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[Hover]

Stacksquatch
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Heyo! This is a puzzle-action virtual reality game that's pretty fun and cute. It's also coming to early access soon so throw it on those wish lists :D

A cozy VR action-puzzle game about balancing towering stacks to meet cute cryptids on colourful floating islands.

• Explore across locations, seasons, and sizes to build the best stacks
• Chat with the cryptids you find, all with unique dialogue, hopes, and dreams
• Sit down or run around, whatever your space allows
• Enjoy accessible, intuitive gameplay without violence

Sit back and stack with Dogtective!

The gameplay relies on VR+Hands hardware and impressed some of my VR skeptic friends. Not every VR game needs to be Skyrim or DDR but  v i r t u a l  

It's also pretty family friendly with accessibility features and fun without violence. I like to think that in an alternative timeline it's the game that Nintendo made to sell Labo VR.





Story

As the newest member of the Stacksquatch Society, your hobby is wandering the wilds to catch a glimpse of elusive cryptids. However, you have a secret weapon up your sleeve: the General Object Balancer to stack the world around you. Nothing lures a cryptid out like the right totem.



Gameplay

Explore the world to find objects. Grab varied objects, plan how they fit together, and balance them. You grow with your stack which lets you explore and grab more. You master a level’s layout to reach the goal. There are also various secrets to hunt down.

Beating levels will unlock more levels filled with new interactions and loops. Also, doing a better job will achieve better scores, more lore, and more cryptids.

It turns out it's really fun to just stack things!



This is where most of the time goes as there's a lot of research to be done about UX in VR. It's a simple concept but I want people to just be able to pick it up and play. I'm sure you all know how difficult that can be in a traditional game with established user language, never mind the chaos of VR knowledge.

Beta reception

“Such a fun game. It's an original game type with a great difficulty level.”
“Has a good vibe to it and I'm pretty sure my kids would enjoy it too.”
“The music is amazing.”

I've been pretty lucky to find a small group of streamers that really dig the beta so far. I keep a playlist of their videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnMefpypR04BdwsdqNBo6km9ucvIWK_7B.

Pretty images :O

Making a mess!


Low-poly worlds!


Unlockables cosmetics!


Bugs!


and here's a bonus picture of the very first prototype from years ago




I posted about this game in a few other places but I figure y'all might be interested in something a little different from the usual fare here. Let me know if this is your jam and I'll answer questions and keep you in the loop!

[Tusky]

Interesting premise! I like the idea 

[tomgcoleman]

I love stacking stuff, and puzzles, and exploring.  Sounds fun!
I can see spending time just playing around, to see how stuff interacts.

That very first prototype. . . was that extending a fountain?
wouldn't that be cool, to stack stuff and cause things to flow in a new way...
like stacking on top of a natural thing... spring of water, magma flow, gopher hole
cannot wait to try it.

[Hover]

I love stacking stuff, and puzzles, and exploring.  Sounds fun!
I can see spending time just playing around, to see how stuff interacts.

That very first prototype. . . was that extending a fountain?
wouldn't that be cool, to stack stuff and cause things to flow in a new way...
like stacking on top of a natural thing... spring of water, magma flow, gopher hole
cannot wait to try it.

Awesome, glad to see some keen stackers out there!

The first prototype image is just some plants and a bucket. There's a sweat effect when things are stabilizing (which looks a lot better now)



Don't fret though! There's a fountain in the first header image where I could do all that stuff, I just haven't rendered the water very well yet. A lot has changed since I took that video


Speaking of trying it, what kind of VR headsets are people sporting? Eventually I'm going to need some public beta testers I suppose to guide me.

It turns out that UX and tutorializing is really difficult in VR right now because there's not really much of a shared language. A lot of things that you take for granted in traditional games get pulled out from underneath you.

[Hover]

Happy Friday! New updates in video form:



In general things flow a lot better with teleporting transitions (with sounds that weren't recorded. trust me, you love them), an actual skybox situation, grass that's less one-dimensional, and new conversations. I have a couple other things in there but no video of those yet so you'll just have to wait and see :]

[Hover]

I've been up to a lot of tiny things all over the place.

Performance is updated. It turns out that it's really easy to make ParticleSystem a huge resource hog. I was also loading a bunch of Resources at runtime which probably had a big impact so I front-loaded it. Now I can grow smoothly instead of causing the game to lag out to the point where SteamVR takes over to avoid stuttering and nausea.

I've also been mulling over the story and cryptids. The original idea was that you were a Squatcher hunting down the Stacksquatch and stumbling across cryptids along the way. That felt okay but something was a bit weird where cryptids were secondary to the one cryptid you could never catch. It also made it difficult to figure out what the hub area should be. I originally wanted it to be a ship, inspired by this, but it never fit the more down to earth aesthetic. Then when I tried to make a down to earth hub it felt weird and bland.

But what if instead you _were_ the Stacksquatch, gathering your cryptid buddies from around the Crystal Islands to take back to your home planet? It's goofy enough that it feels charming and gives you a reason to see a constant stream of cute buddies. Nice

I've also been working on a logo. I have a few pages of sketches for that so I might have a placeholder soon for the real pros to make a reality. That'll probably show up in future hub world videos.

And to avoid a giant wall of text, here are some pictures of updated models:




Feeling a lot more interesting and closer to shippable now!

[Hover]

The first demo is coming together but I want to wait for the musician to finish a track so I can replace the internal-use placeholder music which most certainly I do not have a license to use publicly. Maybe a couple weeks? The 2D art is still scraped from Google Image Search but I'm pretty sure that'll be fine for a quick alpha demo build. I have someone working on stuff to replace that soon enough

I've started ramping up the Cryptids available in the game, giving one per level. That includes a few holding tanks in the ship for the water-y ones you find.



And my new favourite addition in the new forest level: wormy.fbx

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Oh wow, so rumors of this game's death have been greatly exaggerated. I may not be great at keeping a consistent dev log but I am good at making progress on a game. Some highlights from the past year:

More cryptids from the amazing artist I'm working with:


Hot tracks from the amazing musician I'm working with:




A first proper trailer!




A Steam page that you can wishlist on :O
https://store.steampowered.com/app/937090/Stacksquatch/

Streamers giving feedback on the beta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WN1aOi1_KI

and so many small improvements that I don't even know where to start. It's like a completely different game from a year ago. There's still a lot to do though. I had someone else try their hand at the game recently and they had some good feedback to build in. One of those asks was an explicit tutorial to understand the controls. I may have to do a quick write up for you guys to vent about how agonizing that is. There are only two hard things in gamedev: getting noticed and good tutorials.

[Hover]

Did you know that releasing a game is actually a lot of work on top of just making the game? Early Access is coming early next month! Website updated, streamers contacted, press kit made, sale platforms updated, Twitter hyped, builds finalized and then hot fixes applied as I find game breaking bugs, list of journalists compiled, and now I'm making the rounds on all the things that I've been doing a bad job of keeping updated.

Nobody told me that making a game required so much human interaction! Maybe I'll get better at this for the next game

Anyway:





What do you think of the new trailer?

[Benmode]

It really is so much extra work! It looks like you're doing a good job of it though. Have you had much success with the streamers?

Your game looks great, very cool idea. Is there any chance I'll take off the headset to find I've accidentally stacked all my furniture? Perhaps there should be a warning 

[Hover]

It really is so much extra work! It looks like you're doing a good job of it though. Have you had much success with the streamers?

Your game looks great, very cool idea. Is there any chance I'll take off the headset to find I've accidentally stacked all my furniture? Perhaps there should be a warning 

Thanks! I'm getting hints here and there that I'm doing a decent job so it's encouraging.

Early on I had a lot of streamers saying good things (which I compiled into a YouTube playlist) which was a lot of help. They're not big names but neither am I so it's a perfect match. Things have changed a lot since then though so I have to go on a spree of cold calling streamers and press again leading up to the 8th.

Now I can't speak for everyone, but I definitely did develope an unhealthy habit of stacking: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23stacksquatchin. I was doing it at home, in the bathroom, at the store, you name it. Buyer beware!

[Hover]

By the way, the date for EA is officially August 8th

https://twitter.com/stacksquatch/status/1290031218868645890

:D

[Benmode]

Wowow that's pretty soon, very excite!

Good luck with contacting everyone again, hope it gets you a nice boost.

Hahaha well maybe the game will help me to organise my house a bit better then.

[Hover]

Wowow that's pretty soon, very excite!

Good luck with contacting everyone again, hope it gets you a nice boost.

Hahaha well maybe the game will help me to organise my house a bit better then.

Thank you very much I managed to get a pretty fun Twitch stream recently with a decent viewer count which I think helped: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/704906836

I'm at a total of 12 net purchases on Steam :V This is a lesson to all you devs: you can make a top notch title that a bunch of people love but it is depressingly difficult to get anyone to pay attention to it. But you probably already knew that. Right?

[Benmode]

Ahh man, hopefully it'll pick up in time. Ours launched yesterday but I don't actually know how well it's doing yet as I'm just the audio guy haha.
Yeahh it seems no matter how good a game is, if the marketing isn't up there it just simply won't do well. A bad game with the right amount of attention will do just fine! I'm sure you at least learned a LOT while making it.

[Hover]

Thanks, I hope so! Which game is yours?

Also, I just released v0.2.0 which has a bunch of new gameplay modes. Details on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/937090/view/4389274483825787649. I'm certainly learning a lot about Steam's janky interface, that's for sure :V Hopefully people actually read those things.