Supraland
Crash DLC Release
We do a lot of things differently in this compared to the main game. I'm curious how our experiments go.
I hope you like it.
There are lots of surprise moments waiting for you.
Translations that are ready: Chinese, German, Turkish, Japanese
Translations that are ready but need a little bit more work: French
Translations coming later in an update: Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Finnish, Hungarian, Serbian, Polish
Don't expect major sales for the DLC beyond the little launch sale. I would not wait for a better deal in the next few years. I will just keep on putting the main game into sales.
Have fun!
David
Update 1.17.1
Main Map:
- New toy Cacti everywhere replacing the old "real" ones
- All NPCs were doing angry voices due to a new bug. Now they sound happy again.
- Fixed getting stuck in "link cave" without having the cube
- Fixed stomp damage and range values not showing
- Fixed Rattle Hag respawning issues
- Skeleton warrior now drops 2 coins
- Skeleton warrior behaviour changed
- Increased enemy spawn chance again
- Small text changes to German and English
- Minor other fixes
DLC 1:
- Fixed projectile getting stuck in jumppad
- Fixed beam headbump force being too low
- Lots of other improvements
- Chinese, Turkish and Japanese translation added/improved
DLC Release Date - 250k sold - More
DLC 1 will be release next friday, the 3rd of July 2020.
Some translations might come a while after release, but they will all come sooner or later!
Definitely ready: German, Japanese, Chinese.
We will also get Korean Translations for the first time in the middle of July.
Meanwhile Supraland reached 250,000 sold units.
Before release I was hoping to maybe get 10000 people to play it, so this is unbelievable of course.
You maybe noticed our Twitter account is back.
A little mistake happened when I entered the company's birth date into the profile, which led Twitter to think, we're a 6 year old child and banned us instantly.
I decided to drop Linux support to give Linux players a better game and save us time.
The native version, that UE4 compiles, performs poorly for most people, but if you're using the windows version with proton, the performance is great. So you get a better game and it's less work for us. It's not financially viable for us to do the extra work, because Linux makes up just roughly 1% of the playerbase (and 10% of forum posts :D).
DLC 2 is doing great and is now in a somewhat fully playable state. It will be a while though until we open it up for early access testers. DLC 2's development was a bit hindered bue to DLC 1 getting finalized, but now DLC 2 will get more attention than ever. As usual I don't wanna share what DLC 2 is about; you shall have a good surprise party when you get to play it. It's so annoying when AAA studios kick out 100 videos about their upcoming game before release and you basically know everything before playing it. Playing blind is the best.
- David
PS: you really should watch 'Dark', best show on Netflix
Update 1.16.4
- Skeleton warrior much more awesome combat (the little guy with the sword and shield)! Totally different behaviour. Please give feedback!
- New deluxe version of detector: icon now shows what is being detected
- Carry-code updated -> no more pushing objects through geometry
- Current weapon will no longer fire if you are carrying an object
- Jumppads no longer kick things out of your hands while you're holding them
Supraland 1 Changes:
- Less enemy spawning
- Brought anvil back to old position because people will just look it up in walkthroughs and complain that the game is bugged because it was now different.
- Grave stats fixed
- Changed percent calculation; graves now weigh much more (previously 2% for destroying all graves)
Crash/DLC 1 Changes: (Until now only playable for crowdfunding backers)
- Changed the way you open the red lol-gate to the skull tube in loop1
- Tons and tons of little improvements, I didn't write them all down!
- Should now show the Menuslot % in green if you finished it
- Should now save correct playtime when you finished the game
- Changed scrap amount rewarded for revealing the burglar (10 -> 30).
- Metal beam pull-physics now reliable for catapult puzzle
- German Translation added (beta)
- Japanese Translation added (beta)
- Fixed Sea of Skull stomp functionality in loop6 (stomping did kill all enemies in the world...)
Backer Update June 2020
DLC 1
You have by now all received a key for the first DLC. If you didn't get it, check your spam. Two backer's email addresses didn't work and returned error messages; the rest seems fine.
The DLC is as good as done. There are some small bugs here and there that we're being told about, but those will be fixed soon. They are already fixed actually, just not released yet.
We will finalize all the English text in the game today or tomorrow, so we can hand over the game to the translators. When the main languages (Chinese, Russian, German, Turkish...) are done, we can release the DLC to the public.
DLC1 has about 8000 words while Supraland 1 had about 7000. The DLC is a bit smaller than the main game, but if you already played it, I think you can tell that the dialogue and characters are much better.
Please let us know how you feel about "Crash". You cannot write Steam reviews yet, but you can once it's officially released.
For your info: I plan to not go on sale with the DLC, so it will be full price forever. I only go on sale with the main game a lot to draw in more people into the Supra-Verse who don't know yet what it is and if they will like it. But the DLC target audience knows what they are in for, so they don't need a special price.
DLC 2 and Supraland 2
Meanwhile the 2nd DLC is making good progress. You will be surprised by how big it is. Both DLCs were supposed to be small things but they got bigger and bigger. We could just have called them Supraland 2 and 3. But the real Supraland 2 will start being worked on when both DLCs are out the door. So whatever dates I have given for Supraland 2 are definitely wrong because the DLCs got so big.
For DLC2 we also try to not spoil anything upfront so you can be surprised by it all. We've also decided to step up the production value of DLC2 another step after DLC1 is finished. I don't know yet when it will be released. My gut feeling is winter 2020, but I don't know!
Regarding "Supraland 2" I decided to not call it that. Numbers in sequels have one big problem. People, who don't know the previous parts, are less likely to jump in. That's most likely why you don't see Harry Potter movies having numbers. Without a number it looks like it doesn't require knowledge of previous parts. While it's a lie in the mentioned example, the next Supraland will not require players to know the first part anyway. There will be references of course, but nothing really important. So it will be called "Supraland ", like Zelda or Assassin's Creed games for example. The subtitle will probably be determined by a story detail, which we don't know yet.
Backing Tiers
Crowdfunding Tier 2 Backers (55€) will also get DLC2 for free including early access. For Tier 1 backers (20€) the 2nd DLC was not included. Supraland 2 is for all backers of course.
GOG
A lot of you already heard about it from all kinds of sources. Due to way too low sale numbers we stopped the GOG support and unlisted the game there. We cannot offer version parity and don't want GOG customers to have a lesser version. Getting the APIs between the game and the platform to communicate properly is no trivial task, but at this point it was financially not viable to do so.
If you are totally outraged about GOG support being dropped, you are completely right of course and I apologize. But what can you do?
- We can give you a Steam key if you email us your GOG receipt of the game.
- If this is unacceptable to you (then why are you reading this on Steam?) you can email us your refund wish including your paypal address. (Only backers!)
Email: hey@supragames.de
FAQ
Is there still a way to become a crowdfunding backer of the game?
- Nope. We simply don't need more testers or funding, so when you buy it when it comes out, it's all good.
DLC1 confusion
So what happened?
I wanted to put up the store page of DLC1, so you can see the trailer, images and text, but not buy the DLC yet. But I pressed the wrong button and suddenly the game was released and I couldn't undo it.
If anyone needed a proof we're certainly not an AAA studio, there you have it!
So some of you already bought it before Valve helped me take it down again. You can't play it anymore now, but you will, when we really release it. I'm sorry for that mess! I pressed the wrong button.
The actual status of the DLC:
The English version is 100% playable; might have minor bugs here and there. Translations are not done at all. The remaining development time will be mostly just text changes and localization work.
We will send out beta keys to all the remaining crowdfunding backers soon, so you can start playing the English version if you like!
Update V1.15.1
Anti-Motion-Sickness
- New "no weapon bob" camera option to counter motion sickness
- walking steps now smoother camera (could help against motion sickness too)
Gameplay:
- new "auto brake in air" option in controls menu
- added invisible calibration during tutorial with new platforming bit that tries to find out, if people expect air brake or not and then sets the option for them accordingly
- Reworked region around Suprastar house solving lots of issues
- Changed 1 puzzle in Volcano1 region - previous one was too hard and weird
- Changed bonus puzzle in Volcano 1 region completely
- Added new magic puzzle in Red Town that awards you a new achievement (NPC text not translated yet, only English)
- Putting ball into yellow shoot-button now gives you a hint
- Improved several puzzles behind the locker room building and added a new hint
- Fireflies can now be carried around with an appropriate object (previously only normal flies could be carried)
- Flies no longer accidentally attach to static crystals
- Fixed glitches that let you fly by re-picking up objects
- Fixed that you could carry the translocator ball while riding a jumppad
- Fixed translocator spawning you through walls
- Fixed occasional problems with picking up Supraball
Visuals:
- Gun projectile a little smaller to not get stuck on geometry so much
- Big ring in facility now makes a different beep sound when activated to avoid confusion
- Green moon door is now green
- Fixed giant pumpkin roof not having collision
- Fixed NPC next to facility being removed too soon in a special case
- Improved lighting in several places
- Fixed fake solution in Volcano 4 area
- No more allowing to respawn during rattle hag fight
- Removed piece of cardboard in carrot town that you could not destroy if the volcano was already gone
- Some chinese translation fixes
- Magnet sound problem fixed
- Fixed lots of other small problems
- Fixed idle animation of NPCs, feet were slightly moving around while standing still
- NPCs with more than one line now have "(1/3)" or so at the end of their speech bubble
- Fixed ugliness in lava-cliff materials
- Fixed NPC speech bubble sometimes being removed after 2 seconds.
- Lots of small things everywhere
- Quest text more visible
- Main menu background changed
- Being farted on looks much fartier
- Added necessary tool to _every_ home
- New battery model
Other:
- Speech bubble visuals improved - now also supports speech bubble for people off screen
- Make new quest after blue MacGuffin more clear by displaying quest msg more often
- Moved far away chest closer so it's more likely to be in the detector radius.
- Added fallen hero locations to endgame map in your home
- New stomp effect to make it clearer how it can damage foes
- Translocator gets destroyed when reseting to last checkpoint
- Lots of small changes
Crash Keyart is done
The keyart for the Crash DLC, made by the great Manuel Molohua, is done.
He painted all the stuff, I did the logo.
A keyart is the image that's used on all store pages, cover boxes etc. to get you to click on it!
You can start creating theories based on that one!
For all the obvious questions, read the previous news post. I answered them all!
DLC1 FAQ
Not at all! The DLC1 campaign is a separate thing. A separate adventure. It continues the plot, but you select it with a different menu button and it uses different new save games.
Do I have to finish the main game to play the DLC?
You don't have to, but you should, because the DLC brings back many mechanics and they won't be tutorialized as deeply as they were in the main game.
Why is it being called DLC1?
There will be another DLC2 later this year which is also a new campaign just like DLC1.
How big is DLC1?
So far testers need something like 10-15 hours to play through it.
When will DLC1 come out?
When it's done. Maybe in late June if all goes well. Maybe July. I won't release it before the Chinese, German, Russian and Turkish translations are done, as they are the biggest audiences (after English). But translations are the last thing that will get done, because we are still frequently changing the text.
What will DLC1 cost?
Similar to the main game. It's a bit shorter than the first one but it was much more expensive to make because there are a lot more people working on it and we produced tons of new stuff for it.
Why don't you release the DLC as a standalone game?
- The game is not different enough from base game. It would be more like Supraland 1.5. People would probably not like a 2nd game that is too similar to the first one technologically.
- There could be installment confusion, so after we released a bunch of Supraland DLCs, people don't know which order the games have.
- The DLC requires advanced players. It's not starting from scratch explaining everything. Standalone would lead to many people playing it without knowing the base game, which would not be a good experience for them.
10 things DLC 1 does better than the first game. You won't believe what's on #4
I just wanted to write a bit about how in the first DLC (which is basically a 2nd Supraland game) you will see what I (now we) learned since the first game and where we increased the production value.
You cannot compare both games directly, because their general structure is significantly different. It is still very familiar for Supraland veterans but a lot should feel really fresh. Which I hope is kind of the perfect formula for a sequel. Enough familiarity but also enough new stuff. The core abilities are the same though (plus some variations), that's why we felt more comfortable releasing it as a DLC rather than a standalone game. It also does not tutorialise as hard as you would expect from a standalone game.
Here are the biggest changes:
- The world is much denser in DLC1. It is smaller, but there is much more stuff everywhere. In the first game the world is bigger but also much emptier. Red Town was the only very dense place. I find a high density much more appealing and in general better game design.
- The dialogue writing is much more interesting.
There are stories playing out in the world now, while in the first game there was pretty much nothing.
Narration for Supraland is tricky, because you don't want to interfer too much with the player's freedom and agency, which is the core of the game.
- The NPC characters are more fleshed out and interesting, compared to the random throwaway hint-givers from the maingame.
- The production value is higher when it comes to animations. You will see some cool animations here and there that we made just for an easter egg for example. Same for some elaborate assets that were built just for one little joke.
- It's pretty much all new assets. You will barely see assets repeating from the first game.
- There are more cutscenes, but we are honestly not quite sure yet how much we like it. During development you completely lose your senses for this kind of stuff. Some of these cutscenes take the control away from you for a moment, which is something I prefer to avoid, but sometimes there is just no other way because you must see certain things and we can't allow you to look the other way or run away. But these scenes are like 1% of the full playtime.
- A big difference is that the world design is now much more clearly a miniature world. When the first game was started, it was not supposed to be a small world. I got that idea when I was halfway through, so a lot of the game is not really built with big things. This time around it's pretty obvious.
- Combat is very minimal and barely noticeable. I know combat is the most controversial thing in the first game. But everyone saying "get rid of combat alltogether" is wrong. It has big effects on exploration rewards, on the entire atmosphere and other things. So what we're doing in this DLC is basically an experiment, but I have other combat plans for future games. But you can be sure, no monster is gonna bother you while you try to solve a puzzle.
- There are tons of little improvements that also made their way into the first game, like better speech bubbles, a reactive crosshair and much more. The next update will include a lot more of these.
- Last but not least, the music in the first game was all bought in the asset store. It fit very well, but it's awkward if you hear the same tune in another game. Now almost all music is made by us.
The songs also feature different moods, and we created a system that can seamlessly blend back and forth between them depending on the situation. The background music will become more energetic in an action scene and it becomes muffled when you're entering a house.
David