We’re working away at completing Puzzle Spy International and it’s feeling like we’re in the last downhill stretch heading towards the finish line. And it’s not a wild, uncontrolled mad dash to get there but instead a nice measured pace. We have a number of people playing through the full game now and giving us notes, and we’re going through them one by one. Some are simple to fix like typos and awkward phrasing. Others involve changes with code or how we’ve designed puzzles and hinted at their solutions. After some brainstorming, we came up with a fun and efficient way to show more granular hints for the first puzzle in the game. And sadly, some suggestions are out of scope, or just things that RenPy cannot do as an engine.
Another important necessity for launching is a trailer! I (Mike) have taken to learning DaVinci Resolve - a popular video editing application - and have been busy getting a trailer together: Recording footage of my playing, exporting custom pieces of art from the game, cutting and editing it together, and synching it all to one of Alex Doty’s more intense pieces of spy music from the game. I’m really excited about the result, which is a lot more punchy than the slow gameplay trailer that I produced earlier. Alex not only provided the music but he’s also quite adept at sound mixing in general, and it working on a final sound edit of the trailer this week. It came together really smoothly, so I may end up with enough time to produce a second trailer. If so, we’ll have one to announce the release and another to announce the launch.
One of the things we want the trailer in time for is the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which Puzzle Spy International will be participating in. As I’m writing this, tomorrow is the broadcast of the Thinky Awards sponsored by ThinkyGames.com. PSI is nominated for the most Anticipated Game of the year. But I’m super-excited to see who wins all of the awards! The week after the NextFest will be the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, USA. I’ll be there and hopefully giving out PSI stickers. I can’t say for sure where you’ll find me most of the time, but I am once again helping organize the Thinky Game Developers gathering in Yerba Buena Gardens so if you attend that - and you should, it’s a blast! - you should be able to find me there. And soon after all that is when we’re planning on launching the game! We’re looking forward to everyone getting to try it out… Cheers!