Paleo Pines
An Update on Paleo Pines
Firstly, a HUGE thank you to everyone for being the best game community EVER. It’s been a while since we posted our survey and I wanted to share the results of that survey and provide a small update on where we’re at with Paleo Pines.
When we initially put out the survey asking for input on the entire idea of doing crowdfunding for an expansion to Paleo Pines, we had hopes that perhaps a couple of hundred players would respond. Unbelievably, we had over 2,100 participate! Your feedback is absolute gold to us.
Here’s what you told us:
1. Overwhelmingly, you like the idea of us crowdfunding for an expansion pack that would then be offered as a free update to the existing game. Nearly 80% of you would support this with 90% of those happy for the pack to be free. The main limitation in supporting a campaign was personal financial situations, which is completely understandable.
2. The main content that appealed to everyone was a new swamp region and dinos. This echoes the feedback you’ve given us over the past year.
3. The quality of life improvements you requested had several clear categories:
- Cosmetic improvements such as player customisation and saddle decorations.
- Ranch improvements such as poop management, ranch size, decor crops, and customisable fence boundaries.
- Dino improvements including spawn timings, more dino interactions, UR indicators, dino storage and journal tracking.
- A wide range of wishlist items such as fishing, fast travel and photo mode.
It was so lovely to get such an expansive amount of ideas and even better for these to echo our team’s top priorities for Paleo Pines.
So where do we go from here? Since you last heard from us, we have been trying very hard to find a new home for Paleo Pines 2 that would allow us to have some longer term financial security to bring our team back together. Unfortunately, the current game investment environment is continuing to make this impossible and we now feel as though it is unlikely that this will move forward using the traditional publisher/developer model.
Your input into this survey has shown us that the future for Paleo Pines truly does lie with the players. We’ve always had an extremely close relationship with our community and it does feel right to us to move forward hand in hand with you in this way. So our hope is that we will be able to bring a pleasing crowdfunding option to you in mid-spring that will allow us to begin to work on an expansion pack and, depending on your enthusiasm, a host of QOL features and beyond. Before the holidays, we will be gathering more feedback from you on what specifically you would like to see as the stretch goals and the reward tiers - if we’re going to do this, we are going to need to look at this as a project we’re doing TOGETHER.
It also means that to make this happen, we all need to continue to be patient. We have a patch coming out next week with the long-awaited unsaddling update and a few other fixes that we were able to implement before we needed to put our team on hiatus. We are actively gathering and continuing to report any bugs that are found during this hiatus for the team to include in their work when we are able to regroup. We appreciate your kindness and patience whilst we are in this interim period.
Approaching the holiday period, we greatly appreciate any support you can give our plushie and merch sales. The income from this will be going directly towards paying team salaries and overhead, ensuring that our tiny team can continue to work to pull together what will be needed for the crowdfunding campaign that will allow us to bring back the others!
Collaborations with Makeship are particularly incredible because these require no upfront costs from ourselves. Without your support, we would not be in a position to do the crowdfunding campaign at all, so thank you for this!
Our upcoming plushie is a community favourite that we specifically chose for you so we hope you like Scramble! Also, we will be reaching out soon with exclusive community offers as our way of saying thank you.
As always, please continue to reach out to us with your thoughts and know that we are listening closely. Be on the lookout next week for further updates and requests for input.
Thank you for being amazing.
Lots of love,
The Paleo Pines Team
Paleo Pines is 50% Off Until 4th November!
Have you been waiting for a Steam sale before buying the full game? Now's the time; we're 50% off until the 4th of November, and if you want the DLC too our Paleo Pines: Halloween Bundle is 47% off!
Already have Paleo Pines? Thank you! You can help us out by spreading the word, and maybe picking up our DLCs for 10% off full price as well!
Happy Halloween! 👻
✨ Albino Styracosaurus Plushie Campaign Ends Tomorrow 👻
We want to start off with another huge thank-you to everyone who's supported our Albino Styracosaurus campaign on Makeship, especially following our announcement about the financial situation of Italic Pig and Paleo Pines.
For any of you who were meaning to order your very own little Boo and haven't got around to it yet, her campaign ends tomorrow, Tuesday 29th October at 9AM GMT, and every order comes with an entry to win a fantastic Paleo Pines Prize Pack from Makeship!
The prize pack includes one each of our original Lucky plushie, Carrot Anky, and Bi Pride Sarcosuchus plushies as well as a game key for whatever platform the winner wants!
P.S. We've heard whispers that some Lucky 2.0 Plushies have started making their way to peoples' homes, so if you ordered one we'd love to see any cute pics you take across our socials 🤗
P.P.S (the second P stands for Plushie)- We made a little mistake over the weekend; we forgot about daylight savings time! The time listed above (9AM GMT on the 29th of October) is the accurate time the campaign ends!
Makeship x Paleo Pines 👻 Bought Boo? You Could Win Our Other Plushies! 🏆
✨ You can place your order here!
*Each order grants you an additional entry 🥳
Already purchased an Albino Styra? You’re already entered to win this exclusive prize! 🙌
Contest closes at the end of the campaign! (Tuesday 28th of October, 10AM BST!) and the winner will be contacted via the email they used to purchase.
Winner will be selected on 10/30
Extra note: The Paleo Pines Team would like to shout out to the Makeship Team for doing this giveaway. This is their effort to help us after reading our statement about our current challenges and we were just blown away that they wanted to help! We would love if everyone could help share our social posts about this giveaway in the next few days if you are able to, even if you don't want a plushie! Thank you so much! 💚🦖
We're looking for feedback about a potential Paleo Pines expansion!
We're still working away behind the scenes following up on all the leads we've got over the past couple of weeks after our announcement about our financial situation, and part of that could involve you!
Lots of you suggested crowdfunding in some shape or form, so we're gathering some feedback through the survey below about a potential expansion pack for Paleo Pines funded in that way, and we'd love to have your input! 🦖💚
If you have a few minutes, please do fill out this survey .
Thanks, and lots of love,
The Paleo Pines Team
Ask Aimee Anything - Answers Thread from October 10th AMA
I’ve gathered up the questions and answers Aimee was able to answer last week following our Paleo Pines Needs Your Help announcement. These questions were primarily answered live on Discord so I’ve tweaked some of them slightly to make more sense read after the fact!
Aimee: Hello… THANK YOU so much for all of your support yesterday after we made our announcement. The outpouring of lovely messages just blew us away and had the entire team feeling equal parts proud and weepy. For those who don’t know me, I’m Aimee and I’m the Marketing Director of Paleo Pines 👋 I’m here tonight to give everyone a chance to ask any questions we may not have had the chance to answer yesterday.
I’m going to start by answering a few of the most common questions from yesterday so that we are all on the same page then I’m happy to take more starting at 8pm. 🥰
Shouldn’t you continue to add to the core game instead of focusing on a sequel?
Our main commitment for this first year since launch has been on supporting the core game. We’ve done this with patches, several free updates, a new dino and now our DLCs. At the moment, we have to overcome the financial challenges that are standing in our way of delivering further updates and any plans for a sequel. We are exploring Patreon and crowdfunding as a potential way to offer a more significant expansion to the core game, but it is very unlikely that we can get external funding for this. As for how we pack more regions or dinos into the space we have on the Switch, this will be down to the ingenuity of our team to see just what this expansion offering may look like. We will bring all options back to the community to get your input before even attempting to crowdfund. At the same time, we will continue to look for larger investment for a sequel that will allow us to continue to support Paleo Pines and have a new game for players to enjoy a couple of years from now.
The mechanics and features that we want to introduce in a sequel really do require us rebuilding from the ground up - the core game would be a multiplayer open world experience and that alone means our level design needs to be redesigned. In addition to these fundamental requirements, our suggestion box is chock full of ideas that everyone wants to see implemented in Paleo Pines and many of these are ambitious enough to warrant a new game. I think we can all see the potential for how much the entire world of Paleo Pines can grow.
Are you abandoning Paleo Pines in order to make a sequel?
Not at all! At the moment, we do not have the financial capabilities to neither maintain Paleo Pines nor begin production on a sequel, which is why we have started reaching out to our community for assistance. We will be looking for financial solutions for every possible avenue to expand the world of Paleo Pines - whether this is technically feasible expansions, DLCs, or a fully funded sequel that will also allow us to continue to support Paleo Pines.
Why didn’t you include all the ideas in Paleo Pines?
Game development is an ever-moving and evolving thing. The more we make, the more we know and the more we want. So during the production for Paleo Pines (a game that was planned out in excruciating detail) we began to develop a wish list of things that we knew we couldn't include but that we would want in the future. This applies to game mechanics as well as some of the dinos and regions originally concepted that didn’t fit into the final game design. Just like our players have so generously filled our suggestion box with requests, as devs we also had wishes. It wasn't a case of not being able to make the game we wanted - we made the game. And in making that game, we wanted more. The design of the current game just doesn’t allow for some of the key features we are planning to be bolted on, I’m particularly thinking of multiplayer and open world. There’s only so much we can add onto the current game from a technical standpoint.
Have you considered Crowdfunding?
A Kickstarter was part of our funding plan all along. Ultimately, the plan was to do a part-investment part-kickstarter funding for the next iteration of Paleo Pines. However, without the part-investment portion, it is too risky for us to attempt to fund the entire game through crowdfunding due to the high number of supporters we would need. That said, our team is eager to take one of the more manageable options for extending the world of Paleo Pines and bringing this to Kickstarter in the spring if we can’t find a larger investment sooner.
Have you considered a Patreon account?
We initially felt that a patreon account would not bring in enough funding for us to continue to support Paleo Pines, BUT after having so many people express their interest in contributing to the game’s future in this way, we are definitely exploring this possibility for DLC and expansion packs that might fit into the current framework of the game. We need to explore this further and we will bring ideas back to the community.
– Live AAA Begins Below –
Hello everyone!
I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the entire team and particularly on behalf of Kevin who has been contacted by many publishers since we've put our announcement out. He's being kept very busy and is actively following up all leads!
i have a question about the sequel game. Will the storyline be the same just changed a bit or will we get a new one where it starts after we bring the parasaurs back.
Our initial plans were that the sequel would begin several years after the first game but on the same island with new regions. HOWEVER, I say initial plans because I feel as though our discussions this week have shifted our thinking so we are going into next week with no expectations of what a sequel will look like until we discuss with our team.
That said, we are happy to have suggestions with the sequel in mind 🥰
Hello! Not sure if it would be directly related to the game storyline or so but would you consider in the near future to have volunteer work to help as well?
We've always shied away from volunteer work because we want to ensure that our team are paid for their talents. We do consider work experience placements so that may be a good option in the future?
We've worked with a lot of graduate students that have then stayed on and become treasured full time team members!
And we currently work with the CINE scheme in Northern Ireland
Once you've secured funding what comes next? Broad question i apologize, but will it go straight into full blown production or?
I like this optimism!! 💪 If we are lucky enough to secure funding it typically takes around 2-3 months to work out the legal details of such things. Then, we will enter pre-production - the time that we solidify all the up-in-the-air questions in our game design doc and figure out all the designs we need to work towards. Basically, setting the rules for the production. Then, it's production time and for a game of Paleo's size, that would be about 2 years.
I wanted to ask you guys a bit more about how things are looking now. I know you are working hard and are quite busy but if you guys find a publisher can we expect a update? like just a simple lucky in a party hat on steam xD as in a news update! I don't expect a celebration update xD just a news update ♡
Oh my goodness - if we secure a publisher I will be racing Yazz and Katy to get here to tell everyone first!
I expect we will know more in the next couple of weeks if the effort everyone has put in has resulted in a solid investment or not.
I heard you wanted to do nesting and baby dinos. Would that be planned for in the future of the sequel? And will we be getting planned dinos that never got added, added into the sequel like Argent and Spino?
And will we have a larger ranch by chance with the sequel? Im really curious to how the open world multiplayer will work
I don't want to go too deep tonight into what the plans for PaPi2 might entail because then I would get in trouble for giving away secrets and we all know I am HORRIBLE at keeping secrets. The team is probably biting their nails right now! What I can say is that Abigail has been hoping for baby dinos for YEARS and we know that everyone has wanted the Spino for YEARS and we do not plan to disappoint.
Everyone has loved their ranch and at the same time wanted more that they can do with it (and more dreamstones). I am confident that we will fulfil ranch-dreams.
If you guys get a publisher and they are on board with it, will you consider doing DLC for the OG game? Or will all the plans be going into 2?
The entire team would love to continue to release DLC or free updates whilst we move towards a sequel. To me, that just makes sense as a way to let all the players find new ways of enjoying the world.
You mentioned wanting to add multiplayer, has it been decided how exactly that'll work? I personally prefer a mostly singleplayer experience but being able to have the option to play with friends would be incredible. Online co-op or local only? I assume not an mmo 😭
Completely understand if this isn't a question you can answer right now
In a nutshell, the plan is currently online co-op with 1-4 players and open world. The key enjoyment of multiplayer is people playing in a shared space and we have put some initial design into mechanics in the game that require more than one person.
Follow-up Question: Require? Oh dear... so if you play solo would you be locked out of things?
I would hope not! If we are clever enough with our game design, there will always be a way of achieving whether you are a single or multiplayer.
If it hasn’t already been addressed, could something like transferring data or at least dinosaurs from the first game be in consideration? Thank you very much for your transparency in all of this!
We've been hearing this a lot and I'm hoping this can be done because I totally understand why you would want to keep the dinos you've bonded with. However, I haven't discussed this with the team so I can't give a definitive answer.
How much do you need for the investment? Is there a set price?
To give you a rough estimate, Paleo Pines would need around 20-24 developers for a 2 year period. I don't like to share full budgets but I will leave the math to you.
Now, I know everything is still up in the air rn but let's pretend that it isn't and that you get properly funded. Would PaPi 1 still receive new colour palettes, decor, trees, DLC events, dinos and whatnot, even after PaPi 2 and alongside with it?
It's our intention to continue to support Paleo Pines if we are funded for PaPi 2
You mentioned purely crowdfunding without a publisher investing wouldn't be feasible, can you elaborate on why?
Crowdfunding needs to be balanced very carefully between your ask, what you offer and the size of the audience that you believe will become supporters. I do not believe that we can fund the full amount that we need for PaPi2 solely through crowdfunding. I love to take risks, but that would be too risky even for me.
🚨🥕 Win A Carrot Anky Plushie! 🥕🚨
Entry Rules Below 👇
👻 All types of visual art is acceptable - digital, paint, clay, etc!
👻 Upload your entry to the Artworks section of the community with "Competition Entry" somewhere in the title.
👻 The winner will be chosen by the Paleo Pines Dev Team.
👻 By entering, you agree for your Boo art to be used on our socials.
👻 We are accepting entries across all our social channels and you can also submit your entry on our Discord in the #BooPaleoPinesArt channel.
👻 The winner will receive a Carrot Anky Plushie!
👻 Entry ends Oct 24 1pm BST. Winner will be announced on October 28th at 11am BST.
Feed Into the Future AMA
We'll be accepting questions here for those of you who aren't on Discord to be passed on until 6PM this evening, and will post a followup thread with questions and answers in Discussions afterwards.
Discord AAA- Ask Aimee Anything 🤔
If you're not a member of our Discord, you can join the server here.
If you'd rather not join the server, you can also post any questions below and I'll pass them on before the event starts and post any responses over in Discussion!
P.S. You are all amazing and we appreciate all the kind words 💚💙💚
Paleo Pines Needs Your Help
For the better part of this year we’ve been working behind the scenes to create a plan for the next iteration of Paleo Pines, filled with stunning new regions, quirky new NPCs, plenty more adorable dinosaurs, plus eggs, babies and - yes - multiplayer. The job after launch seemed simple - listen to our community, provide a roadmap full of updates and DLC to ensure that our players can continue to enjoy the existing world… and double-down on that enjoyment with the plan for bigger, better, shinier Paleo Pines for you to enjoy with friends and family.
We've been searching high and low for a production partner, one that felt your love and passion to help us bring the next Paleo Pines to life. On several occasions in our journey, we were within a few small steps of the finish line, only to have circumstances beyond our control cause the future to fall through.
This isn't happening just to us. It seems the whole indie game scene is facing a sudden drying up of publishing and investment opportunities. Thanks to the unwavering dedication of our small team and the massive love from all of you, we've been able to support the first year of Paleo Pines on a shoestring budget.
We’ve managed to keep the lights on… until now. Unless we can find a partner who is keen to see the Paleo Pines universe grow, we won’t be able to keep our team together for much longer.
So, we’re making our situation public. Here's how you can help:
Do you know a publisher/investor who would be a great partner for Paleo Pines 2? If you're a serious publisher or investor and are interested in seeing a production plan, financial model, game design document and more, please reach out to kevin@italicpig.com.
(By the way, Paleo Pines isn’t the only property we’re working on... Our talented team has a diverse collection of small, medium and large scale projects, for PC, console and mobile. If you’re looking for something fun and a little bit different, get in here.)
Can you help in smaller ways? Every little bit helps! Here are a few ways you can directly support the devs:
- Have you got our DLC yet? We've just released our very first Halloween DLCs – a great way to support us while getting more gameplay for yourself.
- Still playing the demo? Are we on your Wishlist? Please consider buying the full game today, or in the next sale. We promise it'll bring you hours of dino-tastic joy!
- Befriend a Paleo Pines plushie. These adorable creatures aren't just cute, our portion of the sales goes towards development. Our latest, Boo, the albino Styracosaurus, is available now. Our previous plushies helped fund our new Halloween DLCs and free update.
- Order Paleo Pines merchandise. We’ve got dozens of fun items celebrating your favourite dinos available in time for gifting this year.
- Even if you can't offer financial support, you can still be a hero! Share this post with anyone who might be interested in helping. Wishlist us, buy the game, talk about how it makes you feel, and share share share. The power of community is real, and every share brings us closer to making more Paleo Pines!
The team here can't express enough gratitude to the incredible Paleo Pines community. You've been with us through every step of this amazing journey, from the demo launch to the release last September, and through our adorable plushie collaborations with Makeship. You've become more than players and we couldn't have imagined building this world with a kinder, more supportive group.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting us on this roller coaster of a year since launch, and your patience and understanding with our current situation. Hopefully with your help, this won’t be the end of the Paleo Pines adventure.
Lots of love,
The Paleo Pines Team