hey there lovers of hellish pies!
Another week, another "Sluggerfly Directly"! And with it we are going to show you a unbelievably great feature in Hell Pie that we are massivly proud off: Rotation! You might know rotation from other games. Or you might even know rotation from the real world. Bla bla bla...
Might be! BUT: No rotation is as impressive as the rotation in Hell Pie! You do not believe us? No problem! Here is the irrefutable and obvious proof:
But of course, that wasn't the last groundbreaking feature of Hell Pie, so stay tuned! We'll keep you posted on the next "Sluggerfly Directly". It won't take too long.
Till then and take care everyone! The Sluggerfly Team
