VIDEO GAMES ARE THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD!!! Watch this video and tell me if you agree!
And then come see all these games & meet the devs March 8 in SF!
youtu.be/hJf0-dsb-nI?...
Tough choices were made my9games.com
Thanks Moo! Looks like you got solid numbers too, and I saw some great coverage for Mythmatch! Hope it means good momentum going into launch!!
Stylized digital illustration of Mulder and Scully from the X Files turning to look at camera at something, flashlights in hand. A UFO is flying by overhead, highlighted by an X in the sky. There are other X shape motifs in the shape of the flashlight beams nd the tree bark.
Do you want to believe?
Guess who's been rewatching the X Files~
Here's our numbers, with the context of ~62k wishlists going in. Pretty happy overall, though nowhere near as effective as Crow Country's NF in 2024...
General takeaway is that the store page does pretty well at getting wishlists by itself (~20% conversion during NF), the demo less so but still OK!
An interview about the development of The Mermaid Mask: www.respawnstation.com/2026/03/the-...
A photo of the Chibi Crow Country plush on a small table decorated with tickets and tokens. The plush is wearing one of the included accessories, a pumpkin-shaped hat that goes down over its eyes.
A photo of the I Survived Crow Country shirt, a black shirt with a screenprinted souvenir-style design reading "I Survived Crow Country 1990." The shirt is spattered with red ink to simulate blood.
A collage of some of the items included in the Crow Country Deluxe Edition, including reversible cover art, a folded poster, trading cards, an instruction booklet, stickers, and an "investigation journal."
Don't let anybody tell you it's cheating to just buy some Crow Country souvenirs online instead of visiting the park yourself.
Browse the full collection here: www.fangamer.com/collections/...
And taking advantage of Flash's nested timelines is a big part of the puzzle, being able to independently play back or set frames on those allows for a super flexible character model, closer to the way 3D animation can independently animate different parts of the body
Absolutely, it would work for any style, we just happen to have the vector look. The general idea is that a whole frame of a human gesturing packs pretty badly and almost guarantees no image reuse, but automatically breaking it up into smaller chunks allows for much tighter packing and reuse
Thanks! Aim was balancing texture memory (one 4096x4096 texture per character), render speed and flexibility, and also making sure the animator/artist don't have to worry about any of that, just frame-by-frame animate right into Flash!
Definitely going to redo it here soon with new features...
It's an older thread, and it's on The Bad Place, but here's how we handle 2D animation in Tangle Tower, and in our upcoming game The Mermaid Mask - I'm going to enjoy doing a thread on all the new animation tech I've added since, it's a lot!
x.com/SFBTom/statu...
Check out some of the concept art slides from the Art Gallery feature we added to The Mermaid Mask steam demo!
Crow Country is $9.99 on Steam buff.ly/Af9MN6M
Xbox buff.ly/agUKfIP
Deck verified
also on PS+ Extra
Checking out some Steam Next Fest demos this weekend?
🧜♀️Try The Mermaid Mask!🗡️
Like Ace Attorney, Monkey Island, Professor Layton, Tintin & Indiana Jones had a detective adventure game baby
We have over 65k wishlists so far, help us reach 100k by launch!
store.steampowered.com/app/1696770/...
Just under 2 days left to enter!
Me: ugh, everything is getting less and less colourful these days, bring back the bright palettes of the 90s
Also me: I NEED THE BLEAKACHU
For reference / #gamedev info, our most recent game Crow Country in 2024 had:
30k wishlists before Next Fest
40k wishlists after Next Fest
60k wishlists a week before launch
80k wishlists the hour before launch
So I'm cautiously optimistic The Mermaid Mask will do OK when it launches this Summer
Checking out some Steam Next Fest demos this weekend?
🧜♀️Try The Mermaid Mask!🗡️
Like Ace Attorney, Monkey Island, Professor Layton, Tintin & Indiana Jones had a detective adventure game baby
We have over 65k wishlists so far, help us reach 100k by launch!
store.steampowered.com/app/1696770/...
GOING LIVE FOR DAY TWO 👀
Giveaways in Twitch chat every £100 raised for #Gameblast26 @specialeffect.org.uk! Keys kindly provided by @sfbdim.bsky.social @sfbtom.bsky.social @panicdepartment.bsky.social 🥰
twitch.tv/lomadiah
youtube.com/live/gDhz1_P...
I'm gonna do a list of my favourite Next Fest demos, but for now:
You owe it to yourself to play the demo of The Eternal Life of Goldman. The fact that you get to see animation this delicious FOR FREE is insane. The trailer doesn't do it justice but here it is anyway
youtu.be/PrfqckMmWW4?...
We've been getting the most wonderful responses to the Mythmatch Demo for Next Fest.
store.steampowered.com/app/2490290/...
It's a perfect weekend play so help us keep the momentum going!
And if you've played it and loved it, please leave a review to let others know it's worth taking a chance on!
Is this mogging? 🫱🦋
an illustration of sally and grimoire from the detective grimoire games. They are running after a fishing line with a piece of seaweed on the fish hook. Their shadows are large on the wall behind them. the shadow of an offscreen serpent is looming behind them as well.
an illustration of sally and grimoire from the detective grimoire games. They are peering into the submarine door from the mermaid mask demo. they both have apprehensive expressions.
I'm so excited for The Mermaid mask!
you should wishlist it perhaps 🔎
No generative AI was used in creating The Mermaid Mask - this game is the result of nothing less than a small group of very talented artists working hard for a long time!
A shame it even has to be said, but it's important to restate our values when making games:
No GenAI. Ever.
I wrote it! First for our 2019 game Tangle Tower, and then upgraded even more for this one!
Thanks goes to @panicdepartment.bsky.social for helping us set up the competition!
We're having a The Mermaid Mask giveaway to celebrate Next Fest!
Three winners will take home a bundle including:
🕵️Handmade crochet amigurumi of Detective Grimoire & Sally
👕The Mermaid Mask t-shirt
🍫Bar of “HER” chocolate
Head to our Steam news post to enter:
store.steampowered.com/news/app/169...
It's so that it lines up in my code with:
Soul (character)
Clue (uh, clue)
View (location)
This is what the dialogue tool looks like in our Mermaid Mask Unity project. I write the script directly into these boxes, select facial expressions if it's for an examine box, as these are, and I include voice directions, since it later gets exported as a script for the voice actors
Thanks to @sfbtom.bsky.social's custom pipeline, at the press of a button we can export a script file that's automatically formatted, ready for the voice actors:
