Spring Down Under for the Steam Fall Festival

Hello!

It's Goldie! I hope you’re cosy and wrapped up in various blankets, hoodies, oodies, onesies or jumpers right now, because it’s time for the Steam Autumn Festival! My very witty title would have worked better if they’d called it the Steam Fall Festival, but I appreciate the language too. Autumn just has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Autumn.

Makes me think of all of the best parts. From the chilly, crisp air, to the warm ciders, grey skies…Beautiful golden leaves, darkening evenings. Late season honey, pumpkin soup, apple pie…and of course, videogames on sale uwu.

We’re dipping our toes into the world of sales - we’re offering a 10% discount on Wayward Strand this week - not bad! Maybe it’s time to pick it up, or maybe now is a good time to tell a friend or family member about us?

Ok I’ll fess up, it’s actually spring in Melbourne! We’re climbing out of winter (allegedly), but boy is it still cold, wet, windy. Almost as if…the climate has…changed? Nevertheless, it’s been lovely having lighter evenings. And some of the days have been glorious - warm sunshine, flowers popping off.

So how are we going? Pretty good. Busy!

What have we been working on?

Saves

The big one is saves. We definitely heard you loud and clear that we need more save points!

I want to be upfront: I, Goldie, am not a programmer. I usually do the art stuff for the game, so I won’t be the best person to speak to the technical particulars but I do understand that there’s a good reason that implementing saves into Wayward Strand has been quite tricky. I think it’s likely to do with needing to work out a way to let the game know WHERE every single character is at any point in time, as well as WHAT information that character has about you - what did you say to them, what have they said to you, do you know X, and have they told you their thoughts on it or not? What did you say to someone else and how does that impact them? All of that sort of stuff. Honestly, I’m sure it’s complicated.

If you’re curious about this work, I definitely invite you to come to our discord and chat about it with the people who are working at it.

We’ve also been busy with patches of course! There are a few blog posts here on Steam outlining changes we’ve already pushed, if you’d like to check those out. Off the top of my head, there have been standard bug fixes, and we’ve also unlocked a few achievements which weren’t possible to get (they are now all possible to get!) And of course there's been the big change of letting players load in to any of the three days once they’ve completed a full playthrough. You can always see our full patch notes here.

Speaking of achievements, a bloody huge congratulations to UnbrokenOdds who, as far as we know, was the first person to ‘100%’ Wayward Strand, in a way. They’ve collected all of our achievements which is a ridiculously big achievement in itself. I can’t imagine how many hours they played to do that! Well done to UnbrokenOdds, and to everyone else who is getting close, or who may have done it by the time I’ve posted this blog. Inspirational!

What else?

• Well, as usual I’m going to remind you that reviews really help - we don’t have many but we’re reading them all and being filled with warm feelings, and appreciate each one. If you have 5 minutes and could sling a review on Steam, that would be super great!

• Our other request is to think about anyone in your life who you think might be a good fit for Wayward Strand. If you’ve played it, you know that it’s highly accessible, and perhaps especially to people new to games. Maybe you have a family member who would like it?

• We’ve been enjoying watching everyone Stream the game - get in touch if you’re on Twitch! The best place to get in touch is probably over on Twitter @WaywardStrand.

Oh!

We've been nominated for a Golden Joystick!

Did I write about that in another blog? Freakin’ wild. What a huge honour to be nominated for Best Storytelling - like…the games we are alongside are so, so great. It really made us feel proud and excited. At the time of posting, the ceremony is just 2 hours away - you can watch the award show at 12PM PST November 22 on Twitch or YouTube.

Jumplight Odyssey

Finally, did you know that our very own Jason was lead developer for League of Geek's amazing debut game Armello? Well, he was! League of Geeks have just announced a VERY cool looking game (two games, actually, but I'm gonna talk about the one with a badass space captain princess).

"Keep hope alive on your adventure to the mythical Forever Star! Gather survivors, repair and build out your starship, brave black holes, and fend off attacks, all while managing the daily soap opera of your colorful crew."

Kinda seems like Rimworld meets Two Point Hospital? Neato!

Check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1893820/Jumplight_Odyssey/

Anyhew, I will wrap this up, much like the gifts I'll be wrapping this time next month! Exciting times!

Love you, thanks for being here.

Goldie & ghost pattern.

PS: Steam backend can be quite confusing, so if this blog post disappears after the sale ends, I'll repost the newsy bits as a general update <3

TL;DR Steam Autumn Sale. Wayward Strand 10% off!

Starts

Tuesday, November 22 at 10 AM PST (Nov 23rd 5 AM GMT+11)

Ends

Tuesday, November 29 at 10 AM PST (Nov 30th 5 AM GMT+11)