I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas or any other holiday that you celebrate!
Full notes
Full The Funnel update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
What changed
0 fixes2 additions2 changes0 removals
Compatibility
Balance
Events
Store
changedI hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas or any other holiday that you celebrate! We took a break from working on The Funnel, but we're back at it and I can happily say that the main part of production is now complete. We've moved into our internal testing phase and if all goes well, we'll expand to private beta testing in a month's time.
changedDESIGNING OBJECTIVESFrom the very beginning of designing The Funnel, I wanted to offer as much choice as possible so that the player could really make a story that they wanted to experience. Looking to an immersive sim game like Thief has been very helpful as it often uses simple open ended objectives and then leaves it up to the player to figure out how to achieve them. An example being something like "retrieve an amulet from this castle" and then it's up to you how to enter the castle and so on. This is a little harder to do with a narrative focused game as I have to write the dialogue for every possible outcome. But, I've tried to strike a balance by writing dialogue in chunks that look at single game conditions, so that they can be slotted in through different points in the game. That way there should be a decent amount of variability in the events the player experiences, but also at what points in the game those events occur.
addedUNIQUE MINIGAMESAn important part of replayability for me is actually experiencing new content in those subsequent playthroughs. I think it's always a bit disappointing when you make totally different choices in a game but the large bulk of the content ends up being the same. With the main part of production now complete, The Funnel features nine unique minigames, but there's only two minigames that you'll always experience in a playthrough. The rest of the minigames are connected to different story events, so you'd actually need a minimum of three playthroughs to see all of them.
addedKEY ARTBefore we wrap this up, you might have noticed that our key art has changed. I wanted something that would pop out a bit more in the steam store, and also feature an aesthetic that might fit across multiple games to really establish a Bronzeman Studio look. I hope you like it. Here's some of the new art:
The Funnel changes
changedI hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas or any other holiday that you celebrate! We took a break from working on The Funnel, but we're back at it and I can happily say that the main part of production is now complete. We've moved into our internal testing phase and if all goes well, we'll expand to private beta testing in a month's time.
changedFrom the very beginning of designing The Funnel, I wanted to offer as much choice as possible so that the player could really make a story that they wanted to experience. Looking to an immersive sim game like Thief has been very helpful as it often uses simple open ended objectives and then leaves it up to the player to figure out how to achieve them. An example being something like "retrieve an amulet from this castle" and then it's up to you how to enter the castle and so on. This is a little harder to do with a narrative focused game as I have to write the dialogue for every possible outcome. But, I've tried to strike a balance by writing dialogue in chunks that look at single game conditions, so that they can be slotted in through different points in the game. That way there should be a decent amount of variability in the events the player experiences, but also at what points in the game those events occur.
addedAn important part of replayability for me is actually experiencing new content in those subsequent playthroughs. I think it's always a bit disappointing when you make totally different choices in a game but the large bulk of the content ends up being the same. With the main part of production now complete, The Funnel features nine unique minigames, but there's only two minigames that you'll always experience in a playthrough. The rest of the minigames are connected to different story events, so you'd actually need a minimum of three playthroughs to see all of them.
addedBefore we wrap this up, you might have noticed that our key art has changed. I wanted something that would pop out a bit more in the steam store, and also feature an aesthetic that might fit across multiple games to really establish a Bronzeman Studio look. I hope you like it. Here's some of the new art:
I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas or any other holiday that you celebrate! We took a break from working on The Funnel, but we're back at it and I can happily say that the main part of production is now complete. We've moved into our internal testing phase and if all goes well, we'll expand to private beta testing in a month's time.
This week I wanted to talk a bit more about replayability in The Funnel.
DESIGNING OBJECTIVES
From the very beginning of designing The Funnel, I wanted to offer as much choice as possible so that the player could really make a story that they wanted to experience. Looking to an immersive sim game like Thief has been very helpful as it often uses simple open ended objectives and then leaves it up to the player to figure out how to achieve them. An example being something like "retrieve an amulet from this castle" and then it's up to you how to enter the castle and so on. This is a little harder to do with a narrative focused game as I have to write the dialogue for every possible outcome. But, I've tried to strike a balance by writing dialogue in chunks that look at single game conditions, so that they can be slotted in through different points in the game. That way there should be a decent amount of variability in the events the player experiences, but also at what points in the game those events occur.
UNIQUE MINIGAMES
An important part of replayability for me is actually experiencing new content in those subsequent playthroughs. I think it's always a bit disappointing when you make totally different choices in a game but the large bulk of the content ends up being the same. With the main part of production now complete, The Funnel features nine unique minigames, but there's only two minigames that you'll always experience in a playthrough. The rest of the minigames are connected to different story events, so you'd actually need a minimum of three playthroughs to see all of them.
SATISFYING ENDINGS
I think one of the hardest parts of a branching narrative game, is making sure all the endings feel satisfying. That's not to say that every ending should be positive, but I never want the player to feel like they wasted a playthrough because of the ending they got. There's more than twenty ways to reach the end of the game in The Funnel, and some of them are certainly negative. The way that I've tried to still make them enjoyable is that each ending offers some unique information that the other endings don't. You might play through one ending and think you've figured out the truth of what's going on in this world, but maybe there's a completely different viewpoint from another ending, that would change your understanding.
KEY ART
Before we wrap this up, you might have noticed that our key art has changed. I wanted something that would pop out a bit more in the steam store, and also feature an aesthetic that might fit across multiple games to really establish a Bronzeman Studio look. I hope you like it. Here's some of the new art:
Thanks for reading and as always, if you know someone that would like The Funnel, share it around!
