Snow Scout
The Scouts Are Back On Duty!
After a somewhat lenghty wait, the scouts are finally back on duty! As some of you probably know, the financial situation in the PC-VR sector is a bit difficult at the moment. In respect to Snow Scout, it's even harder, as I simply made my VR "dream game" without minding too much what most people actually want to play. To me as the game designer, VR means as much immersion as possible, so I pretty much play everything in a standing position. On top of that, I really love movment-intense VR games, which are a great way to burn calories while playing. Turns out though, most players prefer playing VR sitting down and being relaxed instead of active. So I probably should have known that Snow Scout would not sell too well - but it turned out not to sell at all, more or less.
So after we worked on the game full-time for 9 month with 3 freelancers, I had spent about $135,000 and the income from the game was pretty much zero. Up until now, the Steam payout from the game is pretty much exactly $1,000 in total. You don't have to be a math genius to figure out that continuing work on the game in this vein was impossible. Instead, I had to focus on making money through paid jobs for a couple of months, while the rest of the team left. I was limited to working on Snow Scout on the side, as I definitely want to improve the game itself, but also make it more accessible to all those players (aka pretty much everyone) who do not share my idea of what a great VR game should be like ;)
So finally, Build 109 is here. It's kind of a launch pad for new features which are still under development. When starting a new game, you will now get a somewhat lengthy explanation about calorie-crushing standing vs relaxing seated gameplay and a chance to choose from the different options. However, the alternative control methods to move your skier with button presses instead of body motions has not been implemented yet. What's there though is some help against motion sickness in the form of vignettes and snap turning.
In the same vein, the game now has an actual "AR overlay" that is visible whenever you are outside, wearing your Snow Scout AR goggles. This orange HUD is supposed to help reduce motion sickness, but also, it's a starting point for player-guiding graphic overlays which I'll add in the coming weeks.
So these are the two main directions I'm going to expand the game towards in the future. Of course, on the way there are lots of visual and acoustic improvements as well as added polish, which will hopefully reduce the jankiness the game still has in a number of areas. A good showcase for improvements in this build is the "avalanche cannon" task, which has been completely revamped.
Aside from all that, the game is of course still playable from start to finish. If you come across any issue, please don't hestitate to post it here in the discussion threads for the game, or join or Discord:
https://discord.gg/tr2TtKEyqr
So keep on scoutin',
Kalle from Tunermaxx
Season's Greetings With A Festive Discount
While we still keep working on Snow Scout in the background, we do not have to share anything new for this year's Steam Winter Sale. Honestly speaking, the game has generated very little revenue, so we had to prioritize other projects, like our 2D retro platforming game "Die Känguru-Verschwörung", which is a movie tie-in of the German comedy hit of the same name. It will be released on December 26th, so if you speak German, you could have a look and support us with a purchase if you feel like it. Any money that we make with our games pushes the company forward and will ensure continued development in Snow Scout as well.
If you don't own Snow Scout yet, it's also worth a look, as the game is currently offered at its highest discount so far. With it's skiing gameplay, the game is perfectly suited for the current season. But judging from the sometimes quite harsh negative feedback we have received from some people, let us remind you that Snow Scout is a game that is best played standing and it's supposed to be somewhat physically demanding. It was designed to be a mini-workout that you don't even notice when playing. The cross-country skiing controls may take some getting used to, but once you have them down, you'll notice that they are more about controlled, effective motions that are not as taxing as you may think at first - instead, they are really good for your body. But if you know that this is something you definitely won't enjoy, you probably should not buy the game.
At any case, negative reviews for the game have to be attributed to personal taste or even wrongly calibrated VR play spaces. If you'd like a professional opinion, have a look at the review from ImpulseGamer, which we posted in the description. They gave the game a 4.0 out of five. Also, the video reviews by Doc Oculus and FastLawyer are recommended.
But wether you will try the game or not - let us extend our best wishes to you and your loved ones. Have some great Holidays and enjoy some game time, wether it will be in VR or 2D!
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team
Build 91 is live with a stability update
We keep working on Snow Scout and this patch improves the general stability, fixes some bugs and is preparing for the next bigger update. We are almost done overhauling the cannon operation, complete with some new graphics and sound effects, but it will take a while until we can roll this update out. Still, the current solution works alright too, so hit those slopes for some stay-at-home workout.
If you'd like more information if Snow Scout could be a game you enjoy, have a look at this review from ImpulseGamer - We think they pretty much nailed it.
https://www.impulsegamer.com/snow-scout-vr-pc-review-meta-quest-2-via-air-link/
More importantly though, it's Halloween tonight! So if you happen to own our game Rainbow Reactor, be sure to fire it up today or tomorrow for a little spooky surprise ːDottieHeartː
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team
Build 90 is out now
A new build for Snow Scout went live today. It fixes some collider issues found by the community, some dialogue errors were fixed and there is also a quite visible improvement: The seats of the ski lifts look much better and more life-like now. So hopefully, longer rides on a lift are more visually pleasing. And if not, don't forget you have the option to "click" both joysticks simultaneously to skip ahead to the top. You could miss some bits of dialogue that way though - don't say we didn't warn you ːDottieWinkː
Other than that, you may have noticed that the game is a bit low on the fan art side, except for our diligent community member and bug-hunter Greener, who has posted some nice sketches on our Discord. But for today, we turned to MidJourney for the update post artwork, and this is the result:
We think the AI has captured the spirit and even the visual aspects of the game nicely! And with the cold season approaching, it will be much easier to get in the mood for the playing Snow Scout - and if your heating is set a bit too low in order to save money, you could play standing and swing those ski sticks like a pro. We guarantee it will make you warmer and even burn some calories in the process. After all, that is the way the game was meant to be played ːDottieJoyː
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team ːDottieHeartː
Build 89 is live now
Also, the tutorial now has some additional lines and ski stick calibration works a bit better now. Remember, if pushing off (especially uphill) doesn't work well enough for you, try increasing the stick length on the 3rd page of the tablet's menu. Keep in mind though that going up a hill on ski will always be harder than down, otherwise the whole game wouldn't really make sense ːDottieJoyː
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team
Snow Scout is Out Now!
Finally, the day has come and Snow Scout is officially out of Early Access! We had to push the release a bit back in order to get everything ready - of course a lot of work is involved in promotion when you're a small developer, but also we did some more polishing in those two extra weeks. We got some good tips from the community and released and tested several updates, so the final release version of Snow Scout is now #86. Of course, we'll keep updating and improving the game following the community's feedback, just like we have done in those past 5 months.
Speaking of the date again, another nice touch is that now it's been pretty much exactly 5 month since we started Early Access, and I dare say that the game has improved in many ways. Of course, we still have lots of ideas about things that could be added, but when it comes down to it, it's a matter of cost as well, especially for what is essentially a 3 people team like ours. So the more money the game will make in sales, the more we can improve it. If you like it, please don't hesitate to recommend it to others, and if you come across any issues, just post in the Steam discussions for the game or on our Discord and we'll do our best to iron them out until Snow Scout is the best it can be!
But for now, I guess it's time to finally open up a bottle up bubbly as you see in the picture, take a breather and think about everything that has happened on this journey so far. And of course thank everyone that has helped, from our significant others to friends and family, the awesome VR community and not least the German games funding fund #gamesfoerderung, without whom the making of the game would have been impossible.
Cheers!
The Tunermaxx Team
Build 81 just went live
We just released Snow Scout build #81 with a bunch of polishing and stability improvements, thanks to a lot of good feedback from our community member Greener! Domo arigato :D
Keep sending in feedback, people, and the game will get better and better. Just use the Steam discussion boards or write to us on our Discord, where a bunch of free game keys await the almighty bug hunters.
https://discord.gg/kbQJWVDf7p
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team
The "End Of Early Access" Update Is Here!
With this build, we are wrapping up the last bits of player feedback from our Early Access phase and the amount of polished little tidbits is basically too big to mention everything. However, a major overhaul of the save system is part of this update, and this version will now be incompatible with older saves. If you still want to wrap up a game still in progress, you can do so by activating the beta for Snow Scout in Steam. Or, you could also simply start a new game - we promise it will be worth it with all the improvements!
A little snag for us is that when drawing up our grand plans, we forgot to look up what day the 31st of July actually is, and as you probably know by now, it is a Sunday. Not a really good day for a game launch! Accordingly, we'll move the official end of Early Access to August 9th. In case you already have the game and like it, it would be greatly appreciated if you could help us spread the word! And if you don't have it yet, now would be a great time to buy it - because once Early Access officially ends, the price of the game will go up to 29.99!
Once again, huge thanks go out to everyone who contributed during the game's Early Access phase. But it's never too late to send new ideas our way, or report any bugs we may still have overlooked.
Ski on everyone,
The Tunermaxx Team.
Early Access will end this month, price hike incoming!
We are currently preparing the last big update for Snow Scout, which we will release later this month. With the release of that update, the Early Access phase will end, at which point the game's price will go up to $29.99
We know that a lot of people will say this is pricey for an indie game that seems to have standalone-optimized graphics already, but we can tell you that we, as a small team, have put a ton of work into this game. If our work hours were normally paid, the game would have cost about $150,000.00 to make.
The result is a unique adventure-style game that contains elements of walking simulators, job simulators and skiing games. We simply made the game we wanted to play in VR, not looking to maximise profits. There is a minimum of two hours of play time if you just rush through the story, but if you take your time and explore the game, as it's meant to be enjoyed, you can easily get five times that.
So, if you're looking for a bargain, snap up the game during this Steam VR Fest at the highest discount it has had so far, and be sure that this will be the cheapest price the game will have for quite some time :D
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team
Build 56 is out now
Build 56 just went live. It further improves the games "end sequence" audio-visually, so that part is now done until further notice. Also, we've fixed some bugs concerning the fuse boxes, the cannon, and a bunch of comfort issues like radio operation. But there still is quite a bit of room for a lot more polishing, so we'll keep those updates coming.
In other news, we now have a Valve Index for testing and so far we can confirm that with this current build, the game is fully playable on the Index. However, the grip threshold is very, very low, so you trigger "grip mode" when skiing quite a bit too easily, so the game thinks you want to make sharp turns with your ski sticks instead of pushing off to gain speed. If anyone can figure out faster than us how to make a Controller Binding with lowered grip threshold, please let us know :D
All the best from
The Tunermaxx Team