Genre: Point-and-click, Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Adventure, Indie, Visual NovelSlay the Princess
LudoNarraCon is here! Live streams with the devs, panels, and discounts!
LudoNarraCon is finally upon us, and boy do we have a MOUNTAIN of things for y'all.
First thing's first, Slay the Princess and Scarlet Hollow are each going to be 20% off, starting at 1pm EST on May 9th. So if you've been itching to pick one of them up, now's the time, and you can also pick up both game's bundled together for an extra discount here: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33452/The_Black_Tabby_Games_Collection/ If you already own one of either Scarlet Hollow or Slay the Princess, I'd suggest buying the other through the bundle, since you'll still be able to apply the extra discount there.
At 7pm Eastern on Thursday May 9th, we'll be doing a retrospective Twitch stream where we'll play through the ORIGINAL demo cut of Slay the Princess as well as the first episode of Scarlet Hollow. This'll be broadcast on http://twitch.tv/black_tabby_games/
On Friday May 10th, we've got 2 panels that will be broadcast on the LudoNarraCon Steam page.
At 1pm Eastern, I'll be doing a fireside chat with Meredith Gran where we talk about narrative design.
At 5pm Eastern on the 10th, Abby and I are on a panel moderated by Patrick Klepek (formerly Vice, now Remap Radio) alongside Ben Gelinas (Times * Galaxy, formerly Bioware + Remedy) and Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper.) The topic of this panel is balancing storytelling with player choice.
On Sunday, May 12th, at 1pm Eastern, we'll be doing an art stream, specifically going through some of the process of how Abby makes assets for our games! This one'll be simulcast on both Twitch and our Steam page!
All the best, and can't wait to share more updates with you all!
Tony and Abby
5/8 Smol Update
A couple of small bug/logic fixes.
Switched the (Expand) tag in the late game to (Explore) so players aren't hit by unexplained terminology and are less hesitant to look at additional dialogue options in the relevant scene.
Livestream: The Art of Slay the Princess
We'll be simulcasting on Twitch (twitch.tv/black_tabby_games) and Steam on Sunday, May 12th, starting at 1pm Eastern.
We'll ALSO be doing a stream on Thursday May 9th at 7pm Eastern where we'll be playing the original cut of the first Slay the Princess demo and sharing our thoughts on the design process, AS WELL AS playing through the first episode of Scarlet Hollow. Because switching between two games on a Steam broadcast is a complicated mess, twitch.tv/black_tabby_games]we'll only be broadcasting *that one* to Twitch!
Hope to see you on one or both streams!
Tony and Abby
5/1 Small UX Patch Notes
Added a toggle for auto-advancing text in the preferences menu.
Clicking to the next line no longer automatically disables auto-advancing text.
At this point, you should now be able to do anything you can do with the quick menu via controller/hotkey inputs, so don't forget you can turn the quick menu off in the preferences.
All the best,
Tony and Abby
4/27 Improved Controller Support Patch Notes
Happy to bring a new small update that fixes some frustrating issues with controller support (but there's still some work to do!)
1. Biggest fix is that controller focus should no longer be lost in scenarios where the quick menu is hidden, the top button in a menu is greyed out, or save file is loaded at a dialogue menu. It seems like the culprit here was allowing draggable mouse scroll on the dialogue menu, which stole focus from the individual choice buttons. This does mean that click-and-drag scrolling was sacrificed, but I don't think many players used that functionality. And you can still use your mouse wheel, arrow keys, or gamepad!
2. When in the preferences and save/load menus, buttons that hard both selected *and* hovered will now properly change color, which should reduce the feeling of the controller getting "stuck."
Right now, we're working on a solution to tie how much the scroll bar increments to the size of the previously hovered dialogue option, so things snap better and so that there are fewer options that require multiple interactions to scroll past. But we wanted to make sure you all got these improvements as soon as they were ready!
Thank you as always for your support, and happy slaying (or not slaying, but really, you should be slaying.)
Best,
Tony and Abby
April 23 Small Fixes
Moment of Clarity sprites not appearing when both flickering and boil effect were turned off.
Fixing a corrupted voice file that slipped through the cracks last winter.
Assorted typo fixes.
Slay the Princess Player Choices Survey!
We hope you've all been enjoying the new update (and if you've only bought the game after the update dropped, we hope you've enjoyed your first playthrough!)
We'd like to get some baseline player data before you al play the Pristine Cut so we can see how the new and expanded chapters change your thoughts. And there's also just some other player data we'd love to see about how you've played!
So we've got three surveys for you:
- A general survey: https://forms.gle/6qTkNoJWnBSB2HdE8
- A new Princess ranking poll, this time separating the Chapter III Princesses out from the Chapter IIs, as well as including options for TSM and the base Princess ^^: https://strawpoll.com/05ZdWooYlg6
- A similar ranking poll, but this time for the voices: https://strawpoll.com/kogjk33o8Z6
We're really excited to see what you share!
(Also, work on the Pristine Cut is continuing to come along splendidly, and we can't wait for you all to see what we've been cooking. It's Very Good (IMO))
All the best,
Tony and Abby
P.S. We know that a lot of you have been itching for translations. Please keep your eyes peeled for a big announcement later this year!
Hotfix April 1st
March 28th Update Patch Notes
Here with a small update fixing an assortment of minor issues and tweaking a few things.
Music
- Adjusted the volume of "Transformation" and "The Apotheosis" to be a tad louder. They should both have a bit more oomph now.
- On the note of "Transformation," adjusted the point where it starts playing such that the opening swell more organically flows into the first animated sequence.
Usability
- Added hotkeys for quick saving (F5 on keyboard and left shoulder on gamepads) and quick loading (F9 on keyboard and "Back"/"Select" on gamepad)
- The "controls" menu should now accurately reflect the gamepad layout.
- Mapped a button to toggle self-voicing on gamepads (L2)
- Added an optional toggle in the preferences to turn off the flashing click-to-continue buttons.
Cheers,
Tony
- Hotfix 1 (March 28th PM) — Fixed the one-time tooltip that you receive after clearing your first loop to reflect a remapping of the skip button on gamepads.
- Hotfix 2 (March 29th AM) — Fixed a small number of display bugs.
Pacing Tweaks
This patch mostly tweaks the intro pacing for a number of Chapter 3 setups that felt a little too repetitive/tedious.
Tweaks were made to:
- Moment of Clarity (the ending is tighter)
- Apotheosis (intro trimmed)
- Eye of the Needle (skeptic intro trimmed)
- Fury (intro trimmed)
- Grey (intro trimmed, mostly on Smitten side)
- Wraith (intro trimmed, mostly on Spectre side)
Just a handful of lines here and there that felt like they didn't really add much in terms of information or humor, but hopefully those chapters are smoother experiences now!
Patch also fixed all remaining instances of the flashing click-to-continue indicator not correctly line-breaking from the text, as well as a couple of other minor bugs.
All corrupted audio files should be fixed as of yesterday's update as well. On to the Pristine Cut!
Cheers,
Tony