Townseek News

[p][/p][p]It's been a while since you've last heard of Capt. Jawline and from our team, hasn't it? That changes now! Our crew is taking Townseek on a remote trip to Japan and heading to BitSummit! 🗻 While we're not going to be there in person, we're sending it off with a brand new look in tow and a new adventurous demo for all of you who've been eager to play it! 🦈[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]That's right! Our Townseek Demo is back on Steam again! If you've not had the opportunity to take a trip through Explora yet, now's the best time to do so! Fly at your own pace, trade over 200 items between five different towns, upgrade and customise your airship, discover landmarks, find random events, and much more.[/p][p]And if you're a returning player, there're a ton of new things to discover as well! We've rewritten the early game and its story, improved gamepad support, have a new photo mode for you to take photos of your journey, new cosmetics to equip, new conversations to have with hosts, and a lot more. As a heads-up, the demo is currently only available in English, but we're working to add more languages to the demo (including Japanese, Chinese, and others) soon.[/p][p]We're really proud of the progress that we've made these last few months. The game has never played better! ✨[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]In addition to that, since we think this demo is finally a great representation of the full game, your save data from this demo will carry over to the full game! You'll be able to pick where you left off with your item collection, journal pages and quests. 🎉[/p][p]If you've enjoyed it or if you found any issues, give us a review on our demo page! You can also send us your feedback through the Steam Forums or join our Discord Server to report to us any issues or suggestions you have.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We still don't have a new release date for the game just yet, but we're working towards it. We hope to have more news about it soon. While we've been quiet, we've been working non-stop on a lot of things that we think you're going to enjoy![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]You can also notice that we're progressively giving a facelift to all the game's artwork with a new look! We've got a new key art updated to match the game's art style since our original key art better matched the original jam game artwork. We also have a new logo to go along with it. Gone are the days when we'd be called Ownseek. Explora has never looked better![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Alongside Townseek, our publisher at Super Rare Originals also has a few other games with their own demos during BitSummit. Phantom Squad, Moros Protocol and Gecko Gods each get their own piece of the spotlight too, so be sure to check them out. 🦎[/p][p]Well then, our demo is waiting! The whole world is your sea now, so set sail and see all it has to offer! Cheers! ✨[/p][p]– Whales And Games 🐳[/p]

[p][/p][p]It's been a while since you've last heard of Capt. Jawline and from our team, hasn't it? That changes now! Our crew is taking Townseek on a remote trip to Japan and heading to BitSummit! We're bringing a brand new look in tow and a new adventurous demo for all of you who've been eager to play it! 🦈[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]That's right! Our Townseek Demo is back on Steam again! If you've not had the opportunity to take a trip through Explora yet, now's the best time to do so! Fly at your own pace, trade over 200 items between five different towns, upgrade and customise your airship, discover landmarks, find random events, and much more![/p][p]And if you're a returning player, there're a ton of new things to discover as well! We've rewritten the early game and its story, improved gamepad support, have a new photo mode for you to take photos of your journey, new cosmetics to equip, new conversations to have with hosts, and a lot more! As a heads-up, the demo is currently only available in English, but we're working to add more languages to the demo (including Japanese, Chinese, and others) soon![/p][p]We're really proud of the progress that we've made these last few months. The game has never played better! ✨[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]In addition to that, since we think this demo is finally a great representation of the full game, your save data from this demo will carry over to the full game! You'll be able to pick where you left off with your item collection, journal pages and quests. 🎉[/p][p]If you've enjoyed it or if you found any issues, give us a review on our demo page! You can also send us your feedback through the Steam Forums or join our Discord Server to report to us any issues or suggestions you have![/p][p]We still don't have a new release date for the game just yet, but we're working towards it! We hope to have more news about it soon. While we've been quiet, we've been working non-stop on a lot of things that we think you're going to enjoy![/p][p]You can also notice that we're progressively giving a facelift to all the game's artwork with a new look! We've got a new key art updated to match the game's art style since our original key art better matched the original jam game artwork. We also have a new logo to go along with it. Gone are the days when we'd be called Ownseek. Explora has never looked better![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Alongside Townseek, our publisher at Super Rare Originals also has a few other games with their own demos during BitSummit, with Phantom Squad, Moros Protocol and Gecko Gods all getting a piece of the action if you'd like to check those out! 🦎[/p][p]Well then, our demo is waiting! The whole world is your sea now, so set sail and see all it has to offer! Cheers! 🐳[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]– Whales And Games 🐳[/p]

In a surprising double-combo, at DevGAMM Lisbon, our team at Whales And Games won the award for Studio of the Year during the Spotlight Awards by Game Dev Lisbon! The very next day, Townseek won the prize for Best Game from Portugal at the DevGAMM Awards! 🏆 Receiving both these awards fills us with immense honour, and we're incredibly proud to receive them as a team! 🐳

To commemorate the occasion, we've drawn a special artwork to celebrate both of these awards! Whalechan, Capt. Jawline and Watt Zapp dressed in their fanciest outfits and were overjoyed to walk on stage to receive the awards! ⚡



To explain the background to these awards, earlier this month, our team attended DevGAMM Lisbon, a local conference focused on talks, networking, and its award show! Being two days long, it was a fantastic couple of days where we got to hang out with our colleagues, friends and meet even more developers from all over. It just so happens that networking with other developers is one of our favourite things to do! We also took the opportunity to attend some talks, take notes, and play some games. ✨

This year, our team was nominated for two different award shows happening during the event. The first of these was the Spotlight Awards, organised by the local collective of game developers at Game Dev Lisbon. In previous years, Townseek and our team received nominations in different categories but didn't win any awards. This time, our team earned the nomination for Studio of the Year. Alongside us as nominees, were the talented teams at Massive Galaxy Studios, Funcom ZPX and Digitality Games.

Much to our surprise, Whales And Games won Studio of the Year! 💡

Being around our local community for many years, we're really grateful for the jury for having picked us among our colleagues! Until our nomination, we hadn't stopped and reflected on the amount of work our studio did this past year. Between our trips and booths at GDC and gamescom, to the continuous events we put together, to all the work we've been doing towards bringing Townseek to its completion, we've really had a packed year! We're proud to be part of the Portuguese community and grateful for its vote of confidence for the year ahead.

The second award show of the event was the DevGAMM Awards, put together by the conference's main organizer. Being an international contest, this marked the first time we participated with Townseek in an award show of its scale. We were very surprised when the international jury nominated us as one of the candidates for Best Game in Portugal. Alongside us, we shared our nomination with the excellent ARC SEED, Demon Spore, Gloomy Juncture and The Night is Gray, all of which have their own Steam page! Our bets were on some of the other games receiving the award, as all of them rightfully deserved to earn it themselves.

Against all our expectations, to the point it left us shaking in shock, Townseek won Best Game from Portugal! 🏆

We're incredibly thankful to both the judges and event organisers for considering our game a worthy winner. We also really appreciate the feedback they've shared with us! Likewise, we also have to extend our thanks to Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses and Scorewarrior for delivering and making this award possible.

If you'd like to review the award ceremony by itself, you can watch the video here! You can also read a recap of the event by the organizers through this post. You can spot the photos featuring us because of our Whales And Games themed hats! 🎩

Lastly, but not least, alongside the Spotlight Awards and the DevGAMM Awards, another long-running Portuguese showcase, Indie X Online, now in its sixth edition, also nominated us for Best Portuguese Game earlier this month! For that showcase, the award was won by Digitality Games for their upcoming game Floatylands. Still, we're thankful to Indie X and once again to Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses for including our game. It's been quite an eventful month!

We're truly at a loss of words to express the gratitude we've felt over these past weeks. With everything that happened this year, we're privileged to have such overwhelming love and support from our friends, family, peers, colleagues, community, supporters and from such a diverse industry. These awards inspire us to push forward with our work. We aim to make the industry and the world a better place, even if just by a little. ✨


While we have one last surprise related to the events we've attended throughout the year that we'll be posting on our social media channels fairly soon, this pretty much closes out our event season for the year. It's time for our team to prepare for the holidays. We want to take some time to focus primarily on the game and on our community. ☃️

Finally, we wanted to close with a note for what's ahead, and we can confirm that Townseek will release in 2025! 🧭 As we head into next year, we'll confirm a proper release date. We would rather not go through the irony of submitting our game to these award shows again next year. 😅



We've been wrapping up pending tasks for the game and made great strides despite some challenges these last months. From improving the narrative, improving mouse controls, adding achievements, random events, and overall rounding off the game, we've been really busy! We're also addressing some of the last issues raised in previous demos. We're really thrilled with how the game has been shaping up!

We'll be diving back into action and showing you more of the characters, locations, and details we have spread across Explora soon! As always, you can keep up with us by joining us on either our Discord server, through any of our social media channels, or by following us here on Steam!



Well then, it's time for us to respond to these awards in kind, seek onwards, and finish charting Townseek! Cheers! 🦈

– Whales And Games 🐳

We're excited to have Townseek as part of this year's line up for the Indie Arena Booth at gamescom, flying the game all the way to Köln in Germany! Starting on the 21st until the 25th of August, we'll be showing the game at the world's largest gaming expo. 🌭 We'll be showing the game as part of the Indie Arena Booth at F010G - E019 on Hall 10.2, alongside many other stellar games. In the case that you're visiting gamescom in person, we'll be distributing cards and stickers featuring Capt. Jawline, Whiskey, Fluffyroll, and more familiar hosts from the game, so please stop by and grab some! 🎉

This will also be the first time all of our team at Whales And Games is together at one event! ✨ We've always been partially as a team at different events we've had the game at since the beginning of development. Yet this will be the first get-together where all three of us are present! We'll be sharing photos of the trip and gamescom on our social media. And of course, we'll also share our adventures through our Discord Server! 🙌

Finally, as you might have realised by now, we've drifted a bit from our original release date in Early 2024. While we're still checking on a new release date we're comfortable with, we've decided to change all of our banners and release date to reflect the game is Coming Soon again. ⏳ We're still hard at work with Townseek, but some things have required more time than we're originally expecting. Continents are much more detailed than we ever thought they'd be, and we've almost doubled the game story-wise.


We know many of you have been waiting for the game for a really long time. We really can't wait for you to get to visit Explora! We'll have to ask you to wait just a bit longer, but with us being at such a big event such as gamescom, we promise more regular and exciting news in the coming future!

Thank you for sticking around and for waiting! Cheers! 🦈

– Whales And Games 🐳