Picayune Dreams cover
Picayune Dreams screenshot
Steam
Genre: -

Picayune Dreams

Picayune Dreams is Available NOW!

Picayune Dream is here!!


And it's only $5!!



I think I speak for all of us when I say, we are immensely grateful to all of you! Old followers and new. Striking out in a more avant garde direction in this action roguelike subgenre may turn some players away. But that was a trade off we were willing to make to create something we hoped would truly stand out in the mix!

We certainly didn't expect it to take 1.5 years!! But I couldn't be more proud of the final game :)


While we've launched into v1.0, we are entirely open to continued support of this game! Beyond bug fixing and listening to feedback - if the game sells well, we'd love to expand Picayune Dreams in a variety of ways!

Until then, we hope you love picking apart the story, maxing out a wild pool of weapons, playing around with unique loadouts, banging your head to milkypossum's breakcore OST, challenging your friends in Daily Runs, earning all 99 Achievements (some of them are BRUTALLY hard), and discovering all the game's secrets <3

Game + OST


Enjoying the soundtrack? Please consider supporting the game further by purchasing the Game + OST Bundle. The bundle is set up so you can "complete" it at a later date, if you want to only buy the game to start.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/37061/

Coming Soon


Want to support more niche indie titles? Schism is a challenging roguelite action RPG with guns, gods, leveling, and frequency-switching action. The combination of deep leveling and stat systems, full gun customization, deity worship, intense bullet hell combat, and difficult bosses make for a unique and highly replayable experience.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2084300/Schism/

It has a VERY extensive Demo, and is coming to Early Access in December 11th!
Be sure to add it to your Wishlists. Thank you for all the support!

-Graeme (2 Left Thumbs)

Picayune Dreams 🔴 Launches December 4th

RELEASE


Picayune Dreams will officially be releasing on December 4th, 2023!

We are following the lead of other titles in this sub-genre, charging only $4.99 USD for the game, with a special launch discount!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088840/Picayune_Dreams/

However, we are launching straight into v1.0 rather than doing Early Access. While that's worked wonders for other Vampire Survivor-likes, our game has a distinct difference that motivated that release plan: Picayune Dreams has a proper story that will play out across your runs.

Launching at v1.0 is our way of communicating that there is a complete experience waiting to be played, We hope you'll continue to mess around with game-breaking runs after completing the story. And we reserve the right to continue expanding the game post-release! But it didn't feel right to call the game "Early Access" with that story in place.

THE MAKING OF


This is the game's publisher, Graeme! I wanted to speak about the inception of Picayune Dreams, as it differs from any other 2 Left Thumbs Published title! It remains the only title in that catalog that I was involved with from the ground floor, reaching out to a developer I admire, and offering up funding to start a new game from scratch.

I first spoke with Stepford back in April 2022. The conversation started out simply enough:

Vampire Survivors is really popular now.
I'd like to see what a Stepford-spin on that style of game might be.
You down?

(I'm paraphrasing. But that's the gist of it!)

Stepford immediately suggested bringing Andyland and Milkypossum on board, who had previously worked on Olive's Art-Venture together (and later Underlevel). Shortly after, this mockup was the first thing I was ever shown.



The elevator pitch was, "Yume Nikki Touhou Vampire Slayers (with bullet hell bosses and roguelike items)". After laughing over Andy accidentally drawing Space-Hitler, the idea was fleshed out, and proper development kicked off in July 2022!



The game has evolved in wild and weird ways over the last 1.5 years! Frankly, none of us expected to work on this game longer than ~6 months. And there was a lot of fear that the Bullet Heaven / Horde Survival roguelike sub-genre crazy would fade out if we waited too long.

On some level, that may still be true? But time and time again, it's been shown that there is always room for someone doing something new and different. And that gives us a lot of hope about Picayune Dreams' potential, because it's combat, style, music, progression, and storytelling all feel distinctly different from what others have done!



MORE ACTION ROGUELIKES?


Want to support more niche indie titles? Schism is a challenging roguelite action RPG with guns, gods, leveling, and frequency-switching action. The combination of deep leveling and stat systems, full gun customization, deity worship, intense bullet hell combat, and difficult bosses make for a unique and highly replayable experience.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2084300/Schism/

It has a VERY extensive Demo, and is coming to Early Access in December 2023!
Be sure to add it to your Wishlists. Thank you for all the support!

-Graeme (2 Left Thumbs

New action roguelite RPG from Picayune Dream's Publisher!
Schism is a challenging roguelite action RPG with guns, gods, leveling, and frequency-switching action. The combination of deep leveling and stat systems, full gun customization, deity worship, intense bullet hell combat, and difficult bosses make for a unique and highly replayable experience.


Schism had similar inspirations as Picayune Dreams, following the RNG chaos and twitch action roguelike gameplay of The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne. Then adding in the complexity and depth of traditional roguelikes, and the bullet hell switching of Ikaruga.

Be sure to check out the FREE Demo NOW! Your feedback at this time is invaluable! You can also join the Official Discord to have your thoughts heard.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2084300/Schism/

And of course, be sure to add it to your Wishlist so you don't miss any updates or the upcoming release in Q4 2023. We are planning to launch in Early Access, starting at $8.99 and scaling up from there.

v0.3.0.5
Here are the latest demo updates. You can follow along more closely on the official Picayune Dreams Discord. Please keep in mind that this is just a demo and there is no "real" late game currently. Looping through bosses is just for fun, and while we want that experience to be semi-balanced and enjoyable in it's own way, it is not reflective of the finished game's intended gameplay loop.

v0.3.0.4 - February 1st, 2023


- The amount of Peril earned per Mortality level now increases by Mortality itself, so it will start out buffing enemy HP at the same rate but slowly increase more and more.
- While Peril is active, the XP dropped is now divided by the Peril percentage.
- Removed several C4 explosion frames.
- Stopped infinitely repeating off-screen C4 explosions.
- Optimized when killing huge groups enemies with blackholes.
- Optimized several weapon hitboxes.
- Slightly increased gamepad axis deadzones to stop random 'drift'.
- HP is now drawn on the GUI layer, so it will be above everything.
- Telecom was missing a closing curly brace in its description, so I added it back.
- Warpers now teleport 128 pixels away from your current position, rather than directly at your X/Y. The direction is randomized, however.
- Warper movement speed nerfed: 0.75 > 0.5.
- Warper charge cooldown nerfed: 5 > 6 seconds
- Sawblade Damage buff: 40 > 50
- Dagger Glove Damage nerf: 50 > 40
- Dagger Glove "directional degrees" nerf: 10 per whip > 15 per whip
- Scale Module Driller nerf: 25% weapon size > 20% weapon size
- Cooldown Module Driller change: (debuff: -5% move spd) > (debuff: -10% weapon size)
- Cooldown Module Driller nerf: 15% CD > 10% CD
- Movement Module Driller change: (debuff: -15 hp) > (debuff: -25% pickup radius)
- Movement Module Driller nerf: 15% move spd > 10% move spd
- Absorb Module Driller change: (debuff: -10% weapon size) > (debuff: -5% move spd)
- Absorb Module Driller buff: 30% pickup radius > 40% pickup radius

v0.3.0.5 - February 5th, 2023


- Peril HP scaling no longer applies to bosses, because it made fights go for too long.
- Dagger Glove's internal cooldown wasn't dependant on gamespeed, but now is.
- Micro Blackhole (skill) projectile movement speed wasn't dependant on gamespeed, but now is.
- Enemy spawning will now check if gamespeed is >= 0.01 to avoid enemies popping in while the game is paused.
- Blackhole now scales with Weapon Size.

v0.3.0.3
Stepford has been working so hard on the demo, that I've completely fallen behind reporting these updates. They are all being shared over on the Picayune Dreams Discord, but I want to have it documented here as well.

v0.3.0.2 - January 28th, 2023


- Power system has been changed into the new Peril system.
- Power used to lower your damage down to 25%, however it had little effect on fast hitting weaponry, could hit a cap and was too slow scaling. The Peril system works entirely opposite, where enemies get MORE health (about 5% every mortality level) after 25 mortality. This means all of the weapons keep their balance relevance as well as rewarding the player with more XP for playing that far.
- Fixed an issue where the weapons in the end screen would be printed twice.
- Halo is now drawn on one of the lowest layers. Please tell me if this creates visual bugs anywhere!
- Slime Spike Damage Nerf: 25 > 20
- Slime Spike Cleansehit Nerf: 30 > 45
- Slime Spike Knockback Nerf: 2 > 1.5
- Missile Onhit Damage Nerf: 15 > 10
- Chainbelt Size Scale Nerf: (0.025 x version) > (0.01 x version)
- Eye2 Cleansehit Buff: 8 > 5
- Crown Pickup Radius Buff: 10% > 15%

v0.3.0.3 - January 30th, 2023


- Made Peril's enemy health boost even faster, around 15% HP per Mortality.
- While in Peril, all multilevel generic enemies (skulls, souls, fish, gloves) will spawn at tier 3 every time.
- Enemies that are not selected during the first 6 destinations are added to a big pool that the game will present you to choose from while Peril is active, so enemies that you didn't initialize choose will join the enemy army eventually while doing mega long looping runs.
- Tiptoe-ing while you have a shield recharging will also show your shield CD.
- Tiptoe-ing will also put a yellow glimmer underneath your cursor to make it easier to find.
- Warper Enemy HP buffed: 150 > 250
- Warper fade out speed increased, but fading in is the same.
- Exploder Enemy HP Buffed: 150 > 250
- Spider Enemy HP Buffed: 125 > 150
- Wisp HP Buffed 75 > 150
- Wisp enemies that spawn on their own (through the modifier) have their HP halved.
- Wisp chains follow each other from 6 pixels further apart.
- Exploding Enemy modifier now shoots out 4 bullets instead of 6.
- The lowest any of the passive skills can go is now 20% and the highest is 10,000%.

Picayune Dreams Art Contest (on Newgrounds)

DEMO DEBUT


Thank you for all the support, it was an outstanding first week! We're all a bunch of Newgrounds geeks, so our sweep of the Weekly awards feels really special!



ART CONTEST


To celebrate the launch of this demo, and to pay it back to the Newgrounds community, we are hosting a Picayune Dreams Art Contest! There are $400+ worth of prizes to be won.

Full contest details, rules, and submission requirements can be found in this thread. Yes, contest participation requires a Newgrounds account. But if you're an artist, it's our firm belief that you should be building a Newgrounds portfolio anyways! I promise you'll meet some amazing people there :)



HOTFIXES


Plus Stepford has been hard at work squashing bugs and balancing the demo. All of your feedback has been outstanding! Posts made in the Discord, Subreddit, and Wiki have all contributed to refining and improving the game, bit-by-bit. Thank you for that!

CHANGES


- Eye2 Description Fixed
- Fixed a spelling mistake on the Death Screen.
- Added Mortality to Death Screen.
- Adjusted XP portion of Death Screen.
- Unique Pickups (grenades, magnets, usb, etc) now have 10 frames where they can't be picked up to properly initialize and also make it more visually clear when you acquire something point-blank range.
- When enemy bullets expire, they fade faster.
- Explosive Enemy Modifier explosions are now red instead of orange, to signify they are 'your' damage. The damaging "enemy" bullets remain orange however.
- Moved Firework Explosion Weapon onto the layer beneath players and enemies.
- Enemy bullets have had several optimization changes.

BALANCING


- Eye2 Damage Nerf: (1 + version) > (version)
- Demon Horns chomp hitbox increased by 'a LOT'.
- Demon Horns damage buff: 200 > 350
- C4 Damage Nerf: (5 + (5 x version)) > (5 x version)
- Halo Shield nerf: upon blocking an attack, it will now instead do 1 damage to you instead of 0; reducing the damage by 90% instead of blocking it ENTIRELY.
- Unique pickups currently delete after 60 seconds of being untouched, but now they also require the player to be over 2000 pixels away as well.



POWER


Added a new difficulty adjusting system called 'POWER'. It will only show on the HUD after 30 Mortality (6 bosses), where each mortality level after that reduces your "power" by 1%. It starts at 100% and can go down to a minimum of 25%, reducing your overall damage in the process.

This won't effect anything for the majority of players but for those of you going for 'mega runs' hopefully this will fix the issue of you being too strong for your own good, having to manually close the game because it's become an endurance test - because that never feels good! This is more experimental so if you hate it, tell me.

You might need to restart Steam and validate Picayune files to force the update to download ASAP.

THANKS AGAIN!!
-Graeme

Picayune Dreams - Demo OUT NOW!!

PUBLIC DEMO


Our new surrealist action roguelike has it's first public demo! This game is made by some of the top talent on Newgrounds. You can also play a web build over there to celebrate Pixel Day! And consider entering the Picayune Dreams ART CONTEST to win cash prizes!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088840/Picayune_Dreams/

Picayune Dreams Presskit



INFLUENCES:

  • Bullet heaven gameplay (Vampire Survivors)
  • Bullet hell bosses (Touhou)
  • Gear + power scaling (Diablo)
  • Surrealist interdimensional aesthetics (Yume Nikki)
  • Hard-hitting breakcore soundtrack (Milkypossum is incomparable. This is ALL her!)
  • secrets...


Please give the Demo a try. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Be sure to add it to your Steam Wishlist if you enjoyed it!

Join the Official Discord
Or hang out in our Subreddit

First Boss Reveal (2500 Wishlists)

2500 WISHLISTS


As a HUGE thank you, Milkypossum has shared a video preview of the first boss, as well as the incredible original track she composed for that fight. Milkpossum is composing the entire OST for Picayune Dreams, so be sure to give her a follow!




WISHLIST TRACKER?


We couldn't be happier with the response our teases have had so far!
Moving forward, we will be doing away with the "Wishlist Tracker" shared in prior posts. That made a lot more sense when Wishlists were only trickling in...



All at once, we blew through 3 milestones!! It was a cute idea, but we won't be adhering to that original plan anymore, and will instead share teasers and previews whenever feels most appropriate.

FIRST LOOK during MIGW

MIGW


Melborne International Games Week is LIVE NOW, celebrating developers based out of Australia, and the games they make!

Tune into this specific event later today to see a first look at Picayune Dreams in action!



Prior to this, we've only shared screenshots, teases, and a few short clips. Here you'll get to see our lead programmer (Stepford) play through a small slice of the game, and describe the planned gameplay loop. Trust me, we'll still only be scratching the surface!

That's all for now. We're bursting at the seams to share more about this game! Being able to do so as a part of MIGW is a huge honor. Thank you all for your support and encouragement!
-Graeme

Our first Teaser dropped

Picayune Dreams - Teaser




Andyland put together this amazing teaser! The idea was to communicate the aesthetic and atmosphere of the game first, and sprinkle in some gameplay at the end. I'm obssessed with it!

We can also thank milkpossum for the oustanding music and sound effects that bring it all to life. I cannot explain how HARD this soundtrack goes!

And of course, it'd all be nothing without Stepford's programming. You really haven't seen anything yet ;)
This really is the dream team!!



The original idea of the Wishlist tracker was to slowly fill out the Steam page at each milestone. Turns out it's incredibly difficult to get people to care about a game when you haven't told them anything, or shown them anything... Who'd have thought, eh?

We decided to simply start adding things like screenshots and this teaser on a timer, spacing out the reveals slowly, but not too slowly. I will keep the tracker going though, and the milestones will instead lead to specific reveals. Spoiling a music track, showing off some cool enemy designs, or other such teases of what's to come!

In honor of the Teaser dropping, AND us hitting 1000 wishlists, I've filled in much of the rest of the Steam page. Now people might actually have a vague sense of what it is they're wishlisting!

Thank you for ALL the support so far. Those feel like wild numbers, considering how little we've really shown. Cheers!

-Graeme
(2 Left Thumbs)
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