With the solstice behind us and as the year draws to a close, we thought we’d give you the 411 on some of the questions we’ve seen popping up about the development of the game. You guys have been super patient, and it is extremely appreciated so, it only makes sense that we would be as transparent as possible.
But don’t worry, the news is good.
So, put on your helmet and let’s jump straight into it!
So, Just How Far Along Are We?
We’ve seen some of you guys speculate on how far along we are and when the game will be released. So, here’s the good news:
The game design, narrative design, and level design are final and the game is feature-complete. We’ve also created and integrated most of the art into the game and, as we stand, animations, VFX and overall polish are 95% done. A lot of the SFX and music have been integrated. We’ve also been working tirelessly on optimization while Triple Boris works on the Switch port.
So, “what’s left to do?” you ask.
Here’s the breakdown of what we still have on our plate:
Integrating some side quests and cut-scenes
Polishing the art
Finalize audio integration
Language localization
Some balancing
Optimization
Finalize Nintendo Switch port
Debugging
In other words, we’re very much in the last strech of development.
As far as an actual release date, we’ll be sure to announce it as soon as we can, but don’t despair, it’s coming.
Got It! Now, Show Me Some of that Art!
Alright, calm down!
More good news on that front! The art has evolved significantly in the past weeks, and we're quite proud of it. Here’s a small compilation of some of our favorite shots of the game.
First, we’ve been working on creating a sense of heat and desolation in the Wasteland using some lighting. To give you an example, the title screen looks like this now:
The world of Turbo Kid is vast and diverse. While exploring it, you'll come across a wide array of vistas, from mesmerizing outdoor landscapes to oppressive underground areas.
You’ll also encounter the many strange characters and communities that inhabit these parts. Take this guy, for instance. You’ll find him burrowing somewhere in the depths of the wasteland. He might have a few missions for you.
“I smell a human-thing, yes-yes. I am shivers, I am best-greatest!”
And, that's a wrap for this year! The Outerminds team wishes you a fantastic New Year, which will undoubtedly be THE YEAR of Turbo Kid!
Cheers!
Mathieu Fecteau – Producer at Outerminds
Happy Holidays from Outerminds & the Turbo Kid team!
From all of us at Outerminds, a little word to wish all of our fans and supporters a ✨RAD Holiday Season! ⛄
Wishing you all a season filled with joy, laughter and epic adventures. We've got a ton of exciting news for you coming soon, so stay tuned.
Be sure to join the Turbo Kid Discord server and if you haven't yet, don't forget to wishlist the game!
See you soon!
Development Update - December 15
A Quick One!
Hey, wastelanders! Here's another quick update for you guys. In this one, updates on the junkyard, a familiar NPC, a platforming showcase, and more.
One Person’s Trash Is Another Person’s Torture… Treasure
Atop a former residential neighborhood sits The Junkyard: an unsafely jagged and rusted collection of discarded and forgotten … well … junk. Find your way through this ungodly clutter of trash using makeshift scaffolds and secret passages. If you plan on visiting, you should talk to your friendly neighborhood scavenger Naomi, she’ll probably have some tips for you.
Church Gymnastics
Old Gregor’s Got the Goods
An old tinkerer with a heart of gold, Old Gregor has been trying to find traces of survivors, or even civilization beyond the Eligius Wall. Unfortunately, the antenna he built in the cliffs to send and receive signals is broken. His old age having caught up to his determination, he needs help fixing the device.
Wait, Did You Guys Change the Soundtrack? —Blooper
Our lead QA has what most would call “a cat obsession”, or, as she’d probably say, “of course, I’m obsessed with cats, have you seen them?” Makes sense that this is what she listens to while working and involuntarily recording her music.
For any of you who still have doubts about the cat obsession, here's a picture of her desk.
Have a wonderful period of the solstice, see you on the other side with another update in two weeks.
Mathieu Fecteau – Producer at Outerminds
Development Update - December 1st
HERE WE GO AGAIN
Here's more stuff for your eyeballs!
In this one, currency system, boss update, more Nintendo Switch news and more.
Let's jump into it!
How Much Is This?
Scraps are the currency you’ll use to buy items in Turbo Kid. We’ve determined the number of scraps you’ll earn when defeating enemies, destroying boxes, etc. and, based on that, we’ve set prices for items sold by merchants. If you complete all side quests and explore the entire game, you should earn enough to purchase every item within the game.
For Where God Built a Church...
Welcome to Church! This is the Preacher’s hideout, the base of operations for his sprawling cult, kind of his own personal “Vatican™”. Here, he uses the population’s need for mechanical implants as leverage to maintain control over his followers and expand his grip on the wasteland. Here is a spoiler-soft glimpse at his compound 😉
Boss: The Oozinator
The Oozinator’s voice echoes throughout the sewer pipes leading the passerbys and residents of the Sewers to believe it’s haunted by what they call The Voice. No one knows if he can die, or what would happen if he does.
Switch Build
It's alive! After multiple optimizations, collaborative efforts with our partners, and dedicated hard work, Turbo Kid is now up and running on the Switch. We still have a lot of work ahead of us to achieve the desired framerate and stability, but this progress signals that we are moving in the right direction.
Bloopers!
The burden of bugs is unavoidable when building video games so if we can’t escape them, we’ll at least have some fun with them. Hundreds of bugs are discovered and fixed each month, many of them are pretty funny (dev insight: some of them can even become features sometimes 🤫). Here’s a couple of fun ones we found recently for your viewing pleasure.
Zombie Moonwalking
Overkill blooood!
See you again in two weeks for more stuff, and have a nice month of December!
Cheers
Mathieu Fecteau – Producer at Outerminds
Development Update
Eyes Up Wastelanders
It's been a while since our last update, and we are eternally grateful for your patience. Significant progress has been made on the game and we have amazing new announcements to share in the coming weeks.
Our progress on the game's skyrocketed since we shared the July update, adding more artists and programmers for the final push to complete the project in early 2024. As a matter of fact, we're set to announce the official launch date soon!
Moving forward, we're kicking into high gear and will be posting once every two weeks. Let's jump into some news!
Boss Fights Polish
All bosses are now fully implemented! Each one more badass than the last. There are all kinds of players on the dev team, some better than others, it's given the design team incredible data to work with. Fights are going to be epic! Super-mega-final-boss is in, too, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Here are teasers for The Preacher and Silver Ghost.
Who said going to church was supposed to be boring?
Seems like that wiring needs some work. Still polishing art on this one, we'll keep you posted on our progress.
Arena, the Lightning Dome Challenge!
Test your combat skills in the Lightning Dome! Defeat wave after wave of bloodthirsty enemies to win amazing prizes (if you survive). Conquer all four challenges in record time to prove how much of a badass you really are! Blood, gore, and death are guaranteed!
The Church
An ultimate challenge awaits the Kid in this larger-than-life church fit for a God. Here, you will face the culmination of our developers’ insane machinations. This area will showcase amazing art, accompanied by what will arguably be the best work Le Matos has put out (music currently a placeholder). Get ready to perform indescribable bike tricks to overcome what awaits within!
Flashback Scenes
Remember the events of the movie back in 2015? Well, the Kid certainly does. Every now and then, memories will materialize in the Kid's mind and the world around him.
Skeletron Returns
To end you. :)
Is he real or just a dark memory?
Switch Port
A recurring and legitimate question. We are currently collaborating with Triple Boris to port the game to the Nintendo Switch. This is a complex process, and we are making good progress. Our goal is still to release it alongside the Steam launch, but it might take a bit longer. We're extremely sorry about that. Should the Switch version be released later than the Steam version, Outerminds will personally provide free Steam keys to Kickstarter backers who selected the Switch option. Whatever happens, we will do our best to communicate as we near launch!
Stay tuned on our socials and right here for more updates!
Mathieu Fecteau – Producer at Outerminds
Development Update - May-June 2023
Here we go again, Turbo Kids,
Here's what we've been working on in the past few months, as you'll see the game is really coming together nicely!
Abilities Screen
You may have seen some hints in screenshots from our previous dev updates, but we now have all the screens for the “Status” menu. This one is all about your currently acquired abilities and weapons. Oops, skipped that tutorial explaining a new ability or forgot some of the details? Don’t worry, we got you covered. You can re-watch any tutorial video/text for all your turbo gear, right here, in this screen. Pretty handy, right?
Bike Skins
No more searching for your bike on the rack, make yours unique with these fresh customizations
Need to spruce up the ole wheels? Turn some heads as you ride through town sporting these brand-new bike skins. Collect some sweet customizations for your bike throughout your journey, available as quest rewards, from merchants, or by some other intentionally undisclosed means (wink, wink, cough, cough). Your starter bike will even vary depending on if you are playing with the Kid or Apple.
Music Player
Chill beats to save the Wasteland/rock out to
You are all in for a special treat in this final sub-screen reveal: The Music Player. Oh boy, your ears are not ready for all these heart-pumping beats curtesy of Le Matos. Collect all the audio cassettes throughout the game and listen to them here, featuring brand new music and some previously unreleased tracks.
Headphones are highly recommended. May induce severe head-bobbing and feelings of euphoria.
Merchants
“What are ya buyin' Stranger?”
We talked about these fine folks before and we are happy to report that they have made their way into the game and are ready to exchange their wares with weary travelers. You can find them all over the world, help them on their way, and maybe they’ll give you a discount.
Notebook
Who knew the Kid was this organized?
As promised, we can finally show you the fabled Notebook. This is quite the chonky book and it will be crucial to your journey throughout the game. Keep track of all the places you see, the people you encounter, the quests you need to complete, and more. If you are a lore buff, this is also where you’ll keep track of all the narrative collectibles scattered throughout the world. Oh, and let’s not forget, it also contains the Comic Book! Collect all the pages and read a brand new exclusive book by Jeik Dion right here.
With all that new content, the Turboverse is feeling more and more alive by the minute.
Ready for another dev update? This one features what we’ve been up to since February, so it’ll be a bit less massive than the last one, but still lots of stuff to cover. Here we go, round 2!
Cartridges
Remember these collectibles from the demo?
Shiny AND useful
They’re called “Cartridges” and are much more than some simple shiny trinkets to add to your collection. You will be able to equip cartridges to gain passive boosts like bonus damage or resistance, attracting loot around you and even modifying existing traversal skills. You’ll have a limited number of slots to equip cartridges, though, so choose wisely. Here’s a preview of the upcoming cartridges screen, with absolutely no hints to other sub-screens included. Also note that cartridge icons are not representative of final art just yet.
Nothing else to see on this screen, just cartridges, only cartridges.
Weapons & Energy Turbo Kid is a Metroidvania, as such, one might expect it will feature quite a few upgrades & powers to unlock. One might be right. These will include weapons, all kinds of weapons. The most observant among you may have noticed the mysterious blue bar under your health bar which expands when you collect a certain item that looks like this:
May or may not contain Mutagen
So mysterious. Oh, the many secrets it holds.
That bar represents the energy you can use when firing special weapons. We have put a lot of work into making energy collection and use fun, and encouraging using different types of weapons. “Enough talk, when do we get to see the weapons?!” you might say. Unfortunately, I’m not here to spoil the fun of discovering these new weapons, but I can show you what happens when you collect one. Take a look at this beauty:
By the power of the Wasteland, I HAVE THE POWER!
Other progress
Many other big features are in the works but they aren’t quite ready to showcase yet. Nevertheless, here’s a small sample of other things currently in development.
Junkyard & Sewer Boss Fights
We’ve made a lot of progress on these two boss fights and our QA and designers (and many other curious members of the team) are thoroughly testing them.
Gameplay & Accessibility Settings
We’ve added more settings, including new gameplay (bike options) and control settings (hold vs. toggle), and a set of options for “assist mode”. Assist mode settings are simple adjustments to modify the experience and better suit your needs or preferences. Examples include modifying health or loot drop odds and modifying defense or damage.
Notebook
Another big feature currently in progress: the Notebook. This is where you’ll keep track of your adventures throughout the game. It will contain details on locations you visited, characters you’ve encountered, your current objectives, and all of your collectibles. It’s a pretty big feature and work will be ongoing for some time so expect more info on this in upcoming updates.
Visual Effects
We’ve been putting a lot of work into visual effects, both for in-game and for UI (menus) to capture that signature retro look and feel. Final touches are being added to all manner of feedback in-game, including weapons, collectibles, damage, etc. We’ll dive into this in the next update, lots of eye-candy upcoming.
What Next?
That is it for this edition: progress on multiple fronts, and lots of big features currently in the works. I hope you all enjoyed the update, and I’m already hyped for the next one. As always, you can stay up to date on all developments regarding Turbo Kid by joining our community:
We've been pretty busy here at Outerminds, working hard on Turbo Kid. We thought it would be fun to update you all on what we have been up to since the release of the Steam Demo. Not only that, but these updates will become a monthly occurrence from now on. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Brand New Zones
Sewers
If you caught some of our streams, you may have seen a little preview of this new zone. The Sewers have their own unique atmosphere, lots of cool lore and colorful characters to interact with, some new enemies and challenges to tackle and, of course, a new Boss Fight: Oozinator. ***May or may not include super-powered turtles with headbands.*** Here’s a quick look at some of this new content:
The lovely, inviting and not at all deadly, Sewers
Possibly worse than hospital Jell-O
Just your regular human doing regular human things
Even more annoying than real flies!
…probably something they ate.
Piñatas, but the deadly kind
Boss: Oozinator, maybe they just want a hug
Junkyard
Work has also begun on other zones within the game. One of these is the Junkyard, a really desolate populated mostly by robots and drones. Be ready for a wide variety of challenging enemies, and an even more challenging Boss Fight. Keep an eye out, someone’s junk can often be someone else’s treasure (or killer robot).
Flying drones: Ouch
Turrets: Also ouch
Driller Drones: Surprise ouch
Boss: Silver Ghost, she’s quite the scrapper
Wasteland
This area connects everything together, it's also where your journey will begin. It features picturesque landscapes, lots of mysteries and lore to discover and some rather unique enemies. The perfect place to listen to some kickass music from Le Matos while riding around on your bike.
New Features & Upgrades
We’ve also been working on lots of cool new stuff to make your experience as memorable and enjoyable as possible. From quality of life improvements to brand new features, here’s a quick breakdown of all the shiny new things.
Skippable Dialogues, Cutscenes & NPC Improvements
One of the most requested features from the Steam Demo was the ability to skip dialogues. This is a crucial feature for speedrunners and less narratively inclined players. Practice your speed-reading techniques or blaze through previously explored areas without wasting those valuable seconds.
Skippable dialogues: For players on the go
We followed this improvement up with a rework of existing cutscenes and NPC interactions. This includes text streamlining, timing adjustments, clearer dialogues and a few more background characters chiming in.
That’s some good life advice right there, free of charge
Fast-Travel System
You may have noticed the world we have built for you to explore is quite expansive. While you do have your trusty bike to zip around on, sometimes you need something faster to travel vast distances, some sort of “system” that would allow you to “travel” “fast”... Introducing the Fast-Travel System! You will find many of these fast-travel pods scattered across the world to allow you to quickly get from Point A to Point B, C, D… and so on.
Fast-Travel Pods: Also for players on the go, but much faster
File Selection
Players will now have 3 save slots to choose from when starting a game. Pretty useful if you want a different save game for your speedrunning practice or your Apple playthrough. Save files will display a bunch of important info, like playtime, progression % and unlocked weapons to help you keep track of everything. It also comes with the always handy “copy” and “delete” functionalities.
File selection screen: Organizational skills not included
Gameplay Settings & Controls Remapping
We added a bunch of new gameplay settings to help you customize your Turbo Kid experience to your liking. This includes a planned feature that we sadly didn’t have time to put into the demo, but is now finally here: Controls Remapping. So if you desperately want to map “Jump” to the “Scroll Lock” key on your keyboard, or the “Left Trigger” on your controller, who are we to stop you?
Controller Mapping: you tell that controller who’s boss
Keyboard Mapping: That “M” key was clearly under utilized
Merchant Shops
If you played the Demo you may be wondering what all those scraps you collect are for. Merchant Shops! You can now exchange your “scraps” for some nice rewards like health or energy upgrades and maybe even some cartridges (more on those in next month’s update).
Can’t you just imagine all the nice things this person will have for sale?
Kickstarter content
Last but not least, Kickstarter stretch goal content is constantly being added.
Hall of Corpses
The “Hall of Corpses” is ready to welcome you with its impressive display of varied corpses, as described very “creatively” by our imaginative backers.
Uncensored content in all its gory pixelated detail available in-game only
Apple
Apple has also made her appearance in the game. With over 425 unique animations for our protagonist characters, our artists are always hard at work making sure Apple looks her very best. We even have dynamic hair physics when she is riding her bike.
Apple: BMX Pro
Next Update Coming Soon
That’s it for this month! We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek. There’s so much more to discover in-game, including many Easter eggs and other secrets we can’t reveal quite yet. Our next update will be coming soon, make sure you don’t miss it by joining our community: https://linktr.ee/outerminds
See you in the Wasteland!
Ray - Lead Programmer on Turbo Kid
A New Year, A New Update, A Playable Apple
Happy New Year everyone!
The team here at Outerminds is back in full force after a fun holiday and we’re ready to give you a little idea of what 2023 has in store for us as well as a much-needed update to confirm we’re still breathing. ;) To start, we’d like to address some of the more frequently asked questions we’ve seen in comments and on social media:
Q. We know the game will be released for Switch and Steam, but will it be available on other platforms? A. The only two platforms are still Switch and Steam. Plans to launch on other platforms remain unchanged as of now. We will be sure to update you if these plans change.
Q. When can we expect the physical version and physical bonuses? A. Physical editions of Turbo Kid as well as Kickstarter backer bonus items will be delivered on or after our release date, this will all depend on shipping providers. We’ll have more info to share as we near launch. If you haven’t already, please take a look at the Kickstarter FAQ tab as these questions have been addressed when we first set up the page. If amendments are ever required, you will be the first to know.
Regarding development
2023 is our year and we’re confident that we’ll deliver a totally rad, totally chrome, version of the game. Content is well on its way to being created and you can learn all about our smaller achievements and progress updates via our Turbo Kid YouTube streams. If you’ve got questions, that’s the best time to ask live! We’ll also make sure to keep you updated as much as we can on Discord.
Q. The arrow keys aren’t the best for controlling the bike. Can you please add a key-mapping option? A. Absolutely! The full release of the game will include the ability to map your keys wherever you want them to be.
Regarding the Steam Demo
If you haven’t noticed, we put up a Steam Demo of a tiny gameplay portion for Turbo Kid back in later September/Early October. This is the best way to get a feel for the eventual release, bop to some Le Matos tracks and commit gory destruction.
Q. Will the demo stay forever? A. Yes! Or at least, until the apocalypse.
Q. Will you update the demo? A. No! We’re concentrating all our manpower on the full release of the game, but don’t hesitate to leave feedback on the demo page, we’re happy to have a conversation on game design or whatever you fancy.
Looking over the wasteland’s horizon
With that, thank you again for your continued support and we can’t wait to keep the conversation going. In the meantime, here’s what you’re actually here for, early looks at playable Apple in Turbo Kid.
Turbo Kid Live Streams @ Next Fest
The next Turbo Kid Live streams are coming for the October 2022 Next Fest
Streams will take place at 4pm EDT (8pm UTC) Wednesday October 5th Friday October 7th
Download the demo now, see how you fare against the people who made the game. Come join the conversation and don’t forget to wishlist the game if you enjoyed the demo!
