Nova's Diary #10

November's almost over, so it's time for a new issue of Nova's Diary! (getting closer and closer to issue 12...)

And a special issue at that, because today we'll be talking a looot about our ongoing Kickstarter campaign!

*shill mode engaged* Please consider supporting the campaign by pledging, but just sharing it helps a lot nonetheless! 🤗

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/safeplacestudio/venice-2089

*shill mode disengaged*

DESIGN & STUFF

Ready for a wall of text?

Honestly, November wasn't much of a "design" month, at least not on the game itself. The reasons why you can already tell...

We can't stress enough how hard YET rewarding was working on our Kickstarter page, from pricing and reward-design to shaping the page piece by piece with our artists' quirky and colorful images.

And yeah, we finally launched the campaign. We put the mistakes we made back in June behind us and can now enjoy the overall great support we are receiving, and for that we all are grateful!

Another thing that absolutely deserves its paragraph is the Milan Games Week expo, that took place basically the same days of our grand opening (in fact it was all a pro gamer move for us to announce the campaign to an italian live audience). An incredible three-day event that brought back the nostalgia of pre-lockdown days and the excitement of having actual people playing your game in front of you, giving feedback on the go while a crowd of interested strangers watches and listens as you go explaining the main features of the game.

A special thank you to our proud event boys, Matteo and Giovanni, for their service o7

From left to right: Marina (Design/UI), Giovanni (Sound), Matteo (Producing) and Francesco (Director)

2D ART & STUFF

The same thing can be said about our artists too, as most of the time they worked on graphical assets for the Kickstarter page or for our social...

And about that, can we please take a moment to appreciate the beauty of our Kickstarter page? Granted, it isn't the non plus ultra of Kickstarter pages, but how many of them include popular memes such as this?

I swear this character has so much meme potential

After the start of the campaign and regaining our thoughts, work has begun on creating a new location: Grandpa's Lab, which will be pivotal from the third Day onward. It's still too soon to show you anything, so keep your eyes peeled for any news regarding that!

3D ART & STUFF

While our 2D team was at work with Kickstarter and stuff, our 3D artists have continued their work on texturing new models and game elements that will be put in our Venice. If you follow our Twitter (please do, it's a very fun place), you have already seen some of it, but here are some other screenshots!

PROGRAMMING & STUFF

Finishing as always with programming, a lot of bugfixes and code-cleaning took place, along with some feedback analysis fresh from the Milan Games Week (we'll probably get back to that next month).

Now, remember that very neat water shader that we showcased back in October? Our programmers (again, with the invaluable help of our designers) expanded on the concept, and just look at these results!

And that's all folks! November's done!

Whole lotta text this month, and a lot less media shown, but please remember what a rollercoaster these last few weeks were for us!

Hopefully this'll keep you