Hello-hello, lovely people! I hope you’re doing well and you’re as excited for the release as we are. This is going to be the last dev diary before launch, and it’s a chunky one 😄 So, let’s dive right into it.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been testing the game to make sure it runs well, and that no nasty bugs plague our launch 🐛🔫🐑 We’ve shared a build with a few folks, aaaaand… well, I think I’ll just show you what they made 😁 To say I feel inspired doesn’t begin to express it - I’m brimming with anticipation to see what y’all're gonna build once the game is out 🤩
(Higher res version here)
You might notice that the water in some of the screenshots looks a bit different. That’s because it slightly changes its appearance based on the glade you choose - and even turns into ice in Winter. Here is the same build in different glades. It really changes the mood :3
Speaking of mood, we’ve added camera filters to the photo mode 📸 They can drastically alter the tone, and turn a cutesy house into a sinister manor 🦇 Here’s just a few of them:
(build by Private117)
In addition to the color filters, we’ve also added two artistic effects: “painterly”, which overlays brush strokes (similar to the main menu effect), and what we call a “sculpture” mode, which turns everything white, leaving only the interplay of geometric details and light.
Another thing we’ve been working on is Daily Themes 📅 Each theme is a short prompt and a starting build. Hopefully they will provide a fun little challenge, and inspire you to try something new. We’ve already prepared 30 for the launch month 🙌
Right now, we’re making sure everything is ready for the release day, and ironing out as many kinks as we can. While we’re actively playtesting the full version, it is with a tiny group, and you never know what kinds of quirks can pop up in the wild. We’ve been diligent with backporting engine changes to the demo version - so most of the big internal modifications will have been battle-tested by launch. Even then, during the launch week we’ll be obsessively monitoring our crash database and bug reports, and actively patching the game (if you were around during the Steam Next Fest demo, we’re probably gonna have a similar patch cadence ^^).
Once the first wave of patches is done, our next big step will be Steam Deck verification. While you can play Tiny Glade on the Deck at launch, we don’t really recommend it yet. We don’t have a proper control scheme, so unless you’re using a mouse and a keyboard, it will be quite clunky 😅
Oh, and last but not least, we’re releasing the soundtrack for Tiny Glade 🎶 It will be available on Steam on the 25th of September, and on Bandcamp on launch day, 23rd of September.
Okie-dokie, I think this is it for now 😄 I’m gonna go back to other launch preparations :3 Thank you for reading, and we look forward to seeing your creations!
Much love,
Ana & Tom