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[ratrogue]

Some recent GIFs. We currently try to give the game a bit more life, by adding little animations.

The sun


Banners


Butterflies


Breaking a vase


Making a triangle, water


Birds


The start portal

[ratrogue]

Some new screenshots (a bit of fake posing):

 

Aaand we have a publisher now - read more about it on our blog.

[Savick]

Congratulations!

[ratrogue]

@Savick: Thank you!

...

We decided to make a new "trailer" showing the gameplay. I mainly recorded footage for the purpose of the upcoming Gamescom, but Jana suggested to slap some music on it (as usual, I used the background music for TRI made by my brother Ludwig) and upload it as a trailer.

If you compare it to

from when the game still was Alpha you hopefully notice a few new things: There are all new levels shown, and the creation of the triangles got easier because of some visual feedback.

[ratrogue]

I guess I should write about my latest progress, although it just feels like there wasn't any. The thing with TRI is that now a lot of smaller things have to be done, so there is nothing I can specifically write about. And to make it worse, with the upcoming Gamescom Jana didn't have much time to work on the game as she had to prepare a lot of marketing material and so on. This makes it hard to actually *show* new things, as she is responsible for the visual side of the game.

Okay, at least I made two or three animations for the Fox God in the last level, so it's a bit more clear what is happening there.

I also added some more fox appearances in the earlier levels. He's still not implemented from the light ray levels on, but at least you can catch a glimpse of him now and then in the beginning (this will be important for the Gamescom). Of course, the Monk is still missing, too, which really should be solved soon, when we finally have the remaining story bits for the later levels. Especially because he is the player's guide his absence really is noticeable.

I also try to add some small "puzzles" to a few levels to make them more interesting. The beginning of the Labyrinths level was changed a bit by adding an optional button puzzle. And I added some acid to the level with the mill wings (made by Jana), just so it feels like a small challenge. It also introduces acid in a nicer way than before.

Other "new stuff" includes a new method for the noise filter (no one will notice that probably), and a few new sounds (like water splashing near water and acid pools). Put your head under the water and the sound will be muffled. We changed most of the level names (they are a bit too long now, but sound nicer). The outlines for some of the texts (e.g. subtitles) are now generated via a shader (with 9 passes, oh my!), not by creating 8 text meshes like before. And hopefully there are less bugs in general, but I can never guarantee that.

Oh, and hereand thereare some pretty pictures of the material for the Gamescom I wrote about earlier. (There's more, but we didn't collect it in one place, yet.) Seeing such stuff makes it much more "real", somehow. I guess I just sit in front of the computer for too long.

[ephoete]

Didn't check this one for a while neither. Really witty stuff. It's actually going more off-the-wall than I'd have thought first.

[ratrogue]

Last week was Gamescom week. It was very exhausting, and a great experience overall. My feet are burning, and my voice got lost somewhere between Thursday and Friday, but a lot of people played TRI - and best of all, most of those even liked it! My favorite visitors were two girls who came with their mother, and they got so excited while playing that they visited our booth half an hour later again, just to ask if there is a possibility to find out when the game will be released! (There is, just subscribe to our newsletter.)

Yes, we had a booth to showcase TRI. We were part of the Indie MEGABOOTH, and so we exhibited together with more than 30 other developers in individual smaller sub-booths. We met a lot of cool people which was one of the greatest things about this. Because I don't really think showing the game to (a fraction of) 335,000 visitors actually would have a significant effect on sales or overall popularity - we were located in a less prominent hall and most visitors still didn't care about indie games or could identify them as games at all ... This is why we gave our flyers only to those who stopped to have a look at TRI.

Despite of the AAA preference of most visitors we got some valuable feedback again, and some of it not so valuable. One person didn't think a price of $15 would be justified and told us to lower it to $10 maximum; but other than that almost all feedback was positive. Of course, one reason might be that players who disliked TRI didn't care about telling us why, haha.

I will make the sprinting (via Shift key) less restrictive even though I didn't want it in the game in the first place. In the end it doesn't really matter and if it makes some players happier it shall be - thus the fatigue bar will cease to exist. I guess a valuable lesson in this regard is that most times TRI is played for the first time anyway. Sure, some people might play it more than once, but this will be only a fraction of total plays. A game like TRI should be designed foremost for first-time players. It's not a roguelike after all.

Some people even asked what we planned for our next game. We don't really have a concrete idea yet, all we know is that we want to make a smaller game which should potentially be able to run on consoles and maybe even mobile. Perhaps we do something with local multiplayer. It's just that you need to invest some time into TRI before you "get" it, and the controls are restricted to mouse and keyboard because of the necessary precision for the triangles. Both are factors that makes it hard to generate a hype about the game for the broader masses, which is very unfortunate for us and something we really want to do better next time.

It helped a lot that I took out the second level for the demonstration on the Gamescom; so basically you would start in the Tower of Nowhere as soon as you beat the tutorial before the temple. This way players reached the main gameplay (the triangles) within five minutes instead of 15. It was also interesting to see that some persistent visitors even got to the regions where you walk on the walls and ceilings. One very brave soul directly started a later level, Glimpse of Light, and only a few hints were needed for him to beat it; but of course he needed longer as he didn't have the knowledge of the former levels - he didn't even do the tutorial. It's great to see that people can easily spend an hour casting triangles everywhere.

One of my personal highlights of that week was that Sos Sosowski lured Alexander Bruce to our booth - and he actually played it for a while. Some people even compare TRI to Antichamber (among other games), but this is farfetched in my opinion - TRI is much more conservative in its game design and visuals. On the other hand some people will always find comparisons, because that's how the brain works, and those comparisons might be strange in your own perspective. Though I don't really understand at all how anyone could think of Shadow of the Colossus when seeing TRI.

[jctwood]

Wow, I remember watching a playthrough of an early prototype and saying to myself: this will be amazing. It certainly lives up to my expectations!

[ratrogue]

Time is running out, so here's only short update on TRI. In the last few weeks,...

• ... I created some secrets and hid a lot of statues and idols.
• ... we removed TRI from Desura completely.
• ... I added the Monk and Fox in every level where they were missing.

• ... I added some animations (made by Jana) to the Monk and Fox, and voice overs (recorded by HOCGamer) to the Monk.
• ... I scripted a small scene for the ending, so the Monk thanks you for your accomplishments and does a bit of magic.
• ... I changed all levels here and there, according to feedback I got from Jana and others, and fixed one or two small bugs.
• ... I added a subtle sky to the first level. (Jana still needs to change it a bit.)

• ... I added more achievements to Steam (still missing images and translations).
• ... Spanish, Italian, Russian and French translations were added. I wrote a small tool for that (in Haxe) in order to convert CSV files to XML.

• ... we went biking.
• ... I added a small effect in the GUI when you collect the key statues.
• ... I created some ingame tutorial texts on the walls, so the creation of triangles is easier to get.

• ... I fixed some errors with the animated camera FOV.
• ... I added some arrows.

Now, before we're going to create the interface and content for the bonus content, I'll try to make a new trailer.

Regards,
overhead

Bonus GIFs!

[ratrogue]

We will release the game on Thursday, October 9th! After all these years, we finally have a date.

[wccrawford]

I saw the first page, loved the aesthetic, and wanted to buy it.  Then I saw that it was the sequel to that other triangle game, which was awesome, and was sure I was going to buy it.

Then I went to the page and I have to wait to buy it.    Is there a reason not to put it on Humble now and release the Steam Keys when available?  (Oct 9th, I assume, from the last post.)

[ratrogue]

Hey thanks!

Our publisher advised us to take down the buy options until release, but you can still get TRI on itch.io and IndieGameStand (we just don't link them on the website for now). If you're desperate for the HumbleStore, though, you might want to click on this secret link.

The stores don't have Steam keys yet, I hope we can change that very soon.

[Rebusmind]

Guess I'm a bit late to the party. Congrats on the soonish release!

[Scott]

Wow congratulations! I remember seeing it a long time ago and anticipating it, but I forgot about it until now. Glad to see it's come this far! 

[wccrawford]

Weird.  I can't imagine why they didn't want you to have preorder sales.  It seems completely backwards.  At any rate, you got my money. 

[ratrogue]

Cool, thanks a lot!

We finally have a Steam page, but I still have to fill it with a new trailer and new screenshots.

[ratrogue]

With TRI soon being "complete" (not really, but you know how it is), I created a release trailer. It was a bit unfortunate that I had to make one because I didn't have that much time, but for an adequate representation of the game just in time for the release it was necessary.

We also made a whole lot new screenshots, which you can see at the Steam store page and our website.

The game will be out finally on 9th October, but there is still a bit to do - mostly adding some missing sounds and lights to the level. It would be awesome if I could add some optimizations, too, as the game is too slow in fullscreen, but unfortunately I probably won't have enough time (and knowledge) for that.

[ratrogue]

This will probably my last promo entry here. Sorry for being so spammy about it, but I should at least mention that TRI is now fully released on Steam, GOG, IndieGameStand, our website, etc. pp.!

Yay!

One of the last things I did for TRI was adding an option to change the colors of the triangles. It was not really needed, but as the game is a bit about design (you create shapes everywhere), why not letting the people be even more creative?

And as a side note, my brother released his soundtrack for the game on Bandcamp. Even if you hate the game, the music is really awesome, IMHO.

Thanks to everybody who was interested in the game!

[quixotic]

Grats on the release! The game looks fantastic!