Game Ho! (Patreon)

Ahoy patrons! Julian here with some exciting news of swashbuckling adventures and harrowing gameplay. As those of you who follow our stream progress already know, DD and I have undertaken a small project in order to help Tough Bippy along, now that the project is moving into its next phase of development we're going to need funding to hire on background artists, additional animators and continue to pay our cleanup artist Sneep for his hard work. While the Patreon is keeping our core team afloat, we've decided that in order to pay any additional help a fair wage for their efforts, we'll be doing periodic microgames to sell under a pay-what-you-want model. By making these games on a small, arcade game scale that can be finished in a matter of weeks, we're hoping to give a needed boost towards larger projects like Tough Bippy. The first of such games we've decided on will be a vertical shoot-'em-up with a fantastical pirate aesthetic, which I've had a ton of fun making concept art for.

DD has cooked up a central mechanic I really like the sound of, where playing defensively will be just as important as making a forward push. The player will be encouraged to absorb enemy bullets by releasing the fire button, turning the enemy's ammo against them by converting it into energy used to forge new powerups. This mechanic of eating bullets quickly inspired me to design the shark-ship you see above, but there's lots of room for other fun designs to exist in such a world. 

We're both very excited by the possibilities this new game presents and have a lot of ideas we can't wait to share with you all. Progress should come fast and hard as we intend to finish the game ASAP, so I encourage you to check out our Twitch streams to watch me animate and DD code this salty new escapade. 

-Julian

It has been a rough decision on what to do to really broaden budget and scope for Tough Bippy considering how there's (justified) impatience towards the project as well. We do want to be able to finish this game in a timely manner but to broaden the team and ensure that can happen - we do need to be able to afford the additional hands on deck that we're looking into hiring on. 

We do have people in-mind at least for who we would like to contact, it's just a matter of fleshing out a bit more of a budget beyond enough for just the 3 of us to function and survive. The new Tough Bippy demo is essentially ready to drop, but we're going to be reserving that for right after this small scale project to ensure momentum and to also be able to hop right into getting those new people involved.

You can check out the new combat mechanics in action over here.  (Audio is placeholder.)

We're looking into hire a background artist, an additional animator, and a pixel artist.

The good news to all of you patrons is that any mini-projects here will be available as FREE downloads alongside having proper tiers listed in the credits for all the continued support over the years. We felt this was going to be the best way to ensure continuing things along, as you guys have been waiting plenty for things to play, and if we can hire on those additional roles for Tough Bippy then we can really ensure faster, higher quality progress since time won't need to be set aside for additionally building savings. 

This month you can tune in over on Twitch to watch as Julian and I work on this micro-project, and based on how it goes we do have some engines already setup for other potential small games.

( Rhythm game engine - the analog stick aims the cursor towards incoming notes. )

We are hoping for this year to be plenty of output with a lot more for you guys to get to play and try out. Next week we'll have more information on this pirate game, and once it drops we'll see where we stand in terms of budget and if we can get those additional people involved with Tough Bippy to expand it as a project and ensure nonstop momentum. We have other smaller projects lined up if we can't quite get the budget to where it needs to be (which you guys will also receive additionally for free) but we will see how things end up.

Thank you all again for continued patience, and hopefully by the end of this month we can get those additional hire-ons that we had mentioned. All of your support has made what we have for Tough Bippy even possible and this should make for a much more fun method of expanding scope. We hope you enjoy what we're cooking up!

~DD