Hello everyone! GameZoo Studio here once more with a brand new update.
To kick things off, I would like to share the good news that we've just broken through 100,000 wishlists on Steam (cue applause)! Massive thanks to everyone who helped us reach this number.
We would also like to take this opportunity to discuss where we are in the development of SCP: Secret Files? How is the game progressing? When is it expected to launch? And what can we share regarding the plot of the game?
It has been more than three years since this project first started, yet actual development time probably totals just over a year. So what were we doing for the rest of that time? Well, to paraphrase a certain Foundation:
"We huddled in our small studio in front of workstations, fearful of the things we didn't understand: those hard-to-fix bugs, those rejected proposals, those warnings of "insufficient budget." These are the obstacles we were tasked with overcoming.
In time, the number of these obstacles dwindled and we become stronger. The direction of our project made more sense when there were fewer things to fear. Yet, development hurdles never truly go away, as if the industry demands the absurd and impossible.
But our studio cannot live in fear. No one else will protect us, and we must stand up for ourselves. While everyone else enjoys their holidays, we must carry the burden and move forward in order to finish our game as quickly as possible.
We aim to release on Steam, Console, and Phone."
The Steam page for SCP: Secret Files officially launched on August 23, 2021. Over the following three months, as our game attracted players from all over the world, wishlists quickly grew to almost 30,000. However, at this point in time our game was less than 35% complete. Looking back, it was probably a mistake to launch our Steam page so early in development, and we're sorry to have made everyone wait so long.
Around October of last year, fuelled by player interest in our game, we pulled a few all-nighters in order to cobble together a working demo that could be used for presentation purposes. We are very grateful to everyone who participated in closed testing and provided valuable feedback (including one player who submitted four 20-page feedback documents!) Thank you for helping us to improve.
In February of this year we gained access to a high-quality recording studio and a number of professional voice actors, and set about recording the English voice lines for our story about SCP-239. Most of the recording process went well, but we were yet to find a suitable actress capable of portraying the protagonist, who happens to be a little girl (after all, we don't want to be accused of illegal child labor!) Fortunately, one of our friends saved the day, and so this problem was eventually solved. This particular protagonist has a significant number of lines, and the performance requires quite a bit of intensity, so we can only assume that our little actress was close to losing her voice by the end of it all. The entire GZ staff salutes her!
SCP-239 Original Plot
For our story involving SCP-239, we chose a point in time during the infancy of the anomaly (earlier than the official website setting). Following initial containment by the Foundation, Dr. Sean conducted a series of inhumane experiments on SCP-239. Another doctor, named Valette, believed that Sean's methods were unconscionable and decided to apply for the cultivation of anomalies by humanitarian means. However, is Valette's method really the correct course of action? And what is the fate of the anomaly?
At the end of March, a friend from London asked if we would like to participate in the WASD offline exhibition, as this would enable fans to try out our demo. We jumped at the opportunity, packaged the first three chapters of our game (the most optimized at that time), and submitted them to the organizer. WASD was a great experience for us, with many players enjoying our game and others offering useful suggestions for how we might improve the gameplay.
This all brings us to today, as we approach the end of May, 2022. SCP: Secret Files now stands at 70% completion, and the number of wishlists on Steam has just surpassed 100,000. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks for this. We hoped to have a demo available for everyone to try by April, but regrettably this has not been possible. However, we are now aiming to have a demo available in time for Steam Next Fest on June 13th!
So, if you haven't already added the game to your wishlist, now's the perfect time!