Get ready to gather your friends and family, as Friendship Games Week is back for 2023, and it's better than ever! The event is a celebration of couch co-op, local multiplayer, and split-screen gaming, all in the name of friendship, love, and family bonds.
So grab the comfiest spot on the sofa, because it's time to play video games together! Take your time browsing through the gallery of fantastic games, and discover something new and exciting in the world of indie gaming.
The legends over at Frongsong Studios have handpicked and curated a delightful selection of over 300 indie titles that can be enjoyed by two or more players on the same machine. From bestsellers to hidden gems, from demos to upcoming releases, there's something for everyone in this collection, and we're excited to say that Republic of Jungle is joining the party this year!
Keep an eye on our store page as we will be streaming our Community Game Night, all week, as part of the event. Join us in the chat and have some fun as, no doubt, shenanigans will be afoot, knowing our Jungle Nation.ːsteamhappyː
You can join in on the fun by visiting the page below when it goes live next week! The event runs from February 13-19, 2023, so don't miss out on this opportunity to experience the best in local multiplayer gaming.
As always, thank you for your support. It really does mean a great deal to us all.
See you soon.
Team Gerdoo x
A Look at 2022
Happy Holiday Season Jungle Nation
From expanding the team to launching the closed beta, we've had a super busy year and we couldn't be more proud of how far the game has come this year alone.
With 2022 drawing to a close we thought we'd take a moment to reflect upon the past year of development, highlighting some of the key moments, and taking a look at what it took to get to where we are today.
So without further ado, this was 2022...
The Team Grew
At the start of the year, we expanded Team Gerdoo, adding Jarvis as our Marketing and Community Director. She brought with her experience of managing the communities of several indie games, as well as of a huge YouTube channel in the UK, PlayStation Access. For a community-based game like ours, this was an important role to fill and according to you guys, we definitely made the right choice in bringing Jarvs on board.
She has been a key member of the team this year and we're glad you seem to love her as much as we do.
The Big Update
For most of the year, the team was hard at work updating the game prior to the launch of our closed beta. We wanted to overhaul pretty much everything bar the core gameplay loop itself, which was no small undertaking, to say the least.
A great deal of coding needed to be rewritten, and whilst we won't bore you with the details, trust us it was a long but fun process.
Our artist Naeim did an incredible job redesigning the characters, developing a completely new art style for the game in the process.
The feedback from the community on the new art style has been wonderful, and we cannot wait to show you all what he's been working on in recent months as well.
At the same time as the characters were being given new life, our UI/UX Designer Erfan was busy overhauling the UI to change the way the game feels to play, making it more accessible for players and easier to follow from a viewer's standpoint.
The little flourishes he added, such as the candid scandal photos in the secret files or the species info of each character, continue to be fan favourites and we are so grateful for his incredible work this year. We honestly can't believe just how different the game looks now from the start of 2022.
We also knew that, with the big update underway, we needed new marketing materials to reflect the changes to the game's look.
Work began on several iterations of possible new logos and whilst it took us a while to settle on the final designs, we absolutely fell in love with the new key art Naeim produced. It gave us confidence going into our first big in-person event of the year, that the look of the game was strong enough to attract new players who previously knew nothing about it.
EGX London
With Jarvs being based in Europe we were able to attend EGX London this year, without the need for trans-Atlantic travel, making it the first time RoJ would be shown at a big in-person event outside of the US.
A lot of preparation went into our presence at the show as we knew this would be our biggest opportunity to get more people to sign-up to play the closed beta.
We hired an intern, Jerreau, just for EGX, who helped Jarvs and her partner to run our booth on the show floor.
We had everything from merch to giveaway, to a TikTok treasure hunt, to beta sign-up forms and the game on display for people to see, at the booth and we were inundated with people wanting to know more.
We had some great conversations with eventgoers and even managed to make some new friends, whilst telling people about the game.
But the booth wasn't our only focus for the event as Jarvs also managed to wrangle two stage appearances across the weekend.
The first being a talk on careers in the games industry, titled Finding What You CAN Do , on the Barclay's Rezzed stage, on the Saturday. It was well attended and we are honoured that she spoke about how much working on RoJ has meant to her as a disabled dev. We always try to be inclusive in all that we do here at Gerdoo Games, so to hear a member of the team speak about what that has meant to them really made us smile.
The second stage appearance was to show off the new beta, in all its upgraded glory, to the audience of the EGX Main Stage.
Jarv was joined on stage by Twitch Partners Captain Badgertail and Nikoheart, as well as Psy White, Scott Tailford and Jules Gill from YouTube's WhatCutlure Gaming, for a few rounds of RoJ. Chaos ensued, as we're sure you can imagine, and the audience laughed all throughout the show.
Almost every single person watching that day signed-up for the closed beta and we were blown away by the love and support given to the game across the entire event.
Launching the Closed Beta
That brings us to the launch of the closed beta this November. The culmination of all the team's hard work since the start of 2022.
Everyone who signed up during EGX or had previously backed our Kickstarter campaign received an email inviting them to take part in the new phase of beta testing, and we sat back, nervously awaiting their first impressions.
The feedback soon came rolling in and we were delighted to hear that you loved the new look of RoJ as much as we did. You let us know what you liked, where the bugs were and gave important opinions of the subtle changes to the gameplay.
Each week Jarvs ran an RoJ game night in our Discord server, which quickly became a regular hangout for our core community. There she was able to get valuable feedback on the beta, which she then relayed to the rest of the team, in order for us to iterate on and improve your experience when playing the game.
We encourage more of you to join the game nights too, because not a single one has ended without at least one person crying with laughter, and we challenge you to name a better way to end your week than laughing with friends over a good game. Plus, the more feedback we get whilst in beta, the better the final product will be.
One of the things that we mentioned earlier which was continually commented on during the early beta game nights, was the inclusion of the characters' species in the UI. Out of this, the community suggested it would be nice for us to do a fundraiser for an animal preservation charity, if possible, and we took this to heart.
So, we got in touch with The Humane Society of America. They loved the fact that our game has no violence towards animals and we loved the work they do on their Black Beauty Ranch in Texas, rescuing animals of all kinds, from tigers to kangaroos, to the tiniest of kittens. So, together we planned a stream as part of their December Dash in order to help raise money for the ranch to continue to support the animals in their care.
We smashed our original goal of $100 making three times that in the end, and had the best time working with them. We look forward to working together on future fundraisers in 2023.
Thank You
A huge thank you to every single person who has shown an interest in RoJ this year. Your support inspires us to do what we do, and we can't wait to share more with you in the new year.
Don't forget that it's not too late to get access to the beta for yourself. All you need to do is head to the Republic of Jungle website and sign-up to get a place on the waitlist and we will email you as soon as more slots become available.
We hope you have a wonderful holiday season whatever you get up to. See you all in the new year, when we'll have even more updates to share with you. But for now...
...Thank you Jungle Nation and here's to a great 2023!
Team Gerdoo Games.
Republic of Jungle is now in Closed Beta
We're thrilled to announce the launch of the closed beta of Republic of Jungle. After months of work, we now have a completely revamped version of the game ready for you to try.
If you are a Kickstarter Backer or have already pre-registered for our closed beta, you should find another email in your inbox with the instructions to access the game.
If you have not signed up, you can head to https://republicofjungle.com to join the waitlist. We will be rolling out access to more players in the coming weeks.
We can't wait for you to try the game with your friends and family. Please feel free to provide your feedback and report bugs via our Bug Report & Feedback form. We still have a lot more planned for the full release, and as always, we rely on your help to make the game better.
We also run multiple game nights every week on our Discord server, and we'd love it if you joined us.
Thank you for your ongoing support
Team Gerdoo Games
Closed Beta Roll Out
For this month's #DevLog we are focusing on our experience at EGX London, as well as the rollout of our closed beta.
We hope you enjoy getting an insight into our development cycle and we can't wait to hear what you think of what we have been working on.
Thanks for your ongoing support, it really does mean the world to us.
See you soon.
Team Gerdoo Games
Closed Beta Game Nights
Join Us in Playing the Closed Beta of Republic of Jungle
We are about to roll out our closed beta, to those who signed up over the past month, and we couldn't be more excited to hear your thoughts on the game.
Those of you who didn't sign up will still be able to try the Republic of Jungle closed beta by coming along to one of our Discord game nights.
For the duration of the beta, we will be hosting a minimum of four game nights a week. With a mix of European and American-friendly start times, we hope to accommodate as many of you as possible.
All you need to do to come along is join our Discord server (link below) and head to the Community Games voice channel for the start of a session.
That being said we usually run the events for a minimum of two hours and during that time we roughly get through four or five games. So if you can't make it to the start of a session, please do feel free to hop into the channel whenever you see a group of us playing in there.
The beta is browser-based so all you need to play is a phone/tablet/pc and an open browser. We will give you the link to play once we start.
Bonus Games
In addition to the regularly scheduled game nights above, our Mod Squad will be running extra games throughout the week, so keep an eye on the Events tab, above the channel list, to stay up to date with what's going on.
Join Our Discord
All that's left to do is for you to join our server. When you get there why not go to the #introduce-yourself channel and have a go at our intro quiz?
Looking forward to seeing you over there.
Team Gerdoo Games x
Republic of Jungle at PAX Rising Online
We're excited to announce that this weekend we are taking part in PAX Rising Online.
Republic of Jungle & our Marketing and Community Director, Sadie, will be part of the fun.
So, head to the link below to see the full schedule & find out how you can watch events.
Thanks for your ongoing support. It really does mean a lot to us.
Hope to see you for this week's game night.
See you soon.
Team Gerdoo.
Dev Log #4 - Thinking Outside the Fox
Hello everyone, and welcome to our 4th Dev Log! Today we’re gonna talk some more about the UI rework, show off the Fiona Fox rework, touch base on some game mechanics, and more upcoming community events! Now, let’s dive into it, shall we?
UI/UX:
Erfan, our UX designer has finalized the new character card designs, and we have started adding them to the game engine.
He also started working on the new design for “operation folders''. More info on the folders will be shown in the near future, but what we will say is that they are not only going to indicate the number of players needed in the task force, but a lot more! Here’s a first look:
There are a lot of changes we want to make to the trial phase, the end summary, and the initial loadout, so more to come on that.
Art:
Naeem, our game artist, was primarily busy with the character redesign for Fiona Fox, who is President Puma’s antagonist and one of the 2 main characters of the game. We believe she’s coming along nicely:
He’s also been busy creating the new loadout screen (the starting screen where everyone joins the game), showing off some Bite House staff striking poses!
Game Design:
One of the discussions that came up a lot this past month was how we could have different achievements and recognition badges for players. Our brainstorming sessions had some excellent results, and we now have a better idea about what we can do in this area.
With that said, there’s a lot of different challenges and scenarios that we want to add to the game to add some replayability value for the veterans.
Tech:
We are making great progress on the tech side. The code for the new server and the new backend API is coming along nicely, and we have already connected this new backend infrastructure to Unity.
Last but not least, a big point of focus has been the code’s testability, and we are aiming to make this new infrastructure much more testable than what we had before. This means that you as players will see much less game-breaking bugs and issues in the future, making the game experience smoother for everyone!
Community:
We are glad to announce that our last community Game Night was yet again a blast, hosted by our dear Melfice! You can check out the vod here. More events are coming, so if you missed the opportunity to test the game before, make sure to check our socials and to join our Discord so you can join us on the next Game Night!
That is all for this month, friends! Thanks for reading our Dev Log, and stay tuned for more!
See you next month,
Gerdoo Games
The New Community Game Night is Here!
Calling all Jungle Citizens! We want to invite you all to the Bite House for our third community game night, on Tuesday, February 8th, at 7PM PST!
We wanted to make our first game night of 2022 extra special, so we invited a special friend to host the game!
Our awesome host for this night is going to be Melfice! The Game Night will happen on our Discord and on his twitch channel!
Get ready for a night of laughs, banter, and deception!
Join us on Discord before the event! See you there. :)
