Trash Goblin News

Another two weeks, and another update! We've been working hard like good little Goblins since we last spoke, having officially moved into Production on the game (woo!) and so far things are going really well! Of course they are, we're like 2 weeks into the Big Plan so there's not been time for anything to go wonky yet. Still, I'm very pleased and the team are feeling confident 😁


[h2]Progress[/h2]

Let's get into some neat specifics!

• The paper design for the player's progression is done. This covers things like the long-term saving goals that drive the main route through the game, and considerations like access to new Tools and new Gameplay, making sure we know how best to lead the player through satisfying purchases and keep doling out fun things in a way that feels good. Of course, as soon as we get this into the game and people play it for real, it could all change - but the structure and the tools are a strong foundation.
  We've also laid out the design (using Flowcharts!) of the first Golden questline - it consists of a lot of steps! This first Golden Quest is also (sort of) the tutorial and onboarding phase of the game, and we know it can change dramatically as we see how people are playing it. That said, the focus here is for the systems that drive Golden Quests to be built, which includes things like quest steps, key moments, unlocks, character interactions... an awful lot of interweaving systems!
  
  
• We've designed our first two new Named NPCs, and there are already some early concept sketches of them as well. If you're in the discord (see below!), you might've already seen some of these because we're huge teases 🥰
  
  
• There are a ton of concepts for new Trinkets, including a range of Charms and Lockets for you to find and customers to buy.
  
  
• Several brand new Trinkets and their icons are in the game and ready to be turned into Chipping challenges, alongside a new material type we're calling 'goopy' which is very exciting as we're always looking for ways to surprise you and keep the Trinkets feeling varied and rich in their various aesthetics.
  
  
• We've designed our dynamic music system (we use Fmod for anyone interested), and have even got first drafts of music in! We're trying to keep the game feeling chill, and are looking at games like Tears of the Kingdom for inspiration in how to keep music part of the experience and reinforcing the player's emotion, but without being just a traditional soundtrack. At the moment, the music changes and adapts to the time of day, as well as each of the main gameplay sequences - chipping, cleaning, talking/selling to customers, and talking to /buying from Aimon. This is all to ensure that over the many hours of playtime you'll be spending in the world we're building, you'll never get bored of the music, and hopefully never notice it looping.
  
  
• We've fixed up our build machine. This might sound really boring, but as of this moment, we have a constantly playable game deployed to a development branch on Steam, built every time someone commits any work. This means we can test on-platform which is super helpful (sometimes bugs that occur in Unity don't in the actual game, and vice versa) and also the build machine will notify the team if a build ever fails. Super useful automation, it keeps things moving nicely.
  

[h2]Rewards on Discord![/h2]

We're gently but insistently nudging all you lovely Goblins to come and join the Discord! We've started rolling out the Discord Rewards - an exclusive role and access to a private channel which everyone who has backed the game on here gets; it's a lovely little space to share work-in-progress snippets and behind-the-scenes glimpses with you, and just generally all be total Goblins together.
So if you haven't joined yet, please head on over to discord.gg/spiltmilk so we can give you access!


The sort of fun tidbits we show in the exclusive backer discord area!

That's all for this update, and until next time - stay lovely!

Apologies for being a day late on this! We've been very busy planning, tweaking, and tweaking plans, and planning tweaks and tweaking tw- ah you get the idea.

[h3]WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING[/h3]

Well, we're about to move into the first sprint of Production! As of Monday, we'll all be working really hard to make the game a reality. Wait. I mean, or course we've been doing that this whole time but now we're done with the planning and pre-production phase!

We have a load of dates in mind for exciting moments along the way, plus of course the Early Access launch date itself. It's incredibly satisfying to be moving ahead with this - no small thanks to your amazing support - and to be sharing a glimpse at the roadmap with you is both thrilling and a bit stressful.

Having a plan is one thing. Writing it down is another because it becomes way more real. Showing people the plan is just... you can't go back! We can't un-show you this 😅

[h3]DAT ROADMAP[/h3]

But we can caveat the crap out of it, and say - seriously now - all of this is up for change, tweaks, things might get dropped or shifted around. As we move into production we get a better idea of what we can and can't do in the time we have, and we will be adapting these plans to fit almost constantly. More on that below.



We're presenting this in a way that does not overpromise. You'll notice there are no numbers of Trinkets or Quests or whatever. If there's stuff that's seemingly not mentioned at all or is skated over, it's because of that. We want to make sure we're transparent about progress and if possible we overdeliver rather than underdeliver 💖


[h3]KEY DATES[/h3]

MAY - Beta
Very exciting for any of you who will get access to it as part of your rewards! We'll be granting access to the game, and gathering lots of lovely feedback. This is one of the key moments that will impact our plans from there onwards because if you love something or hate something, we'd be mad not to double down on it or address it!

JUNE - Next Fest Demo
This demo will be built off the feedback and hopefully shows the game in a brilliant light, and should contain loads of content too! We will also be leaning into your support and asking you to help us spread the word. The better we do during Next Fest, the better a launch we'll have!

JULY - Early Access Launch
Um, trying not to think about this too much and get all nervous! But also we've got so much to do in preparation. Again, we'll be looking to you lovely lot to help us in any ways we (and you!) can think of!

AUGUST - Continued development
This gets very loose, but in terms of the current goals, we'd love to drop weekly patch updates to the game, which would contain bug fixes, quality-of-life updates, tweaks, balancing and polish. Then alongside that, but spread out to every 2 months, we'd drop a huge update with a new Feature (something like being able to Haggle with Customers, or perhaps Customise Trinkets, all those dream features!) with tons of new content to support it (new customers, quests, trinkets, etc). That way we keep improving the game every week, and expand the content and add new mechanics every 2 months.

This phase could go on for a very long time! We've got tons of cool stuff we'd like to put in the game, and no doubt you'll all have loads of amazing ideas too!

[h3]HOW WE WORK[/h3]

As we move into Production, we start with all the tasks listed out in Miro, with virtual Post-it notes. Then we estimate their complexity very roughly, with the smallest being XS and the largest being XL. An XS task should be less than a day, an L might take almost 2 weeks, while an XL is so big we're not actually sure, and we need to dive into more detail.

So then we lay out a calendar that splits our production time into 2-week sections called Sprints. This combined with the sizing gives us a really simple and fast way to spread the tasks out and see if they all fit into the time we have.

When that's all done and agreed, we plug the first Sprint of tasks into our project management tool (Hack N Plan for anyone interested), and we break those tasks down into tikes as small as is sensible, so that we all individually and as a team know what we're doing for the next two weeks.

As we progress through those tasks, we'll see how accurate our guesses were, and that accuracy (or lack of!) will be passed back up to the Miro calendar, and the remaining elements will get nudged and moved and resized. As we do more work, we get a more accurate idea of the time things will take, and we can adjust easily using this method, rather than rummaging around in reams of individual tickets, plus it means we're not front-loading the planning so we're able to always dedicate time to making the game better even at this point.

While a Sprint is going, we look to plug the next one into Hack N Plan using the same process, and that way we're always ahead of any problems in terms of the next work, but also we're not bogged down in details and wasting time breaking down tasks that may or may not be moved, delayed or brought forward.

This is all done to keep us nimble, keep us making good and focused progress on building the game, and any tasks that are more or less complex than we originally thought they were get caught early, and the resulting shift in the rest of the planned work is known nice and early, so that as things do inevitably change we can keep you in the know!

PHEW

Thanks for attending our Goblin Production lecture! Your homework is to take break from work around 4pm and treat yourself to something nice - a good cup of tea and a biscuit, or maybe that new cardigan you've been eyeing up on Etsy!

That's it for this update,

Stay warm, cosy and healthy!

The Spilt Milk Goblins 🥰

[h3]Dev Progress[/h3]

We're hard at work (as always) but the thing that stuck out for us to share this time was a look at the progress we're making on the cleaning audio. This is very incomplete, showing the systems and responsiveness rather than the intended audio quality or assets, but the crucial thing to notice is that the sponge noises now react to your motions!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It's soooooo much more satisfying now, we're super stoked to see how you like it in play!

We've also really started digging into the planning of the Early Access launch features, and while we still need to measure the complexity against the time we have to make it all, we're confident of being able to present a pretty accurate roadmap sometime soon!

[h3]Backer Surveys are sent![/h3]
We sent out the basic surveys for all backers last week, so please check your inbox, junk mail, and the like for the link if you're a Kickstarter backer. We've made sure this survey gives us what we need to cover the majority of the rewards, but it's worth going into some detail here:

"Toss A Coin To Your Goblins", "Trash Goblins", "Collector Goblins", and "Beta Access Goblins" - you're all set! We've got everything we need once you've responded to the survey! Yay!

"Delver Goblins", "Doppelgoblins", "Quest Goblins", "Very Important Goblins", "Fashionably Late Goblins" and "Eureka Goblins", you're more complex. Because we will need to gather images and go into feedback and iteration for Trinkets, NPCs and Quests, we're going to have to build and send a different survey for each of you. So you can expect that in the not-too-distant future.

Hiya! I'm excited to talk through all the cool stuff we've been up to over the past two weeks - there's a ton of non-Trash Goblin stuff going on around the edges of Milky Towers right now, all very exciting... but you're here for Goblin news so let's get on with sharing it!

[h3]PROGRESS[/h3]

Now, we thought it'd be great to show you some of the musical trinkets we've been hard at work bringing to tuneful life! They were the first stretch goal you Goblins unlocked, so it makes sense to start there!



A Viola is not a Violin. And even though it sounds like maybe it'd be smaller, it is actually bigger. Like an Orc is to a Goblin, maybe?


The Lyre is one of the world's oldest musical instruments, and their strings are supported by a yoke. And what's that about 'slotted'...?


A tiny wee drum with cute lil' feet. PLS IGNORE THE SCRIBBLED ONES. Oh dangit, we know you're going to obsess about the Acorn Drum now...


This is a Lute. You can tell it's a Lute and not a Flute because it cannot 🎶Toot🎶


Another glimpse into our process- this time on the Flute! Which definitely 🎶toots🎶! Yours truly used to play the Flute...

In the image above you can see the progression (left to right) from concept to in-engine plus the icon that is drawn for use in the Stash! Donnie is an amazing concept artist and Tahlia does just the most incredible job of realising his work in three dimensions. But who draws the Stash icons? Dare to hazard a guess?

Of course, lots of other things are being worked on - planned, prototyped and polished - but I want to make sure we don't share before we're certain of it. and if we're not certain, we might show you work-in-progress stuff anyway and then ask you questions!


[h3]HOT TOPIC - BLOCK TYPES[/h3]

We always ask you for ideas and steer on what to cover - we could blether on forever about all kinds of things, but it's better if you have something you wanna hear about - and the lovely CitizenSnips came through with a doozy on our discord!

"This randomly snuck into my head this morning. But I remembered some time ago asking about things we wanted to see. Your new block ideas! The calm tinkity tink game sits in the depths of my idle mind. What fun block ideas do you have?"

Well then. Let's go! Usual caveats apply - these are ideas that may be good, some might be bad, and either way may or may not end up in the game. Them's the breaks.

Noodle-Chain Block
Will destroy a chain of blocks when the weak face is destroyed

Type Change Block
Will change the surrounding blocks to different ones

Grow Block
Any time you chip any other block, it grows - both in size and HP!

Unstable Magic Block
It randomly changes to any other block, based on a timer and/or you chipping any other blocks.

Shy Block
Every time you chip it, it teleports to another spot! Chase that block!

Worm Block
Every time you chip a face, it grows another of itself off the opposite face. You'd have to 'aim' it at an occupied block to destroy it!

And talking about this stuff made me realise we can share a little bit of how we work! Visuals are so important, and help us communicate more efficiently when it comes down to mechanics and all kinds of design elements. Don't get me wrong there are tens of thousands of words in our Miro design doc, but pictures are best!


Steve is great at bashing out clear little storyboards for player and game interactions (action boards?) that help the team to figure out all the little wrinkles and opportunities they present us!

We've also got a bunch of concept art of various block types. Much like with all the other concept art we do, there's always a pure 'ideation' phase where a loose brief is given and we encourage playfulness to come up with anything. WELP this was not that - here we're trying to keep within 'definitely still made of dirt' ideas!


This was us figuring out ways to show the Goblin marking blocks with chalk as you find the Trinket during Chipping.


Some slightly more fanciful and intriguing blocks that might suggest fun behaviours to play with.


Can you name all these kinds of stone, dirt and rock? DO THEY EVEN REALLY EXIST?!

Have ya'll got any ideas? We'd love to hear them!

Until next time, take it easy Goblins!

Hi! I am actually really confused about how time works - how is it only 1 week since the end of the Kickstarter?! Anyone else feel the same?

So while I investigate the mysterious construct known as "Time", let's dive into what we've been doing, what's next, and start to take some steps towards sorting out some rewards for you lovely Goblins!

[h3]WHAT WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON[/h3]

To kick things off, we thought it'd be neat to look at some character concepts and talk about our process a little bit.

First up, a couple of images that show the first stages of how we concept a Species for the game! The team agrees the Species (in this case, Frogs), and then discusses and pinpoints references for that, covering literal examples of other frog-characters, or even just key words we think are important to consider. So with these Frog People we called out Chrono Trigger specifically as having a very cool Frog, but then we also include notes about things that might be important to their culture (like lilypads) or physical attributes and differences (toads = bumpy). Once that's done, we smash out what you can see here, a bunch of relatively simple line art concepts that touch on some of the more interesting elements we called out, and sometimes we just riff on whatever seems fun (stilts!), while also playing with stature, body shape, and the like.

Frog people are just the best people.

The importance of this step of the process isn't really about landing on something special, or even wringing every last creative drop out of the opportunity - it's about getting familiar with the demands and specifics of a New Thing, and playing with it. It's cheap, fast, and fun - and sometimes you strike gold.

With the Mushroom Folk, the initial phase covered only 3 sketches, but each one pushed their idea quite far and in separate directions, and we got what we needed out of it. This stuff is like a first draft, which is by its nature always perfect - because the only thing required of it is to exist!

Sometimes you realise that the practicalities of getting dressed in the morning are just as important as anything else.

Related to characters, we have also been working on the "Paperdolls" system a bunch recently. The term "Paperdolls" is something we've used before and we're thinking it might be a good topic for a deep-dive sometime, but essentially all the non-quest-giving characters are generated from a set of visual parts, and we've been trying to make sure we add as much variety as the game needs. Here are just two examples of this system "in action" - for reference we will need the Paperdolls to give us hundreds if not thousands of customers to support the game, spread across all Species.

Left: a completely randomly generated human customer. Right: Same, but one that happens to feature the features of yours truly!

But it's not just the Art department that've been keeping busy - oh no! Design has too - and we keep banging on about planning the Early Access launch, so I thought what better way of showing the sheer gargantuan size of a task like this, than literally showing you?!

Welcome to the Trash Goblin "Game Design Document"! This is literally the whole game laid out on paper - even down to dropped features, and of course some dreams and plans for the future!

We use a piece of software called Miro to plan and work together online - we're a remote-first studio - and it is essentially a digital whiteboard with infinite "Post-It notes" and all kinds of cool features. It allows us to colour code and arrange thigs for clear communication, and to collaborate in all kinds of useful ways.

This is a zoomed-in look at one of the sub-sections, which is where we're planning the Early Access launch!

Once we've had a proper Design-led pass over all the elements we want to make for the Early Access launch of the game, we'll take Code and Art through it to spot holes in the plan and bring up additional elements we'd not considered, and once that's done we'll be ready to guesstimate all the effort required, and break it down until we know what we can fit in the time we have, and what will have to be moved to an update during Early Access itself. We can never plan perfectly, but using this method we can be confident of our reasoning and happy that we're covering everything we need to.

[h3]WHAT NEXT[/h3]

We're still settling down post-Kickstarter and wrapping up some work unrelated to Trash Goblin that needs doing, while beginning to identify all the pieces of the puzzle that we'll need to tackle for a smooth development! Everyone on the team is focused on us creating a sensible plan for Trash Goblin that results in you all having the most fun possible with the Early Access launch of the game, and beyond to 1.0 - for what it's worth we want to make sure everything in that version is super polished and feels as finished as we can (kinda like the demo, but even more so!) and as detailed above if that means we have to shift a feature into an Early Access update we will. But don't worry yet, right now we're doing our darndest to cram as much in as we can.

[h3]YOUR QUESTIONS
[/h3]
We love chatting with you in our public discord, and when I asked what you'd like to see in these updates, there were a few elements that I was really happy were brought up! I think it is safe to say most of the requests were around concept art and progress shots of stuff we're working on, and that's going to be a consistent element of these updates (see above).

But one topic was Accessibility, and it's an important one.

The demo raised a few points where people were asking about our plans, especially around the colour-coded words in customer conversations, to the need to hold the mouse button down to clean with the sponge etc.

Specifically to these two elements - the word colour was partially an arbitrary decision, and we're due to overhaul the customer conversations with a ton more polish and features anyway, so we'll have a chance to address this element then. The mouse button holding was a really good spot, and we're looking to one of our key inspirations - Powerwash Sim - for clues here. They let you 'lock' their hose to 'on' and that's something that might work well for us! We don't want to lose the tactile moment for people who want it (it feels 'right' holding buttons to press or hold objects in the game) but of course we can and should allow for both!

On a broader note about accessibility, we definitely didn't fully consider the implications of these elements (and others) when building the demo, but were absolutely aware of the need to rework and establish some rules and options for players of all kinds when we get to release. It's a bit early for us to properly announce what these are (see above re: planning!) but certainly, our intent is to build this stuff into the game sensibly and that means most of the time doing so as early as possible, and to direct our efforts so that anyone out there is able to play as comfortably as we can possibly accommodate. We're not a Sony AAA studio so there will be a limit to what we can do, and it's probably wise to expect a rollout of these sorts of features over time, but we make games for people to enjoy so why would we get in the way of that?!

In the meantime, please do tell us what you want to know more about in these updates, we're still relatively new to this!

See you next update, Goblins!