People are always saying that indies should charge more, so we're taking charge! Except, we have executive dysfunction ADHD and forgot to put batteries in the machine that makes The Blue Box cost money, so in 12 days from the time this was posted (that's 01/31/20) The Blue Box will be free! You will only need to give us $0.00 to play The Blue Box!
We're also announcing a brand new game:
Zero Towel Dilemma (Giskers Escape)
Zero Towel Dilemma (Giskers Escape) is a fast paced escape the room game where the only puzzles you'll need to solve are strictly kinetic. Plow your way through everything in the house until you find what you need to clean up Giskers' mess. This game will be made available at a later date. This game will be sold as paid DLC, but everyone that owns The Blue Box before 01/31/20 will get it for free when it comes out.
That's all -- psych; we're announcing a second brand new game:
Pocket Dootie
Pocket Dootie is the state of the art Virtual Pet Buddy you can take anywhere. He will protect you with his handy dandy switch blade. Train him, raise his stats, and try desperately to keep him alive. Visiting him daily will allow him to survive in this incredibly cruel world. Pocket Dootie will be made available as free DLC at a later date. This means all you gotta do is have The Blue Box installed and you get access to this digital delight.
WE GIVETH AND WE TAKETH AWAY
We're doing all this because we're actually converting each game inside The Blue Box into paid DLC except for Pube Spider, which will become free DLC. There's a lot of reasons going into why we've made this decision, but here are a few major ones:
It makes it easier to pick what you want.
Since the main goal of The Blue Box is to become an ever-expanding collection of games and fun diversions, it makes the most sense to split it up into DLC so that only the games that you want to play are installed at any given time. In the far-off future of there being 40 games in The Blue Box, not everyone is going to want however much size being taken up at once -- and we'd like to keep it slim so it doesn't take much time or space to keep it installed (or re-install it) and check out what's new every once and a while.
It makes paying people easier.
Did you know that every game in The Blue Box can sometimes involve a team with as few as one person, and sometimes as large as six people? We like to work together and do what's fun and spur of the moment, but when it comes to dividing up earnings, things get complicated splitting when up the entry fee. By making each game its own DLC, sales data will become easier to attribute to particular teams and will help steer development. On the flip-side, if you want to see more of a particular kind of game then buy that DLC and give feedback for it, so we know we're making things you like.
It helps us practice releasing things.
In the 2+ years since we've launched, we've only released one game title. This means we've not done much to get the attention of press or publishers, 'cause most people won't deal with stuff after it's commercially available. In the time since releasing, we've gotten virtually zero coverage. More releases give us more opportunities to get visibility on steam, as well as more chances to reach out to press. It helps build our communication skills which will be valuable to making better games and decisions in the future.
It gives us the opportunity to diversify at lower risk.
In the time that The Blue Box has been available, it hasn't earned enough money to cover a second Steam App Fee. While we did recover the funds for the Steam App Fee in sales thanks to everyone that bought the game, when divided up among each contributor, even the most frequent contributor could only ever buy a half-decent bottle of saké. Even if everyone pooled their money back together it wouldn't cover even 5% of what went into creating, promoting, and translating the games.
It gives us more focus.
We've attended major industry events and our sales during those periods trend downward due time spent preparing and running a booth detracting from our ability to work on the game and share our work online. Despite being at major events, the most coverage we've had in the last year was when a Vtuber, 男鹿ちゃんねる (Oga-chan) streamed BurgerGame. We're very thankful for everyone that tells their friends about our games. As evident from the points above, it wouldn't make sense for us to do what we've been doing for as long as we've been doing it if we didn't do it for the sake of seeing people enjoy what we make.
ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
Everyone that owns The Blue Box before 01/31/20 will get The Deep Blue Box Bundle for free. The Deep Blue Box Bundle is a package that gives you our first 10 games, including everything already in-game, Zero Towel Dilemma: Giskers Escape and Pocket Dootie. To be 100% clear for existing owners of The Blue Box, all the games are coming out and you'll be given it back right away in the form of DLC -- this should be seamless for you. For everyone that does not yet own The Blue Box, now would be a great time to buy it, before the value of its contents goes up by 800%.
If you purchased the The Blue Box in the last 30 days prior to this news post and this pending change is giving you second thoughts, we understand, feel free to cite this when requesting a refund, and hopefully support will grant it to you.
If you purchased this game before that period of time (30+ days prior to this news post), and you would like to request a refund, we understand, if support will not grant you a refund then contact EntranceJew and he will try his best to return your funds.
THANK YOU, IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES
Locale Update: YWDH + Launcher Options
Happy Post-Halloween! We're just in time for that awkward transition between thinking about spooky things and thinking about your family, so, what better time to spend this spooky purgatory than with Grandpa from YWDH.
YWDH
Now features Japanese localization data, provided by Leah Hicks. You can now experience Grandpa's story in multiple languages.
Has had its UI replaced to be higher resolution and more readable for everyone.
The input code for the game now makes camera rotation easier.
The default movement configuration for the game is less likely to get stuck after alt-tabbing, and is more responsive on controllers with analog input.
Now uses the steamworks API.
General game optimizations to provide a more stable experience.
The logic for picking a language is:
Pick a locale automatically based on your OS language. This will be used if there is an error getting this info from steam.
If the launch argument --lang=ja_JP is provided, it will override 1.
If it can retrieve a language from steam, it will use that. (overrides 1. & 2.)
If the launch arguments -language japanese is provided, it will override 3.
The Blue Box Launcher
Now features a gear on each game page, allowing you to define options for each.
Now features the ability to provide launch arguments to any games. This can be useful for supplying documented arguments, or engine level arguments. (see: Unity Standalone Player command line arguments)
Now passes command line arguments from steam into each game. Use this sparingly, or for setting localization overrides.
Disabled unused modules, other minor optimizations that should result in fewer files downloaded.
Uploads game configurations to the Steam Cloud.
As always, we hope you like the update. This is just one of many small steps to make our games easier for everyone to enjoy. If you experience any problems with this update, please visit our support forum or leave feedback from within the launcher. Localizations will continue to be created and maintained as our games develop, in addition to these short glimpses into the future:
Update: [2 New Games] The Retro Content Update
The Blue Box Launcher
Added two brand new games:
Normality - A fast paced arcade style game where you control a futuristic rocket jet and navigate a dark city with all the capabilities of a rocket jet, plus a special time slowing power.
Pube Spider: I Love You - An alarm clock that doubles as a retro LCD handheld style game about a spider that can't spin it's own web so it has to collect web-like strands while avoiding droplets that make him moist.
Normality
The game hinges upon the titular song Normality by Sphere² as it was the direct inspiration of it.
Fast paced rocket jet action, and the only thing that can put a stop to it is your inevitable demise.
Pube Spider: I Love You
Pube Spider can't spin his own web must instead collect web-like strands things that fall from the sky into his porceilin domain.
Collect as many strands as you can without losing all your lives from getting wet.
Oligocene Snapshot
Prof. Choke had his colors changed and his lab has new lighting.
New song for floating italian confectionary treat by Ultigonio.
New effects for using the dash, which reflects the anxiety you will feel if you miss the perfect opportunity to snap up one of those Oligocene Creatures.
Removed some excessive slides from the intro of the game.
Burger Game
Removed joke where if you pressed the order button but you did not specify anything be purchased, then your coworker will drive to the store and back anyway and waste your gas money -- as it was confusing to some players.
As always, thank you for playing, we hope that you enjoy the update and post your high scores so we can see. We're planning on getting something else ou-
Update: Version 1.1 - The Feedback Update
Ever since our initial release, we've been hard at work improving things, fixing bugs, planning content updates, and working on new projects we're looking forward to sharing with you. This post documents all the changes that were made available in the update on 06/27/19. Moving forward, patch notes will be made available with/before their corresponding update. Some changes listed were present in the beta branch, or were made available as fixes as far back as 05/18/18.
The Blue Box Launcher
Implemented a "Feedback" button that allows players to report bugs, add comments, or share their appreciation for any particular game directly to us. Keep in mind, leaving a Steam Review is the best way to help us get discovered!
UI / scaling improvements.
Now shows video trailers and provides a way to listen to the music from each game.
BurgerGame
New Game Plus now makes it easier to perform encore runs with saves.
The gameplay area has been optimized to reduce load times and improve aesthetics during gameplay.
Achievements were created and defined (see: General Changes)
YWDH
Changed the UI to scale uniformly across resolutions.
Added alternate controls for Q/E to rotate the camera.
Fixed lighting to look better in newer versions of the lighting engine.
Llama goes to Market
Added IRC options to release the hellbird onto everyone.
Adjusted haze sorting layers to be more consistent between builds.
General Changes
All games export settings were consolidated to make them more consistent with one-another.
A manual has been made available that outlines the core gameplay of each game and has resources for players that require assistance.
A new build process was developed to ease in the delivery of updates.
Older code has been consolidated a fair bit, allowing to reduce each games' on-disk size and overhead.
Achievements early last year, and were working on rolling out more, but had to revert some developments in the interest of stability. Due to recent updates in the game engine, the middleware library we were using to implement steam achievements started to cause unexpected crashes in builds in addition to other complications during development. We are hoping to restore this functionality in the next update.
As always, thank you for playing -- we hope to have something more exciting for you very
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