Just a quick notice to say that the Steam version is live! Go Go Go!

There’s also a bundle (which isn’t yet appearing on the Tribloos 3 page, but IS on the Tribloos 2 page) to get both Tribloos games on Steam for a bigger discount! Get the Tribloos 2 and 3 Bundle!

Thanks for everyone’s support in getting this far. Fingers and toes are crossed for this release now.

Also, check out the following recorded livestream that I did with my good friend Geoff “DangerGerbil” Davies over on Twitch:

Watch Tribloos 3, with special guest developer AndyBumpkin from DangerGerbil on www.twitch.tv

What’s Next?

For everyone who is interested I’ll be announcing the next Plushie competition on Facebook this evening! I’ll announce it here too of course.

I also have a Facebook ad campaign on the go, it’s a bit of a test as I’ve never done one before. So we’ll see how that goes.

Of course any suggestions are welcome on where we can send it for reviews/news.

What about after The Tribloos 3?

I think a lot will depend on how the game performs on Steam. We’ve got plans for other games in both the Tribloos series and, of course Space Farmers. We also have other game concepts we’re working on. The main issue for us is getting time to work on these projects currently, but as soon as we have anything to show we’ll post it here first!

First off a big thank you to everyone who has bought the game so far on BigFishGames.

The Tribloos 3 Development Diary

I can’t publicly share sales figures but I will say they’re a bit lower than Tribloos 2. There could be any number of reasons for this such as people moving to mobile devices for their casual fix or people generally gravitating away from BigFish to other portals like Steam/GoG/GameJolt/Other. Or it could be related to the technical issues when the game launched. Or maybe because it’s been 4 years since the last game in the series. It’s hard to say but I’m not about to stop trying to get the game out there due to a slight hiccup at the start.

So we had a bit of a shaky start but generally feedback on the game has been really good from fans and newcomers. That’s really encouraging and now I’m looking at what’s next.
Continue reading “Tribloos 3 – One (and a bit) week on”

Let us get straight to the Tribloos 3 trailer!

I think the Tribloos 3 Trailer is well overdue, don’t you? So here it is!

I was originally going to create a teaser trailer, then a story trailer and then a gameplay trailer. But they eventually ended up merging into a single trailer above. Look out for the game coming to Steam in the next few weeks!

The Marketing push begineth

Do you run or are aware of a games review site or youtube channel which you believe would like to share the Tribloos 3 trailer? Let us know and we will also send over a review code!

There will be further announcements on how to get your hands on the game and even one of our real life tribloos over the next few days. We’ll be running a contest, updating our Steam page in preparation and basically just sharing the heck out of it whenever and wherever we can.

As well as looking at our next project we am also preparing the demo version of the game for Steam. That way everyone can look forward to trying the game one way or another! It’ll be very sensibly priced of course…

Anyway, tell us what you think of the trailer. Get ready for release day which is pencilled in for the 12th of April 2018.

Tribloos 3 is currently being checked out in intimate detail by Big Fish at the moment. I’m working on a new project as well as adding some final touches and prepping for marketing. So I thought I would take this time to share some of my personal thoughts on why I like writing Tribloos games.

I’ve spent about 3 years on Tribloos 3. That might seem like a lot, but in actual terms it’s probably only been about 4 months full time work for me. Someone asked me, about half way through development, why hadn’t I just re-skinned and expanded the Tribloos 2 engine. Why had I started almost from scratch again? It’s a good question, I think. I’m biased of course, but I thought perhaps others might want to know why too. So here it is, why I like writing Tribloos Games.

It’s 2014 and…

Space Farmers had been out for 4 months. We’d been working on it in the meantime, adding new levels and gadgets and other fun stuff. But despite various cool things happening (such as it being played by PewDiePie) it hadn’t performed financially as well as we would have liked. That’s quite depressing really, can you imagine what it’s like to have you game featured in a video that has had over 2 million views and your distributor reports back that it’s resulted in a grand total of…30 extra copies?

Yes that’s right, YouTube marketing officially doesn’t work, you heard it here. Okay that’s a big bold statement which begs to be explored. So more on that another time I think.

However we were a little dispondent about creating another game. I decided to take a step back and start work on a new Tribloos title. It’ll only take 6 months, I convinced myself.

But this time I want animations!

I’m torn about this statement. On one hand I’m pretty pleased with the animatics that are in Tribloos 3. I think they look awesome and add some depth to the world and the story. On the other hand they took absolutely forever to make.

Super early screengrab from one of the in-game animatics

It’s no surprise really but I’d made up my mind to focus on making my near-perfect Tribloos game.

That meant I couldn’t simply recycle all the old code from the second game. I had to attack the weak areas of that and build on the good bits. The good bits were, for me and many fans of the series, the characters and the “gotta get gold time!” gameplay. I decided I wanted to add some more intelligence to the workers. This in turn would lead to more possibilities in the engine and what you could do in the game.

I quickly sat down and started writing out a plot for the game based on an idea I’d had at the end of developing number 2. The gist being that one of the Tribloos gets “Tribb-napped” (oh how I lolled) and you have to rescue them. This led to a whole host of new area ideas as the remaining Tribloos could split up and go after them.

They could split up!?

That meant there were going to be sections of the game where you could legitimately play various areas at the same time. So after completing the first area you’d be let loose on areas 2, 3 and 4. After completing all of those you could attempt 5, 6, 7 and 8! 9 And 10 would be in order but I was still pretty pleased with this idea. And it’s stuck until the end.

The challenge here has been to implement a “what happens now” function at the end of each area. If you’re playing the game from start to end then it should be smart enough to pick the next area for you.

That’s something I’ve only had to worry about recently now I’m in the end stages of development. I always enjoy doing the story based stuff when writing tribloos games! Not that I didn’t enjoy adding the 30+ functional buildings to the game.

How much did you say?

Ah ok, here are some statistics for you:

Tribloos 2 had:
20 Building Types
9 Obstacle Types
80 Campaign Levels
5 Environments

Tribloos 3 has:
35 Building Types
24 Obstacle Types
100 Campaign Levels
10 Environments

Now because there are more environments there are fewer levels per environment than before. This has been an advantage because I’ve been able to keep them more interesting progression wise than the previous game. But as you can see this new game is absolutely packed to the brim of new buildings and obstacles.

So, why do you keep writing Tribloos Games?

It’s 3 years well spent. I’ve been full time contracting, moved house, met many new friends, lost old friends and brought a new baby girl into the world. It’s been a roller coaster ride and the Tribbs have been right there with me.

When I first started submitting games to BigFishGames back in the late 2000’s I had some really great feedback from the guys there. I submitted a couple of games. One was a tetris like block building game. The other was a sokoban clone – although I maintain to this day I’d never seen Sokoban before writing it!

The Tribloos are a special bunch for me. It was my first game series to sell several thousand copies, sure, but the big thing was this: People really seemed to like it. I got even better feedback on the second game. The bigger question is why did I stop?

Uhm, so why did you stop?

I attempted to push The Tribloos 2 onto mobile users a few years ago (2013) and it flopped. F2P had just started to strangle the mobile market and I, like many other game devs of that time, fell foul of it. We had no interest in fleecing people for in game items that could be used only once or for cheats to make levels easier. And so our games fell by the wayside…

However I always knew I wanted to make another Tribloos game. I think this one will do pretty well, it’s definitely by far the best game in the series so far. I don’t plan to stop here either. As long as people enjoy them I’ll continue to write Tribloos Games til the end of my development days!

The Tribloos 3 Development Diary
Hey everyone – happy new year!

Christmas has come and gone, and with it our first chance to report that the first Release Candidate has been sent to BigFishGames for review.

This is very exciting for me. It means it’s one huge step closer to being let loose into the big wide world. My current estimate for a release date is around March/April this year.

So what’s next in the meantime? A number of fun things!

  • Marketing – I definitely need to start talking more about it in the big wide open world.
  • Mac Version – Nearly every week for the last year I’ve thought “I should turn my Mac on and see if it still builds…” Fingers crossed!
  • Steam – Store setup, API work and looking into cloud saves (something I’ve not yet bothered with but think it makes sense!)
  • Videos and Trailer – Gosh I really should have done this a long time ago. Oh well
  • New Project – I can really start to focus on the next title that Rich and I will be working closely together on!

So I’ve got a busy few weeks ahead. But here are a couple of new screenshots I took late last year of the game in action. Stay tuned for a video coming soon!

Well goodness me. It’s been quite the adventure. Almost 3 years in the making (again I’ll talk about why in the postmortem) and many speed bumps in the road. I feel like I’m on the final stretch at last.
The Tribloos 3 Development Diary
I’m very pleased with the final result (generally) and I can’t wait to share it with the world. But first I have a few final tasks to take care of. Firstly here’s where we’ve gotten to this last 2 weeks:

– Further testing and bug fixing
– Sound Effects
– Scene transitions
– Conversation tweaks and changes (characters actually show some emotions!)

So I’ve been quite busy!

Previously it’s been awful for me to list out my remaining tasks. But now it’s not so bad. Check this out:

– Mac version setup (partially done)
– Testing and bug fixing
– Music for 5 areas, ending cut-scene and main menu (this is literally the only tough job left)
– Remaining sound effects
– Tutorial (I think this is my least favourite part of developing casual games)
– Final cut-scene construction (although all GFX are in and ready)
– Even more Testing
– Talking with portals/setting up distribution areas for the game
– Far more testing

So like I said the biggest job is the music. This is a bit of a problem because my work laptop which I use for development 4/7 days a week doesn’t have my compositional stuff on it. It’s a group policy thing which stops me installing it on here annoyingly.

I feel as if I need to lock myself in my home office for a week to get that part done. A tune a day shouldn’t be too impossible…urp.

There are a few other tasks that I need to look at but nothing which isn’t fairly straight-forward. I’ll try to cover as much as possible in the next couple of blog entries.

I still don’t haev

logo
Hi everyone, I’d like to proudly announce that The Tribloos 3 is currently in production!

Following on from Tribloos 2, this game features:

  • 100 Campaign levels over 10 new areas
  • Over 40 buildings to repair/use
  • Over 30 new obstacles to overcome
  • A brand new story and animated storyboards between levels

We’re very excited to show you the first screenshots of the game below. Please keep in mind these are not final, some GUI and game elements are yet to be completed.

Tribloos 3 Alpha Screenshot 2
Tribloos 3 Alpha Screenshot 1
Tribloos 3 Alpha Screenshot 2
Tribloos 3 Alpha Screenshot 2
Tribloos 3 Alpha Screenshot 3
Tribloos 3 Alpha Screenshot 3

Tribloos 3 has been a work in progress for some time. Here is an overview of the game status:

Coding: 80%
Level design: 80%
Graphics: 90%
Music: 20%
Sound Effects: 10%

So as you can see there’s still quite a lot for us to do. But in a few weeks we expect to have the game out for Beta Testing. We’ll also release a trailer around the same time showing off game-play and the new animated storyboard system in action!

We don’t have a solid release date just yet but we should be releasing on the usual channels such as BigFishGames and Steam.

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