WooLoop News

WooLoop will be Free!

Here at ToastieLabs, we believe games should be for everyone. With that in mind, like some of our other titles on Steam, we release games for free and offer optional DLC at the lowest price we can on Steam $0.99!

The game will be Free and offer 5 Galleries (plus 1 Bonus Gallery) of string art to complete! Each Gallery will contain 21 unique pieces of art for you to create.
After some quick maths, this means you will get over 100 levels to play for free when you download WooLoop!

[h2]DLC[/h2]
In order to provide even more levels for you to play, we are committing to offering 12 months of DLC, 1 DLC for each month of 2023!
Each DLC will contain a new Gallery of 21 pieces of art, we are going to be offering these DLC at $0.99 (the lowest price Steam allows).
Each DLC will launch on the 4th Friday of each month, with the exception of December's planned DLC "Advent", which will feature 24 levels and slight changes to the release schedule which we will confirm at a later date.

Over the course of the 12 months of releases, that will be an additional 255 Levels to play!

We hope this will be plenty to keep you entertained through the year 2023.

Also, make sure to join our Discord as we will be doing monthly giveaways for each DLC!


It has been a hectic couple of weeks where we have made many updates to the appearance of the game in order to look as good as possible for the Game Trailer which we have just started editing!

New Features

• Allow players to use Right-Click to move without triggering the UI snap-back
  
• Added toggle click to pick up and put down the rope as an alternative to holding left click
  
• Added background colours to levels
  

Bug Fixes:

• Rope clipping on Tree House Level
  
• Fixed instructions turning yellow when the next instruction is anti-clockwise
  
• Fixed UI instruction wiggle
  
• Fixed off-screen instructions breaking
  

Most of the adjustments were for visual updates in order to make the game as aesthetic as possible when recording clips for the game trailer which will be released in the coming weeks.

This along with multiple new levels as we are ramping up level creation in preparation for sharing Early Access keys for marketing purposes!



Make sure you are following us on our Twitch channel to get notified when we go live again this Friday!

As most of the bug fixing from last week is being tied up, we have moved on to some of the finishing touches!

The UI has been finalised before the next stage of QA testing and we have made a start on the New Game+ mechanics!

New Features

• New Game+ Unlocks customisable colours for the ropes!
  
• UI changed to reduce clutter
  
• Color coded clockwise and anti-clockwise
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the Red X UI sometimes wasn't red.
  
• Fixed new pin resetting the rope colour to grey
  

As it says above, the big news is that we have added the ability to unlock additional, customisable colours for the ropes in every level which is unlocked via New game+

This is a very exciting direction for us as we have never had a New Game+ mechanic with an actual in-game reward, we hope this is a fun direction to go and we will be thoroughly testing this in this week's QA Livestream



Make sure you are following us on our Twitch channel to get notified when we go live again this Friday!

Following the live stream QA Testing on Friday, we have sat down and rethought our approach towards the in-level instructions.

This has been the focus of this weeks work along with some minor bug fixing from the reports we found on Friday.

Bug Fixes:

• Spelling Mistakes corrected on the settings page.
  
• Fixed an FPS drop issue
  
• Re-Fixed 180degree instructions showing incorrectly
  
• Fixed the ability to zoom in further than the screen lets you
  
• Changed the UI for the head of the rope to make it always visible
  
• Changed the appearance of the Gallery name pop-ups to differentiate between them and the UI buttons.
  

After testing the new control system we are happy with the direction it takes the game feel but we know it needs tweaking to make it smoother. This is being looked at with 3 main points to address.

• Make the movement smoother/less snappy
  
• Address the camera movement making the player over-move if they are moving the mouse simultaneously.
  
• Find a better solution for pins that are far apart without forcing the game to zoom out.
  

We have discussed a method to address the in-level UI as currently, the UI often overlaps each other and simply making the UI smaller to prevent this makes it hard to read when zoomed out.
We are trialling a solution this week of adding a UI bar with "rope selection" to remove all of the clutter from the screen and only give the player one set of instructions at a time. Check back next week to see what progress we have on this.



Make sure you are following us on our Twitch channel to get notified when we go live again next Friday (25/11/2022)

Time this week has been split between 2 main parts of Game Development.
Bug Fixing and New Levels!

The bugs we found in the last live stream have all about been wrapped up! Most of the smaller bugs were addressed last week with the larger issues being corrected this week.
Bug Fixes and Changes:

• Screenpanning with the mouse has been adjusted for better corner control.
  
• Fixed leftover rope being stuck on screen on small routes.
  
• Fixed 180degree instructions showing incorrectly
  
• Tweaked large instructions to make them easier to read
  

These adjustments will be tested in the next QA pass, especially the instruction sizes as we need to find a sweet spot for readability.

Progress has continued in creating new levels as we move closer to release. We have timed how long it takes to make each level in preparation to make a more in-depth project plan that incorporates more accurate time scales for level creation. Here is another sneak peek!
*This is a work-in-progress level so you will likely see alterations before the game goes live.


Streaming will continue over on our Twitch channel this Friday. We have changed to a desk microphone in an attempt to improve the audio quality so please stop by and let us know what you think!



The first steps have been taken towards preparing what DLC we will be providing along with the content and pricing models. Stay tuned for more details!

Another very busy week! Our Stream on Friday helped us discover a number of bugs which we recorded for Rob to address. This week has been spent fixing the majority of these bugs along with more improvements to the UI and game controls.

Bug Fixes:

• The timer now resets when you New Game+ (NG+) a level
  
• You can now NG+ a level as often as you like without breaking the menu UI
  
• "Hide Level Names" now updates the currently loaded Gallery instantly
  
• Typo corrections
  
• Added a scroll bar to the settings page
  
• Adjusted the end-of-level animation to start according to the current zoom level
  

Other than fixes and improvement, we have finally begun work on new levels, here is a sneak peek!

As always with these update posts, this is a work-in-progress level so you will likely see alterations before the game goes live.


Streaming on our new Twitch channel appears to be much more interactive than on Steam.
We will continue streaming to both platforms simultaneously but if you want to get involved with the chat we highly recommend you follow us on Twitch to get notified when we go live!



Merch has arrived for testing! We are still making considerations and alterations before we make the merch available for purchase, keep an eye on our Website for when the merch is live.

Marketing is continuing at a steady pace in preparation for our full media outreach towards the end of the year.