Hello again!
We’ve had an eventful 5 weeks since we last updated you all on what’s been happening within our little studio and Before We Leave, which is now a two-time award winning game! Ahhhh!
As always, the full version of our monthly blog posts are available on our website, but I’ve tried to summarise the main points from it for you all to read here. It's pretty lengthy, so get comfy!
The Planet Editor Update
We’ve been working on our next update that will include a Planet Editor! We’ve been teasing this on and off for a few months now, and it’s awesome to be getting to a point where we can show it off to you all. I asked Sam (aka Chiefmonkey, our lead developer and creative director, for those of you who don’t know!) for some particulars of the update -
“We're working on the Planet Editor Update. As you might guess, the main feature is allowing you all to design your own planets - with your own islands and terrain, and whatever arrangement of trees, animals, houses and waterfalls you like. Designed planets can be selected to be included in your games alongside normal randomly-constructed planets, and will be shareable through Steam Workshop and as simple files you can give to friends. And, hopefully, they can also be used as the basis of player-created Scenarios later on!
We've just reached the point where we've sent a build of these features out to testers for feedback. The update will also contain a bunch of changes to the main game. For example, just this morning I implemented the changes necessary to allow Forests to be constructed without being next to a Road, which has been requested a whole bunch.”
We're hosting a preview of the Planet Editor update over on our Twitch channel this coming Wednesday, the 21st July at 10am NZST - the VOD will also be available here on Steam and on our YouTube channel, too. If you're keen to see more of what we're doing, please check it out! :)
Another Kind of Update
As well as working on updates for Before We Leave, Sam and I have just completed an overhaul of the Before We Leave Discord! We created a bunch of off-topic channels and roles so people can have conversations about things that aren’t Before We Leave related (a convenient excuse for me to get to know all the interesting and fun people in the BWL community), as well as some extra BWL related channels. We love to chat, so come say hello!
The “Across the Ditch” award
We were nominated for the Across the Ditch award at the 2021 Freeplay Awards (some context - Freeplay is Australia’s longest running independent games festival, and has a focus on the artistry of games, particularly ones made by small teams, like us!). We were absolutely thrilled to learn that we’d won - thank you so much to the judges and Freeplay for choosing Before We Leave, and considering our game worthy of such a cool award. Congratulations to the other nominees and winners, too. You can watch our victory speech here.
In studio related news - we’re on the lookout for our fifth team member, we’re heading to NZGDC in August, and we’re also celebrating our one year anniversary of moving into our lovely Dunedin office!
Thank you so much for reading this lengthy post, I'm looking forward to bringing you all more news next month.
Emily :)
Community Manager