NIGHT SPASM 3 YEAR PRE-RELEASE ANIVERSERY Dev Log (#3) | Some news and such...

Hello Spasmers, Gideon here.

Can you believe Night Spasm was announced 3 years ago today?!?! May 15th, 2020 marked the day the Night Spasm store page was set up, about a year after the project was started in my potato of a computer. Since Night Spasm's release as a demo via Chapter 1, Chapter 1 has gone from a playable (yet underdeveloped) project demonstration to the fully-fledged starting chapter we have today. Now the base game of all future chapters, Night Spasm has become a project I'm proud to share. Heck, I was so scared of people thinking my project was weird that I didn't even tell my family about the project until 6 weeks before I announced the project to the public! Now I've had the honor of showing Night Spasm to the world and meeting hundreds of wonderful people throughout my career. ❤

It's been a while since I've posted something, so I figured now's the perfect time to give y'all an update regarding Chapter 2 and show you some cool things I've been doing either on my own or with the development team.

Night Spasm news

Chapter 2 status:

Development on Chapter 2 is slowing down a little bit, but this is actually a sign of how close we are to the final product. The development team consists of contract/commission workers and many resource contributors (artists, musicians, programmers, etc.) supporting Night Spasm out of their own interest. Most of the contract workers have finished their jobs and have been compensated accordingly, meaning all that's left for me to do is implement the resources, program what remains of the chapter, and eventually set up the Steam store for Chapter 2's grand arrival.

I absolutely can not WAIT to show you guys all the fun and challenging moments Chapter 2 has to offer! Assemble your colony folks... this is just the beginning of an adventure you'll never forget!

(PSST... if you want to hear some music featured in Chapter 2, visit my Soundcloud page!)

Website status:

Don't worry, we're getting there! We're just ensuring everything works as intended, from the Newsletter system to the rewards page (you might want to keep that one in mind).

For now, here are some snapshots of the site:

Oops, ignore that last image... I'm not too sure where I got that. What am I even looking at? Whatever.

The website will be up sooner than later. Making weird-looking websites are hard, ok?

OH AND BY THE WAY... The website will include a new blog page featuring all sorts of content such as behind-the-scenes stories, bits of advice about game development, leadership, and business, lore drops, and other random little things worth reading. The extra-relevant stuff will still be hosted through Steam, but I figured it would be easier to separate the news from the storytelling, you know? I hope you'll continue reading both my insights and my silly goober material.

Version 1.0.7.11 coming May 16th

There are a lot of new game mechanics coming to Chapter 2, as well as a lot of quality-of-life material. Upon developing some of Chapter 2's new features, I decided to apply some features to the actual game engine so both free-version and paid-version players can enjoy the optimized engine changes, which include the new quality-of-life features.

The update adds some other little content changes to Chapter 1 as well. Remember, Chapter 1 is a preview demo of the full game (Chapter 2 and above); Even though the Steam page considers the game fully released on May 15th, 2020, the TECHNICAL full release of the game is when Chapter 2 comes out. Don't worry, Chapter 1 will always be free, but after Chapter 2 is fully released, the only changes to Chapter 1 from that point will be any changes to the engine. Console editions of Night Spasm (should they ever exist), individual DLC expansions, and new language translations are the only exceptions.

Some other recent projects:

My presentation at S.O.U.R.C.E:

Recently, I've been extremely busy preparing to present two massive presentations at my college Central Washington University (CWU), one of which is for an event called SOURCE. I've been given the honor to present Night Spasm in front of a large group of students of all types of majors. There I will talk about the gameplay of the game and how developing a video game positively affected my career and personal life.

Interesting story, I used to be a Computer Science major due to my interest in game development (I had another game project and a massive fan project before I developed Night Spasm). But, as I truly got to experience leading a team and owning a business, I decided to major in Information Technology & Administrative Management (ITAM major). I realized that it is the designing and directing aspect I enjoy so much of game development, not the technical aspect. As the oldest of three younger siblings, I've always done my best to lead and help people in any way I can, and now I'm doing that through Night Spasm. I enjoy the creative arts and storytelling side of game development the most, especially music, being the music nerd that I am.

Anyway, I'm a little nervous, but it will be very fun. I will post my slides and script on the store page after the event is over.

"Cat Tank" event:

Have you ever seen that one TV show where business owners present their business idea to a bunch of investors? The show known as Shark Tank? Yeh, I'm doing that... kinda...

I'm competing in a knock-off version of Shark Tank called Cat Tank, also happening at my college. I came up with an idea for a new product that could actually become a reality someday. Who knows. All I know is you can't predict the future, but you can shape it with enough sweat, ambition, and medium-sized iced mocha coffees from Burger King (caffeine doesn't affect me anyway, but they're very tasty).

While I can't provide the script and slides for this presentation, I can drop the logo here with no context!

I really like the color orange, don't I? I don't even like oranges.

Well, that's about it. A nice brief dev log I'll forget I wrote in like 2 hours. Expect the update tomorrow and have fun messing around finding those extra secrets I added. Patch notes will arrive shortly!

Please consider following the Night Spasm Steam Community page and our other forms of social media. Your feedback and support are greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading!

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