I want to thank this community so much for sticking with us.If you are reading this, we are so grateful that you have stuck with Watson's Watch. Many people have said really encouraging things over the past years to us and we believe you need an update on what has happened.
Answers to some Questions
I would like to take a moment to cover some questions I have seen.
Q: What happened to the Development Team? A: I will write an explanation further below in detail. The short answer is Life has taken us in different directions and game development is hard when you have no time to collabroate.
Q: I cannot purchase the game due to a pricing problem? A: It was recently brought to my attention that many people have been posting about this issue and I have been unaware. We will make it a point to fix this for those of you who are having the issue. Steam requires us to do a few additional steps that we will do our best to complete so that you can purchase Watson's Watch. Thank you for letting us know about this issue.
Q: Is Episode 2 a sequel or DLC? A: No, when you bought Watson's Watch we promised to deliver all 3 episodes to you included in that purchase.
What happened?
I would now like to take a bit more time to discuss what has happened with development of the game and the team. Watson's Watch Episode 1 was created while the team was without employment. Shortly after the release of Episode 1 we found ourselves with full time employment. I, myself, had moved 2 hours away from my home and even was sleeping on the couch of the co-author while I was trying to start my career. Since then, our lives have changed even more. We currently work opposite shifts, live an hour away from each other, and the constant contact we once had has shifted to being an occasional message back and forth. This is partly the fault that I have changed jobs again, moved locations, etc. I know this isn't the full story, nor is it an excuse. You can even see most of this information in the last update post. I think this gives you a bit of insight about what has been going on that has put this project on hold for so long. While we cannot promise we won't be busy, we have decided we do want to pick up the project again.
So what about the game?
Recently talk has resumed about getting Episode 2 to you. However, literal years have passed since we have touched the project. The original content for Episode 2 is being scrapped and reworked. To be honest, the original script was probably too confusing a jump from the previous episode and dealt more with a metaphorical look at morality rather than an actual continuation of the story. The main focus was that we wanted Episode 2 to include a larger amount of player choice. A karma system was made but choices did not feel satisfying and often felt confusing. This long break has provided a new perspective not only about what you, the players, want but, also what makes the most sense for the project as a whole.
Episode 2's new direction
Now that we are picking up the project again we want to focus Episode 2 on the relationship of our Protagonist and Antagonist. Without spoiling Episode 1 we want to cover their past and how the events of Episode 1 came to happen. We also still want to provide the player with interaction and choice rather than just a constant point A to B runaround. Episode 2 will end with a choice that will have an impact on the finale which will be covered in Episode 3.
In closing - A thank you to everyone
Thank you so much for your questions, observations, reviews, concerns, complaints, and all the other support you have given. If you have read this far I would like to extend an offer to you. If you are willing to, please let us know what you want to see in Watson's Watch. In the end, Watson's Watch has always been about making a story that we all want to see. Your feedback has been uplifting for us to see that people still care about our project. We have always meant to come back to finish it but now are in a much better position to resume work on it. Thank you for being patient and supportive.
Status Update
First off,
apologies on our long term silence. Things have been crazy for everyone this year which has made progress much harder and slower than what we wanted.
However we felt it was important to update you on the current status of the game. Progress is still being made, maps are still being created and polished.
Although everything is moving forward, it is moving at a much slower pace than we would like.
What Happened?
Basically, life happened. Our lives have become significantly more complicated and much more busy. Going from a lifestyle of significant amount of freetime to having a much smaller amount has caused the development time we originally had to get shoved around and sometimes missed. New jobs, new careers, new homes, new environments, new schedules, etc have left us struggling to find that dedicated time slot for Watson's Watch development.
However, we are working on our resolve to find within our complicated lives and schedules, time to work on this game.
The Future
So where are we going from here? Well, because of how things are going we are looking for ways to keep you, the player / customer / awesome person, involved in the development and rewarded for your patience.
This is why we want to get a Beta Branch of the game out. Basically this Beta would be content that we have moved on from in a development sense and more into a semi-finalized state or more playable state. This also allows you the ability to have a deeper look into how things are made and how we are moving forward as well as potentially telling us if you like or dislike the way things are being shaped before we have finalized what has been done.
Another thing the Beta will help with is our accountability to you, with you playing the more unfinished content it would be a much better motivator for us to have you involved, to let us know what works and what doesnt, etc and therefore we can move forward with new enthusiasm.
Finally, we wanted to make it clear this was never a situation of "All Early Access Games developers make something and never finish it." It has always been our intention to finish Watson' Watch (at the very least so that we can move on to other projects)! We thank you for your patience and your support and we hope that with your help we can make up for lost time and get things moving in the right direction again.
Thank you
Trading Card Update
The new Watson's Watch Trading Cards are here!
About
There are 9 trading cards in total.
Each one features one of the characters from Episode 1 and bio information about them.
All card drops should be obtainable in about a playthrough of Episode 1.
Sale
In addition to releasing the Trading Cards, we are having a promotional sale!
Watson's Watch will be 50% off between Jan 7th and Jan 14th.
Hey everyone, Trading Cards are finally here. It took a long time, but we are happy with how everything turned out. The drops for emoticons and profile backgrounds turned out well and we are excited to share them with you.
Feel free to let us know what you think and share the news about the sale to all your friends!
Hotfix Version 2.9
Fixed
Fixed an issue with the Extra Talkative Achievement
Hey everybody, we needed to put out a quick fix for the Extra Talkative Achievement. Long story short, it was not possible to talk to Chad all 8 times, we fixed this by changing around when the conversations happened a bit.
Thank you all for the continued feedback.
Update Version 2.9
Fixed
More of the script has been fixed.
Corrected the wallet you find. It had the owner's age listed as TBA.
Changed
Completely changed the exterior maps of the game.
Added new sidewalks and building exteriors that look much better than the previous graphics we were using.
Hospital Interior layout has been redesigned to be more realistic.
Moved around some phrases and events for better and more logical timing.
Added
A few new people to talk to, be sure to look for them!
A few new filler hotel guests / staff!
2 Achievements for Chad the barkeep! (be sure to check in with him frequently)
Hey everybody, again sorry about how LONG it takes us to get updates to you. A lot of stuff has happened for both of us. Family, Funerals, School, Work, and general Life has made it hard to keep up with updating the game. Also the build we were on was stable and we didnt want to update too little at one time.
This update (Version 2.9) should be the last thing we work on Episode 1 for a while. So now we can finally move on full speed ontowards Episode 2 content and getting it out to you.
Trading Cards are coming. We have made a whole lot more progress in the last few days. The current plan is to have them out even before the next update.
Steam Cloud Saves are coming. It would have been in this update but I accidently jumped the gun and put the achievements for this update out first publicly and then realized some of you may have wanted to try to obtain them but would not have been able to if I didn't update the game right away. That was my bad.
Hopefully soon, we can figure out how to transition the current saves into cloud saves without ruining anything.
Feedback for this update and the state of updates would be appreciated as always. Are we doing well? What features do not exist that you would want?Please feel free to ask away about anything.
Also as far as feedback goes, we are always looking for bug fixes and improvements. What about the current game looks or feels bad? What could we improve? Are there any bugs or glitches we have missed or neglected to fix?
Again, thank you everyone for your support and we hope you are enjoying the game.
Progress Update 1 [Conversation]
Progress
First off, we just wanted to reach out and let everyone know we have not abandoned the game. We are still working on it, progress is happening. Things are just moving really slow. That is why we decided to start this conversation about future updates.
Haste leads to mistakes
A lot of stuff has happened since releasing Watson's Watch. The community has been much more involved than we had expected (which is incredible, thank you all again) but the downside of this is that we realized how unpolished our game really was. There were a lot of easy to miss mistakes made in the name of haste to get the game out and working. To add ontop of that, there were features that were requested or things we decided to add that were never originally planned.
Future Updates
Episode 1 should be finished and fully polished by Version 2.9, hopefully.
The idea is to hopefully have Episode 1 completely finished and to only come back to it at a significantly later time. Too much time has been spent fixing what we needed to in Episode 1 that Episode 2 has been delayed.
Version 3.0 is the "planned" release of Episode 2. A few other things we want to do with 3.0 is finally get Trading Cards for the game. We have plans for them, and we have assets available to create them, it just hasn't happened.
Update Chart
Updates and You
We will still be working on Episode 1 for a little bit longer. This is where we ask for your help. This game is Early Access and a lot of titles that fall under Early Access are known for the developers making a bunch of money and promises and then running. We don't want to do either, we would like to hear what you want added to our game and more importantly your game.
Comments, Questions and Discussions are welcome here. Thank you.
Update Version 2.8
Fixed
Roughly one fourth of the current script has been revised and / or corrected in regards to spelling and punctuation.
Controller buttons were mapped poorly but they should now be mapped to more logical buttons.
Changed
Darkened the Message Window Tint and edited the red font color, hopefully to aid visibility / readability.
Added
New ability to interact with objects. It will bring up Inspect | Use | Cancel upon interacting with objects.
New conversations with random people.
Added more townspeople around town.
Added save points that automatically come up during key points of the game.
New Achievement! Beat the game in less than 40 mins to get this one!
Removed
Many shiny interactable spots on the environment. Due to adding more interactables it should be more engaging to just inspect everything rather than have shiny spots tell you where stuff is.
Apologies for how long it took for us to get this update out.
We are working on Episode 2 still. It is happening. Don't worry.
Episode 2 is currently still on paper but the script is finished, we just need to get it digital and acted out.
As far as Trading Cards, we have the graphics for them but we just need some time to figure out what we are going to do with the giant space we have been required to fill. The images we have come no where close to the amount of space we are supposed to fill up. The current plan is to fill this unused space with our pen and paper notebook sketches and writings. This will give those who collect all the trading cards a nice behind the scenes look into early development stages of the game.
Update Version 2.7
Fixed
A missing sound would cause the game to crash when using items that were disabled / greyed out.
Changes
Save and Load SFX are now custom sounds rather than repurposed default RTP sounds.
Removed
53MB worth of unused music and sounds. (this cuts the game's current file size by almost 1/3rd.)
Thank you everyone for supporting the game and helping us further refine Episode 1.
Big Sale News!
Indiegala currently has a $1 bundle going on right now with Watson's Watch in it! Also for couple extra dollars you can get a bunch of other games too!
The sale can be found here: https://www.indiegala.com/friday
Be sure to check it out if you have Watson's Watch wishlisted or want to give it to someone else as a gift as this price only lasts for this bundle.
Version 2.6 is out!
Version 2.6 Change Log
Changes include:
Added 4 Steam Achievements
Removed roughly 200MB of unused assets from the game
Added a fix for a graveyard softlock glitch
Changed & Tweaked SFX to be less annoying and less stock RPG MAKER VX ACE sounding
Adjusted Credits to include Script authors that were forgotten
Removed a dialogue issue in the Police Station where the Detective claimed to be going somewhere he wasn't
Rephrased a dialogue issue where the Detective claims he needs a drink.
Fixed a spelling issue in the interrogation scene
We would like to stress that although Save Files should still work in this update, all updates do contain risks to corrupt saves. The best way to get around this is to save often in multiple save files.
This game is still in Early Access and we would like to ask for your continued support in tracking down bugs, please feel free to report any issues you find. We especially need your assistance in this update as we removed 200MB of files to optimize the game.
As always, thank you very much for your continued support of Watson's Watch.
