Taphouse VR turns six years old! 🎉
Hi! Fresh on the tails of a similar update to The Spy Who Shrunk Me; you're getting the soundtrack to Taphouse VR by Antti Luode to your Steam library!
Read on to get some more info about whatever happened with this game, the non-existent sequel and what the team moved to next.
The Soundtrack
Taphouse VR's soundtrack isn't an OST - it was actually composed by Antti Luode using his Antti's Instrumentals songs that he released to the world, royalty-free. So technically, we haven't "released anything", we just used those. I took the liberty of adding the name of the tavern the songs appear in, but that's it - track names correspond to the royalty-free ones!
All 9 tracks are available through Steam's neat soundtrack system - so it'll appear in your Steam library under "Soundtracks". It's free - as a thank you for playing the game!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2704080/Taphouse_VR__Soundtrack/
Looking back at Taphouse VR: A Brief Retrospective
As most of you know, Catland is long dead. The game IPs were bought out by the CEO & creative director Tomi Toikka (me, the one typing this post) in order to preserve them even after being lost during all the winding-down-a-company hustle. I really think Taphouse VR and The Spy Who Shrunk Me deserve to be enjoyed by gamers long after the company is gone - so I've been preserving, discounting and nurturing them since we wound down operations.
Let me take you back on a history lesson.
The birth of Catland
We made Catland during a business incubator called Nordic VR Startups (after branded as Nordic XR Startups). It was just three founders back then; me (Tomi), Anssi and Tommi (both programmers).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/591680/Taphouse_VR/
Virtual reality was still in its infancy. Here's the very first prototype video of Taphouse VR I could find.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_x5Wj_CSx0
This prototype got us to many places - including the incubator program. We even got to show off the game at Slush 2017! It was all thanks to our mentors in the program, who helped us turn a hobbyist weirdo project into an actual videogame. They helped us also with funding the thing and getting our team up and running.
This picture from October 2017 shows off the incubator program's companies and mentors. It feels like ages! Probably the most I've learned of anything in my life in such a short timespan. Keep in mind; this company was formed by three random people meeting in a bar in Forssa.
Here's us showing the game off in a XR event. The logo is still the coolest thing I ever made.
Humble Taphouse VR beginnings
Some of the first things I did (I made the first prototypes all by myself in Unity and VRTK) was the meme-filled labels on the drinks in the bar. I got some friends of mine (thanks Whitby and the other Tomi) to make me glass models and dwarf clothes. But I'm most proud of the labels, which were just in-jokes and memes from back in the day.
In fact, I gathered them to a PDF for you! Here you go: https://tomitoikka.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/TaphouseVRLabels.pdf
A hilarious news article
The most hilarious thing was when the Finnish press branded the game to be a gay bear bar simulator. That was a nice phone call from Mom when I was on the front page of Ilta-Sanomat. Here's a translated link if you don't know Finnish.
https://www-is-fi.translate.goog/digitoday/art-2000005366313.html?_x_tr_sl=fi&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US
The phrasing "The customers of the current version of Taphouse VR look strongly like teddy bear men based on classic gay aesthetics. According to Toikka, these are the elves or dwarfs of the game's own fantasy world." will be on my tombstone. Lmao.
The reason most of the dwarves in the screenshots didn't have shirts was because we had numerous clipping issues with the t-shirt models at the time...but I get it. It was hilarious.
For some unknown reason then, soon after the article, we released the Ladies Night content update with new diverse drunks to make sure we've got an adequate balance of colorful characters!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/591680/announcements/detail/1571059408646102833
The Spy Who Shrunk Me
There's a retrospective specifically for this part here!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/754850/announcements/detail/6968819156365318616
Taphouse 2: The Taphousening
Taphouse 2 was a project we announced that got shelved very early into development and our development effort went to Starship Saboteur's prototype instead - which we also shelved. Catland stopped existing shortly after, sadly, due to funding running out.
Taphouse 2 was meant to have new patrons (goblins), new interactables such as a new machine to play, new complex recipes and both PC and VR support. We simply didn't have the motivation or the skillset to actually do a proper sequel to the game back then, and in many ways the first prototypes of Taphouse 2 were vastly inferior to the original - trust me on that.
You can see some in-progress screenshots here.
https://www.igdb.com/games/taphouse-2-the-taphousening
Six years later
We took the death of Catland pretty hard, but all of us stuck to the gaming industry. I started a new company called Makea Games, of which I'm the CEO, Founder & Creative Director of.
For Taphouse VR, I made the first prototype, most if not all non-assetflip textures, marketing art, the taverns itself, all UI and much more I can't remember anymore.
For The Spy Who Shrunk Me, I did marketing art, the entire UI, wrote and scripted the cutscenes and story, made the initial prototype and came up with all the gameplay features.
Anssi, one of the founders and programmers, went to work on games like Surviving the Aftermath from Iceflake Studios and other projects, and is now founding a new game company!
Tommi, the other founder and programmer, went onto Iceflake Studios as well to work on Surviving the Aftermath and other cool titles.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/684450/Surviving_the_Aftermath/
Many of the rest of the development team moved onto my next venture. Out of the team, Ville (programmer at Catland who helped us with "liquid physics shader", now CTO at Makea Games), Bea (environment artist at Catland, now founder at Makea Games) and Pyry (all-around guru, now game designer at Makea Games) joined me at Makea Games.
If you're interested in what we're working on - we are making the ultimate parkour party game called Supermoves! You can check out some of the revealed stuff at supermovesgame.com. Put it this way; if you like Tony Hawk's, Mirror's Edge, Fall Guys and Minecraft - boy do we have a game for you.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1959580/Supermoves/
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there going to be a sequel/prequel/any followup for Taphouse VR?
We tried to make a sequel called Taphouse 2 but ran out of funding. We used to have a saying "Everyone loves Taphouse" which still holds true to this day. It always makes my day to see people still enjoying Taphouse VR!! But probably not. A remaster? Maybe, if I can find a developer for it.
Are you ever going to update or bugfix Taphouse?
I'm way too busy with my new company to do that, unfortunately. I'm not a programmer, but I would love for someone to migrate the game over to OpenXR from the VRTK it has now. Get in touch through Steam if you can handle it.
Could you release the source code for Taphouse VR?
Yeah, technically I could. This was however one of the first projects we ever worked on, so the codebase is really, really horrid. I'd rather get a programmer or two to remake it to work on newer VR headsets.
Will Taphouse VR stay on Steam?
Yes, as long as I am able to host it somewhere. I've been using my friend's company Adjective Animal for the games - the sales from the spinner go directly to funding the upkeep of stuff like accounting and business costs. I might make my own holding company someday to host it, it's no biggie.
Check out Adjective Animal's games (like the Smash-like topdown hockey game Puck Buddies) here.
Can I use the music in the soundtrack in my videos or streaming content?
It's CC BY 3.0!
Whatever happened to Starship Saboteur?
It didn't get funded. It was a neat concept though and I really learned a lot from it.
Will Catland ever make a return?
It was my first company and will always be in my heart. That logo I made in 3 minutes (and which required 3 hours to have the eye blink using CSS) is still the best damn logo I ever made. Maybe I'll keep hiding the logo around in my future endeavors to keep the spirit of Catland alive. But no, as a company and a studio, we've all drifted apart to our own ventures - we do keep a DIscord server up for catching up from time to time :) We used to have a saying; "from this poker table, we leave as friends". I hope people remember Catland fondly and give it the love it deserves. That's what we all want. Avenge us! ːsporobarː
What's next?
I'll keep the games nice and tidy in the Steam store so people can play them. Feel free to keep on playing Taphouse VR and The Spy Who Shrunk Me, grab a copy for your friends. I will keep doing discounts and general maintenance. If you really enjoyed the games and want more from the developers, I'll have some news about my next game soon as a separate announcement.
I can't really say how thankful for I am for all the players who've enjoyed Taphouse VR all these years. Thank you so much for having fun with the game! I wish all the best to you.
Tomi Toikka
Former CEO
Catland
