Universe For Sale
Celebrating One Year of Universe for Sale
About a year ago, we launched Universe for Sale which was a beautiful, hand-drawn interactive story which pulled on the heart strings of the audience. Yes, we are technically a month late and it was 13 months ago since launch but uhhh… Jupiter has 13 month years. Yeah, let's go with that.
I talked a little with Tmesis Studio about Universe for Sale in celebration of the one year anniversary and wanted to tell you a little story about how Universe for Sale came to be.
Federico met Zeno by chance 10 years ago during an evening out. When Federico learned that Zeno was a comic book artist they collaborated on The Spirits of Kelley Family which was released a few months later. Tmesis Studio was officially formed years later with the creation of Universe for [Sale[/i] after several years of personal projects.
Zeno remembered a time when Federico was cleaning up their Telegram chat to get organized but he didn’t realize that deleted a lot of the backups they had sent to each other for the project. Thankfully, nothing current was lost but they couldn’t revisit some older iterations.
Tmesis had trouble coming up with the right idea for an indie game of their own. While Zeno and Federico spent countless nights pitching some ideas and discarding others, they eventually settled on pushing themselves to create something a bit out of the ordinary.
Universe for Sale started as a comic book in which the game remains extremely similar to the original comic idea. Tmesis Studio said the biggest challenge was creating a gameplay rhythm that maintained player attention, especially during dialogue-heavy moments. The pacing, character interactions, and even some plot points had to be adapted to fit the interactive nature of a video game while ensuring the players stayed engaged.
Some changes that had to be made to the story when transitioning it to a video game to help it flow. A lot of the lore and details were initially more static in the comic format. For the game, Tmesis Studio had to create more dynamic story beats and dialogue to ensure the player felt actively involved. They also added branching conversations that could change based on player choices. Most of these changes were to give the player some control over the progression of the story, making the narrative itself a part of the gameplay.
Tmesis Studio wants players to feel like they've sat down for a chat with old friends in a warm, comfortable place. The universe may be vast and strange, but it's the small, human connections that make it feel alive and real.
To celebrate, you can get the game for 18% off in the steam winter sale until Jan 2nd. Now's a great time to pick up the game! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1627840/Universe_For_Sale/
-riv otter
Akupara Games Celebrates 8 Year with Sales and Livestream
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/akuparagames8thanniversarysale
Also, to celebrate, we will be hosting a multi-hour stream with tons of activities, announcements, and more! Stream is starting at 11:45 PM PDT! We really hope to see you there - and here’s to another year of publishing your favorite indie games on the market
https://www.twitch.tv/akuparagames
- Riv otter
Patch 1.3 | Updating Traditional Chinese and Korean Grammatical Issues
We have just released a small patch note which fixes some minor graphic details, updated traditional Chinese and Korean texts, and more.
Full Patch Notes
- Solved a bug in the market that softlock the master in an animation when entering in a market (robot) if pressed on the Robot seller when the master is walking inside.
- Fixed some minor graphic details.
- Updated credits welcoming traditional Chinese and Korean translators.
- Updated traditional Chinese and Korean texts correcting many grammatical issues.
- Fixed a bug (but no locker one) in the cult chapter where a contextual balloon could be opened within a dialogue between characters.
- Riv Otter
Universe for Sale won outstanding art in Italian Game Awards
Universe for Sale won outstanding art in Italian Game Awards!
The Italian Game Awards reward the best video games published during the year and promote the cultural and artistic. If you missed the awards and want to watch it, you can view it here!
Congrats to all the other games that also won awards in the Italian Game Awards. It was a blast to see all the creativity in the different games.
- Riv Otter
Patch 1.2.0 - Adding Traditional Chinese and Korean
We are still hard at work with Universe for Sale! We have just released a patch which adds Traditional Chinese and Korean localization to Universe for Sale!
Here are the full patch notes!
- Added Traditional Chinese and Korean localization
- Fixed a bug on church that bring to skip the pc minigame
- Fixed some graphic details.
- Riv Otter
Universe for Sale - save system change patch
We have just released a patch which changes the save system in Universe for Sale which makes them more stable.
Unfortunately, saves from before this patch can’t be carried over to this new save system. We have opened a beta branch which will allow players to continue saves from before this patch.
To join the beta branch follow these steps.
- Right click Universe for Sale on the side bar and click properties
- Click the Beta tab in the Steam window that opens up
- In the drop down menu in Beta Participation, select "old-savegame"
- Steam should start downloading the branch automatically and you’ll be on the old save system again!
Thank you all for working with us.
- Riv Otter
Build 1.0.5z - Upcoming Save System Changes
However, to achieve this, we had to change how the game saves progress completely. The old saving system caused many issues.
We advise you to update to the newest version when we release it shortly. But, doing so means you will lose your existing save progress.
If you want to keep playing on your current save, we've moved this game version (1.0.5z) to the "old-savegame" branch on Steam.
Please set this in your Steam game settings!
Patch note 1.0.5 - Fixing various softlocks
We have released a patch to fix some of the various softlocks that have been reported plus fixing the steam overlay appearing upside down.
Bug Fixes
- War Chapter: players should now be able to progress past shooting the first set of robots.
- Game shouldn't softlock when clicking haphazardly when entering rooms.
- Lila’s Market: softlocks in various places of this chapter should be resolved.
- Teahouse: players should no longer softlock during the first universe making scene.
- Fixed small graphical bugs and typos
- Steam overlay no longer appears upside down when notifications pop up.
- Riv otter
Nominate Universe for Sale for Outstanding Visual Style
First off, thank you for the amazing release of Universe for Sale. It has been great to be able to share with you the beautiful heart wrenching story that Universe for Sale tells.
Steam Awards voting starts now! The Steam Awards are a community-voted celebration of the best games on Steam, announced every year. There are many categories that we can vote for however it is best we unite to vote on one category for Universe for Sale!!
We're asking players to band together and vote Universe for Sale for Outstanding Visual Style.
Every scene in Universe for Sale is beautifully hand drawn showing off the warm colors of Jupiter’s environment in the space colony with each character having a unique appearance!
-Riv Otter
Universe for Sale Patch 1.0.1
Thank you for the amazing launch yesterday! I hope you all have been enjoying the hand drawn art, the wonderful music, and story of Universe for Sale! Did you remember to pet the lomri? Only 25% of players have gotten the achievement for petting the lomri which means 75% of lomris remain unpetted.
We have released a patch that updated the controller functionality as well as fixed some other minor issues. You can read the full patch notes below.
Patch Notes
- Credits updated
- Minor bugs fixed
- Controller functionality update
- Riv Otter