First of all:
We have a new demo, available to play right now!
Wayward Strand is a part of the Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW) showcase, which is starting now - Sep 30th, 10am PDT / Oct 1st, 3am AEST. We'd love to invite you to check out our demo, which is available from the start of the event. Here's a handy widget thingie that you can use to go to our page to download it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080450/Wayward_Strand/
It's been quite a while since we updated our demo (our last one was built in October 2019!) so there's a lot of new features in there to have a look at. I've written more about the new demo features further down this post, but I'll tell you about MIGW first.
Melbourne International Games Week
Affectionately known as MIGW (Mig-Wuh), Melbourne International Games Week is an annual celebration of all things Australian games. During MIGW there are loads of events and parties, sales, conferences and so on. Developers use it as an opportunity to catch up or get together at the pub, and it's also the time when all sorts of industry folks from Asia, Africa, Europe, The Americas and Oceania travel 'down under' to meet or give talks, and to do business (sometimes also at the pub!)
Specifically, MIGW highlights games made in Victoria, which is one of Australia's largest states, and definitely the most prolific for game developers - mostly because there's some funding support available for developers here. Lots of game developers from around Australia and even New Zealand move to Melbourne to chase their development dreams, and Wayward Strand wouldn't be able to be made without support from both Film Victoria and Creative Victoria. These are state-government bodies here, and both do a lot to bolster the entire industry from the ground up.
Some of the events which happen during MIGW include PAX Australia, and the amazing Parallels Showcase, which is part of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival.
The Freeplay Parallels Showcase is our favourite games event each year. It puts a spotlight on some incredible local games, and always fills us with inspiration and hope for videogames. I'm sure this year will be no different - and even better, it's free! You can register for a ticket here, and I've embedded this year's trailer too, to whet your appetite!
We want to thank Creative Victoria for putting together this special Steam Event as part of MIGW 2021. It will be highlighting several Victorian-made games, including ours - there are so many fantastic developers here and I really hope you can find time to dig through the demos, through the sale and through all of the great streams and talks happening.
Streaming
We'll be doing a live stream - a playthrough of our new demo and it's features, as well as looping some of our other streams from other events, such as LudoNarraCon, so be sure to check them out.
If you'd like to catch our live stream...live, it'll be happening on the MIGW event page as well as on our steam page at:
11AM AEST October 1st
5PM PDT September 30th
(You can just subscribe to the event linked to this post, and you'll get notified when the stream is about to go live!)
There are seriously so many great games and developers to check out during the event. It’s impossible to cherry-pick our favourites without just showing our mates off - so please explore it yourself.
I really think your type of game will be there, whatever it is, because there’s so much good and diverse work being made here in Victoria!
Now, about that new demo...
The Demo:
New demo! New demo!!!
We decided to make a new demo for this event. We've actually been working really hard on some other things, mostly on what we're calling a 'Day One Playable', which will serve as a production guide for us as we head towards release. Knowing how long it takes us to make 'Day One Playable' will hopefully tell us how long it'll take us to make Day Two and Day Three playable too. Then we will have 3 days playable, which is a finished Wayward Strand.
SIKE!!!!!
Nah, there's always more to do. We're working on the beginning of the game too, and the ending (both have been really exciting work, it's fun to develop bits of the game outside of the time spent on the ship). We're also busy working on some exciting VO stuff which I am sure we will blog about when that process starts, and as always we are working with our accessibility and cultural consultants to make sure Wayward Strand can be enjoyed by as close to everyone as possible.
The new demo has a few tastes of what we've done for Day One Playable so far, including some lovely new UI improvements, a bunch of new scenes (and even new characters). Various visual improvements here and there, although most of that will plop together like baking a cake which we'll share once it's finished baking. Trust me, it's yummy, (and yes I licked the bowl.)
Does the new demo have bugs? Probably! Hopefully not too many. With a game like ours which has so many moving parts I can't help but wonder, as I write this (about a week before we finish it), if we'll find some weird stuff in there.
As I mentioned, we’re going to be doing a live stream during the MIGW event, where we’ll be playing the new demo and exploring some of the new features - so come along to see those from our perspective, or watch the replay as it loops throughout the event.
Here's that handy widget again:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080450/Wayward_Strand/
That’s all folks!
Thanks so much for following along as we make this beautiful game.
I hope you enjoy the new demo, and I also hope you enjoy the MIGW Event on Steam.
Thanks again to Creative Victoria for the initiative.
Goldie, and ghost pattern.