Dev Log #11 / Marbles & Grey Cells

Hi there, this is the first dev log about Paul on Steam.While PAUL has been in production for a while now, it has somehow become a joyful weekly routine: taking a moment, opening a beer, looking back at everything that happened during the week, and writing it all down. Before the Steam page was live, I already started this kind of dev log / production diary on Itch.io, and from now on I’ll also be posting it here. (On Itch.io there are already 10 DevLogs, which is why we’re at number 11 now.)

So, last week was pretty exciting. The Steam page is live, and the first wishlists have already started coming in (which is super motivating). After all the Steam page tinkering and video editing, I had to think about what the next step should be. As we all know, it’s very easy to get lost in details during game development. Sadly this applies to all disciplines, from code to game design to art. Planning and keeping an overview is half the battle. So I played through the current version of Paul from start to finish and took notes.

It turned out that the top item on my list was to focus more on the upgrade system. In Paul, there are marbles scattered throughout the worlds. These marbles store special abilities that can be projected into Paul’s brain using a marble machine.

This can give Paul more health, increase the range of his teleporter, and so on. Of course, Paul’s brain capacity is limited, which also limits the number of active marble upgrades. Basically you find Abilities and activate them with the Marble machine. So I set up a rough gameplay scene to see if the next playtester who wanders into my apartment actually understands what these marbles are all about and how the upgrade system works.

Oh, and since Paul is a mix of turn-based combat and exploration, there are of course secret doors, like this one hidden behind the fridge.

I also did a bit of animation work, but that would be too much for this dev log. Feel free to check out the results on our Bluesky channel (I think the Quantum Helmet turned out pretty well).

So, my beer is almost finished, and so is this dev log.

Have a great week, Tobi