Salutations, Sweepy Heads!
We're back with another Clean Sweep Devlog! If this is your first time here and you don't know what Clean Sweep is, let us tell you!
Clean Sweep is a comedic 3D character action RPG where everyone in Cleanland is a personification of a real world cleaning product! As the Town Janitor you'll befriend the residents of Cleanland and team up with them to fight germs!
This is Jess, the super awesome and epic creative director, art lead, chief distractor, and many, many, many other things.
Progress
Programming
Guess who can sprint now? That's right, the Janitor! Cleanland's favorite first responder can now huff it across the overworld! But not yet. We haven't implemented it. But in the grand scheme of time and existence, soon!
The programmers also babysat the writers through quest and route event implementation. Now, the writers have the power of knowledge, and the programmers have the power of… more time on their hands.
Nelson told me there was a lot of refactoring happening. And I'm not too sure what that means. But I can guess that the game will be better.
Design
So. About that combat update… Combat is getting COMPLETELY revamped! Like, WAY more than originally planned! Unfortunately, that means we probably won't have anything to playtest in the near future. HOWEVER, we can strongly predict you'll have more fun with the new version!
FAQ
"Dearest cleansweepthegame devs, what changes are you planning for the new combat system?"
What a great question.
Here's our plan (or at least everything I'm at liberty to share):
Overworld Combat
As a janitor, it didn't really make sense to have your only source of combat be through Janitor Jobs that are just available… all day… Now, combat will happen randomly throughout the map, and saving people LIVE will be how you make your dough! Also, leveling up will happen in-world.
The Newer and Cooler Janitor Jobs
Janitor Jobs will still exist in Town Hall, BUT, they'll be catered, carefully designed challenges built to test your mettle. They'll be fixed at a certain level and will still rotate. You can replay jobs for the same rewards, but they'll be marked as completed after you beat them the first time (for all our completionist gamers out there).
Cleanland > Clean Lands
A seamless world of Cleanland (except for interiors probably), no more loading screens! Just one big ol' Cleanland!
Combat Prep… On that Damn Phone
If you weren't already addicted to delicious screen time and Instagram reels, now you can be in Clean Sweep too! On your phone, you can now preload items and preselect party loadouts for when you enter combat. You can run away from combat (but you won't get rewards). If you fight to the bitter end and get KO'd, you will get half of the FXP you earned from killing the germs, and… they might rob you. 😳
Germs!
More germs! Quirkier germs! BETTER germs!
It'll be an exciting new direction to pivot our combat system, and we hope Sweepyhead Nation enjoys it!
Animation
Remember how we said last devlog that we were prepping for motion capture recording? Well, happy to report that we started off the month strong with a MASSIVE MOCAP L. And y'know what? We're OVER IT!! After being burned one too many times by evil mocap suit sensors, finicky software, and the general powers that be, we're shifting to hand animation! Eat it, mocap.
Audio
Ironically, things have been mostly quiet in Audio World, but our composer has been cooking up some straight heat! We've got another awesome combat track to get your sweep on to! Be ready to get your groove on. 😎
Art
2D item sprite production is back underway! Abi's currently working on the Wipe Flushin' and Jenny is cookin' up some Lintguini. Here's a quick peak at some of Abi's awesome thumbnails. For those unfamiliar, thumbnailing is a part of the art pipeline where artists create a bunch of sketches to ideate around a visual concept, or in our case, based off of the item description and photo reference. It gives artists the opportunity to get creative and think about different ways something can be designed or visually represented.
Wipe Flushin' thumbnails by Abi Laure
Can you guess which one we picked?
New props are coming in hot! Our 3D environmental artists are finishing up props for The Periodic Table and The Experimental Bar… two locations that are full-game exclusive. You'll unfortunately have to hold your breath on that for a little while longer, but know that we're hard at work in the meantime.
In my humble Art Lead opinion… I think there's some dissonance with the characters and the environment, especially in the texture department (I can say this without hurting anyone's feelings because I sped textured like 90% of the environment to get it out for the demo). I want a game environment that we can all be happy with! And with that, comes the Era of Experimentation – we need to diagnose what's breaking the visual cohesion and bring out the personality of the world. Our first attempt at ameliorating the issue will be a style test on the environment and props with handpainted textures. Stay tuned for how it goes!
Also… I made the devlog image :D we love Olive <3 Imagine Wave and Lysa and Shawn are there with her for DePod family Thanksgiving. Stay tuned for a timelapse of that coming soon. But be forewarned… those who watch will be cursed with knowing how inefficiently I do things knowledge.
Writing
Cleanland's infamous Wedditor has once again been a big topic of discussion in the writing meetings. I mean, how can he not be? Writing for Vinny's quest arc… has begun. Expect twists! Turns! Curveballs beyond your wildest dreams! And most of all… expect Vinny.
As I mentioned earlier, we learned how to implement quests and route events in engine! We now are MASTERS of the flow nodes Change Camera and Change Location and Change Camera and Location… and so on and so forth.
Production
It was a dark Tuesday night. A cold wind howled through the November sky… Something… was amiss. Perhaps, perchance, for a long, long time… The producers (and creative director) called in an Emergency Meeting to address the elephant in the room.
The game… is not fun.
CLEAN SWEEP IS NOT FUN!! Who wants to play a game that's not fun?! NO ONE!
And while we've made our new literal game plan (see design section), we want YOU (yes, you!) to tell us WHY Clean Sweep isn't fun! I promise we can take the feedback. Hurt our feelings. It will make us stronger. Find it here:
https://forms.gle/7B8Z6sEsEUXyWHcE9
In other news, we did not get into Boston Fig, but we got a lot of helpful notes to help us identify areas of improvement!
In OTHER other news, we did get into a review program with game designer Alice Winters! We're looking forward to sharing the game with her, and we're excited to get her valuable feedback.
Thanksgiving
We gave thanks! And took a lil breakypoo. Us devs want to share… that we're thankful for everyone in Sweepyhead Nation. <3
Dev Corner
Welcome to the Developer Corner! This is a space where we ask the developers of Clean Sweep a question. With the the holidays on the horizon:
What's the number one gift you're hoping SC Jenkins Scenta Claus will leave under your Cleansmas tree?
Jess
As much as I would love to say a job and an apartment, I have a feeling SC's I mean Scenta Claus' pockets don't run that deep, so… let's just go with holiday cheer, and a few extra Sweepybucks for good behavior.
Renee
World peace. 🙂↕️🫶🙌
Nelson
A desk 😔
Assoapciate of the Month
Our assoapciate of the month is… drum roll please… (badabadabadabadabada BA): Abi Laure!
Introduce yourself!
Hi!! I'm Abi Laure and I'm an illustrator who does the item sprites!! I looveee drawing food and drinks and currently discovering the beauty of Stardew Valley! 🐬 🌈
If you were a janitor, what would you clean with?
A pressure washer is calling to me....for sure can't use that inside tho.
What Clean Sweep food item do you want to eat?
Contaminut Shrimp!
If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be?
Peach :D I think they're neat.
Thank You
Thank you for reading! You can find devlog updates on our steam page or on itch.io. If you want to follow along with our game, check us out on our socials below.