Meet David, our senior programmer! Elbow deep in some of the key gameplay mechanics David juggles delegation and programming to make sure all the cogs come together with our vehicles. Deformation, handling, and more he gets involved with it all.
Wanna know more or, have specific audio questions for Martin? Let us know on the forums or, one of our many social media platforms;
Now that Gamescom is out of the way it's time to catch you up with everything that’s going on in the Pow Wow Entertainment offices. We gathered a whole load of feedback from the Summer of Stunts playtests and it's been a huge help in highlighting areas we need to improve on, we wanted to share some details of what we found with you, the community.
First off we wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who turned up, got involved, and most importantly, let us know what you think. For the most part, it was hugely constructive and, you’ve given us a perfect jumping-off point as we head towards our next playtest.
One of the biggest bits of feedback we got was vehicle handling. While Stuntfest is not a racing game at heart, our cars provide a foundation for the game and really need to be something players can jump into and instantly enjoy, while building a preference for certain cars that fit their playstyle. As of Summer of Stunts, this wasn’t the case. Many of you raised the issue of under-steering, uncontrollable drift, and more. That’s why we are tackling both the balancing of the vehicles and also adding some missing functionalities, make sure to keep up with our dev blogs and Q&A’s for a deeper look at our four-wheeled friends.
Now, there isn’t a perfect science to balancing car controls, it becomes even more complicated when we want to straddle the line between arcade-like pick-up-and-play driving while also having a certain nuance to go from good to God-like behind the wheel. It’s going to take us some time to find the sweet spot but, with your help between playtests, we can refine this until we get there. Our supercar has already come along hugely since the playtest and we’re excited to show you the others soon.
In a similar vein to what's being covered above is the crashing. Multiple parts of feedback expressed how the crashing didn’t feel satisfying, the cars didn’t deform correctly and how in certain events, crashing wouldn’t be detected or, would be detected even if you didn’t hit anyone.
To begin with we’re hard at work reworking multiple elements of how the cars are damaged and destroyed. This includes working on how collisions are tracked to make them more accurate, making some flappy parts to enhance the look of the deformation and down the line will touch on realism and improve the sounds for that extra audio crunch!
The learning experience was something we found players struggled with. With Stuntfest World Tour being unlike anything else out there, it's important to us you’re able to pick up and play within minutes of getting in the game, and currently, our tutorial isn’t quite instructive enough to allow for that. Many players struggled to get to grips with how to eject, use gadgets and resummon their car. It’s of course a lot of different controls that our players need to learn to be competitive in the stuntshow and as every game mode requires you to play a bit differently that amplifies the challenge. With a new tutorial and extended playgrounds in the HUB we hope players will arrive with a stronger knowledge before hopping into a stuntshow.
First impressions are important and with this in mind, we’re re-working the user experience when you first start the game. Making it more obvious, more engaging, and repeatable in case you’re ever in need of a refresher course. We also hear you about the ability to customize your experience and, while we have no details on that yet, we’re working hard on making it a reality.
We’re reworking our lighting systems and beyond to, pardon the pun, show Stuntfest in the best light will still trying to match our vision for what we want you to experience. This means going over all our textures and materials to make sure everything fits. While we want to get across the “extreme” elements of Stuntfest, we want to make sure we don’t stray too far into a cartoon dynamic.
All of the above focuses on some key issues you highlighted and, what we’re doing to resolve them. While I’ve not covered everything, we are well aware of the bugs, the issues and the shortcomings and are doing what we can to resolve them. From random/no points during destruction derbies, people leaving lobbies early, and lack of the ability to group, these are all on our laundry list of things to resolve. If you were an early leaver, let us know why, the more information we have the better we can make the experience!
We’ll be doing our best to keep communicating with you, our budding community, on what we’re fixing, when we’re fixing it and how we’re going to fix it at regular intervals. Alongside this we’re also hosting regular private playtests which you can hear all about on discord, and even discuss the game and what you’d like to see directly with us!
So, from all of us at Pow Wow Entertainment, thank you for the feedback and we look forward to showing you the changes we’ve made, very soon.
Don’t want to wait until our next update? Check out our socials here and, don’t forget to wishlist to be notified on any and all updates in the future.
Grab some friends and jump in on the conversation here: Twitter Link: https://twitter.com/Stuntfest YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3ISe3XarnrTiWUt9PJm_w Discord Link: discord.gg/stuntfest TikTok Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@stuntfest Twitch Link: https://www.twitch.tv/stuntfest Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/stuntfestofficial/ Facebook Link: https://facebook.com/stuntfestofficial Wishlist Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366850/Stuntfest__World_Tour/
Post-Gamescom Blues!
We’re back from Gamescom and its been one hell of a ride! We got the chance to hang out with a number of you and had a blast showcasing Stuntfest on both the live stage and a number of different live streams including some guest streamers! Wrap your eyes around me and our guests, showing off our skills below;
If this isn’t enough to scratch the Stuntfest itch, we’ve also got a brand-new trailer detailing exactly what goes on at the fest;
We’re still working hard on the Summer of Stunts feedback we got and, we’ll be showing you a breakdown of what exactly we're working on real soon! In the meantime, if you want a chance to get your hands on the game, jump in the discord and smash the wishlist button!
Grab some friends and jump in on the conversation here: Twitter Link: https://twitter.com/Stuntfest YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3ISe3XarnrTiWUt9PJm_w Discord Link: discord.gg/stuntfest TikTok Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@stuntfest Twitch Link: https://www.twitch.tv/stuntfest Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/stuntfestofficial/ Facebook Link: https://facebook.com/stuntfestofficial Wishlist Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366850/Stuntfest__World_Tour/
Dev Q&A #3
Audio is an often overlooked specialty when it comes to game design and we want to change that! In this week's Q&A we're having a chat with our audio director Martin, finding out what makes Stuntfest Worldtour sound like it does, and how you could get into audio design yourself.
Wanna know more or, have specific audio questions for Martin? Let us know on the forums or, one of our many social media platforms;
Programming is the glue that ties a lot of video games together and in this Dev Q&A we're chatting to the first of many programmers behind Stuntfest Worldtour. Wanna know what goes into a game like Stuntfest from a programming standpoint and, how to maybe start your own career in the field? Well, watch to find out more!
Wanna know more or, have specific VFX questions for Max? Let us know on the forums or, one of our many social media platforms;
With the first ever Summer of Stunts officially over and we at Pow Wow Entertainment want to say a massive thank you to all who got involved! We got some amazing feedback both about positive experiences and things we need to work on. We also got some solid suggestions for how to improve and expand on our current gameplay loop so, we're already super excited to get to work cranking Stuntfest Worldtour up to 11 for the next Stuntshow!
If you want to follow the development, continue to get involved and what we do with the feedback from the event, make sure to join us across our social media channels;
The gates are open and I can finally say welcome, to the Summer of Stunts! Our pre-alpha playtest where you, the community, get the chance to jump behind the wheel of our rides and give Stuntfest - World Tour a solid test drive! Wanna get involved? Well, here's how;
Request Access - If you wanna jump into the fest, make sure to swing on by our store page and click this wonderful button;
We're starting off with 500 slots and increasing it over time to help with server scalability so, if you don't get in immediately don't worry, we'll let you know when you can so keep an eye on those emails!
Get Amongst It - Wanna chat to other festival goers between Stuntshows? Easy! Join our Steam Discussions or our Discord and get involved with the community!
Join the Livestream AMA - I'll be live over on Twitch answering some of your questions, so pop in, say hello, and let me know what you think!
And with that, you're all caught up so ... I'll see you at the Stuntshow!
Dev Q&A #1
Ever wondered what its like to be a VFX artist working on Pow Wow? Curious about what goes into the VFX side of games dev? Well, we got you. Take a look at our first Dev Q&A and let us know what you think!
Wanna know more or, have specific VFX questions for Max? Let us know on the forums or, one of our many social media platforms;
A huge hello to all you new festival-goers and welcome to our very first dev blog. In hopes to be more transparent with the development process, we wanted to share with you a regular insight into our production process and what we’ve got going on between each development cycle.
We’ll be talking about the inspiration behind our characters and vehicles, how all the mechanics work, and, how to use them to get ahead of your competition. Alongside this, we hope to show you work-in-progress images and clips from the game, improvements from cycle to cycle, and, maybe even the odd bug to show what happens when physics stops working!
Ever since our reveal trailer in July, we’ve been getting this question a lot on our social media channels in video comments. In our very first blog, it may be time we spent a moment to straighten things out and explain exactly what Stuntfest is all about!
Stuntfest Worldtour is breaking the mould by combining driving, gadgets, stunts and a knockout tournament all within the space of 30 minutes! Using a weird, wacky and downright wonderful set of tools you can catapult yourself from the driver's seat and into the skies. Gliders, jetpacks, grappling hooks, and more allow you to set yourself out from the other races and allow you to take advantage of all sorts of shortcuts and acrobatic routes to steal the lead.
We’ve already found ourselves compared to multiple other racing games out right now and we want to make it clear that our hybrid gameplay takes us off the track way more than we stay on it. While we may have destruction derbies, lap-based races, and other track shenanigans, Stuntfest is way more than that and our Stuntshows are just the tip of the iceberg.
18 enter, but only one can emerge victorious! The main activity in Stuntfest Worldtour is our Stuntshows, a gathering of 18 players who battle it out across multiple connected events from lap-based races, length & height-based ejection events, glider sprints, and a few more extravagant exhibitions. After each event, your success (or spectacular failure) is awarded points, didn’t get enough points to stay in the green? Bye-bye. Try again next time.
If you’re fast enough and badass enough, you might find yourself the stunt show winner, and if that’s the case, you get to show off in front of the rest of the fest, by leaping back into our hub in style! But, it’s not all about being able to keep all 4 wheels on the track, sometimes it's about leaving your car behind altogether.
Going forward we at Pow Wow Entertainment want to be as transparent as possible with our plans, development process, and ideas behind the features and mechanics within Stuntfest. We’ll revisit the Stuntshow to talk in-depth about the highs and the lows of the event as a whole. We’ve got plans to show off all the cars and characters and their unique characteristics, how they went from concept art to playable entities, and how the world of Stuntshow Worldtour itself came to be.
Alongside all these we’ll be having weekly Twitch streams, posting daily content and Stuntfest advice across multiple social media platforms and holding daily chats on our discord to make sure you can keep up-to-date and informed on Stuntfest and its production.
Through the coming months we’re going to be looking to you, our community, to help make Stuntfest a truly unique experience and are constantly looking for input and feedback. With your involvement we can take Stuntfest from something we want to make, to something you want to play!
Grab some friends and jump in on the conversation here: Twitter Link: https://twitter.com/Stuntfest YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3ISe3XarnrTiWUt9PJm_w Discord Link: discord.gg/stuntfest TikTok Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@stuntfest Twitch Link: https://www.twitch.tv/stuntfest Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/stuntfestofficial/ Facebook Link: https://facebook.com/stuntfestofficial
Thanks for taking the time to catch up with us, Festival-goers. We’ll see you next time!
Enjoy & Stay tuned!
We Do Our Own Stunts: THQ Nordic Announces Stuntfest - World Tour
We Do Our Own Stunts: THQ Nordic Announces Stuntfest - World Tour
Vienna, Austria, June, 30th, 2022: Hands firmly gripping the steering wheel, tensed muscles, sharpened senses, the adrenaline kicking in – Ready, set, EJECT! THQ Nordic’s next stunt brings players back on the track and in the air with the traveling action sports game Stuntfest - World Tour Developed by Pow Wow Entertainment, Stuntfest - World Tour is coming to PC later this year.
First look at Stuntfest - World Tour here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2nKBbiHSao Stuntfest - World Tour combines racing, crashing, and destruction with a unique aimed ejection mechanism. 18 players compete against each other in an elimination-based stunt show through various nerve-wrecking game modes. The goal? To shine on stage and become the winner of the festival! Characters turn into living bullets, ejected out of the vehicles, and catapulted hundreds of meters through the air. The players maintain control when maneuvering their character while hurtling over vast distances and after crashing through huge obstacles. Up in the air, the players can take advantage of quirky gadgets to reach secret shortcuts and turn the tables at the last second. And the best part: Recover after a high jump and dive back into the next vehicle on the road!
Need a break from the action? Meet up and fool around in the Stuntfest - World Tour arena, a vast festival area where you can flex your reflexes and surround yourself with other kindred stunt buddies. Use the pit in the backstage area to upgrade and customize your car or character and become the next champion of the insane Stuntshow tournament!
