Engine Upgrade, Fish Run & Spookity Hollow

Hello Everyone!

I got some interesting Gilbert news for this update, so let's get right to it!

Engine Upgrade

Play With Gilbert has been upgraded from Unreal Engine 4.25 to 4.26. Luckily it wasn't as much of a headache than I feared it would be. Alongside upgrading the engine version I've also attempted a number of smaller fixes and changes to the game. Nothing you should notice while playing.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This engine upgrade requires a fresh new savegame. Don't worry, the game will handle it by its own and you can decline but the game may become unstable. This should remain a rare occasion since I am not planning any big upgrades in the future.

Fish-Run Returns

I am happy to announce that Fish-Run has finally returned to Play With Gilbert Remake proper! Fish-Run remains largely un-changed from the original game, except that it can now be played in single-player, where the goal is to beat the high-score. Another big change is that the game mode no longer requires it's own dedicated level. You will find Fish-Run within certain levels and just walk up to the Cheep-Cheep and ask to play.

Currently Fish-Run can be played in Gilbert's Neighbourhood, The Park and Down Town. Each level offers a slightly different variant of the game. Ranging from two or Three runners that drop fishies, time limit and the terrain being played in. I plant to experiment a bit more with Fish-Run in the future and see what other kinds of terrain I can play with, I'm currently thinking of trying it out in the water. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

When I created the original I would run circles around my daughter but the tables have turned. While recording the footage for the promo video My daughter beat me 4 out of 4. I'm so proud of her and it's really cool to see how much she progressed her skills from when she started 4 years ago haha. I hope you'll enjoy the new iteration Fish-Run as I have, I'm keen to implement other mini-games as well at some point!

Meet The Cheep-Cheeps!

I won't dwell on the Cheep-Cheeps too much here as they will be properly introduced at a later time when the focus is put on them fully but while they are technically introduced into the game through Fish-Run with this update, I have bigger plans for them in the long run. They're cute, funny looking "birds" that whom will serve a larger role in the game going forward.

Their main purpose lies in being able to talk to the player. They'll be the ones offering narratives in future updates sometime in the future. They will also play a significant role in Spookity Hollow, a new stand alone game in the Gilbert Franchise which you can read all about below!

Spookity Hollow Coming Very Soon

Spookity Hollow is a stand-alone companion-piece to Gilbert, see it as an expansion adding some new mechanics and a big, Halloween themed map. It has a spooky castle, a graveyard, lots of pumpkins and a lot of Cheep-Cheeps. As mentioned above, Cheep-Cheeps add a little narrative to the game and while it's certainly not meant to drive any sort of larger narrative, they do provide with small little expositions and other fun little quirky topics to help with a small bit of world-building. Watch the short trailer below. (Which has some WIP footage, since I'm still doing some art-passes, etc.)

You'll also be able to fly a magic broom, read books with some cute stories my daughter wrote (which I edited for punctuation and very light corrections). There are magic potions and some other gameplay features that I'm still working on.

It's also important to note that Spookity Hollow is compatible with Play With Gilbert. One of the ideas behind the remake of Gilbert was to keep it compatible with offshoots like Spookity Hollow. This means that Customized kitties (and unicorns) are brought over from one game to the other but this also works the other way. You can customize your kitty in Spookity Hollow and bring it back to Play With Gilbert. This also means that certain features that are introduced in Spookity Hollow (such as the talking Cheep-Cheeps) will be brought over and introduced in PWG.

If you're interested in the game you can wish-list it now, The more people wish-list the game the better it will do on launch (and visibility on Steam in general) The game will launch with a discount as well, or just wait until the Halloween sale this year! So any help from the awesome community is always highly appreciated!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739150/Spookity_Hollow/

That's It For Now

I hope you enjoyed the update and will have fun playing Fish-Run and I can't wait to share what's to come as soon as possible! Thank you all for the continued support and stay Meowsome everyone! Joure

Steam post image