Trash Goblin News

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!

Words cannot describe how amazed, thankful, humbled and happy we are right now.



We had to make a new emoji just to communicate precisely how we're feeling!

[h3]WHAT HAPPENED[/h3]

• 135% funded - every time we write it down it still makes us think we're dreaming!
  
• 2215 of you lovely goblins helped our dream come true!
  

• 5 Bonus "Musical Instrument" Trinkets unlocked; the Lute, Drum, Viola, Flute and Lyre!
  
• 1 Bonus Golden Quest unlocked, which includes a new Trinket as well!
  
• 5 Bonus "Prosthetic" Trinkets unlocked; the Glass Eye, Artisanal Hand, Pirate Hook, Mechanical Hand and Dentures!
  
• 1 Bonus New Species unlocked; the Spirit Folk will appear as Customers in the game in many guises, including generic customers, and a named Customer with a Golden Quest! This also includes a full set* of Trinkets related to their culture.
  
• 5 Bonus "Mask" Trinkets unlocked; the Spirit "Face", Wooden, Carnival, Spooky and Noface masks!
  

*we're not sure how many, but are aiming for at least 5 so it matches with the Bonus Trinket sets, and ideally as many as we have for all the other 'base' Trinket sets in the game at launch.

[h3]WHAT NEXT[/h3]

We'll take a short breather for a couple of days, then do a ton of planning as we move the game intro proper pre-production. This is where we assess the latest build of the game, the features it contains and that we want to add, and the quality of our processes. We also identify what we still need to figure out (ie: what haven't we tried to do yet) and what is ready for us to just make and implement, and then try to estimate how long it'll take and decide what order to do it in!

We'll also start fulfilling the rewards that we can (eg: getting in touch with people who are going to appear in the game and working with them to help us do just that) and announcing solid plans and dates for those that will be fulfilled in the future (eg: when the Beta is likely to be accessible, and how) so that you're all clear, happy and understand our plans.

We've got so much work to do, but without your support, we wouldn't have been able to get this far - we cannot wait to grow Trash Goblin with you, and will forever be incredibly grateful for this wonderful opportunity you've gifted us. Is someone chopping onions?

[h3]WHAT HAPPENS TO THE DEMO?[/h3]

Well, we're not sure! We'll leave it up for the time being, but might take it down at some point. We're hue fans of keeping the game in your hands though, so we'll endeavour to update the demo properly when the opportunity arises! Heck, we might even decide not to take it down...

[h3]LATE PLEDGES[/h3]

Keep an eye out, as we're looking into keeping the funding going via our Patreon, including the continued unlocking of Stretch Goals! It's not something we initially planned but the response has been amazing so why not continue as far as we can? We will only be offering a limited selection of the current reward tiers, and need to do a test run first to figure out the best way to fulfil any late pledges in that instance.

And finally, thank you all again for your generosity, kindness and passion for this fabulous game we're making. We are looking forward to releasing it, and seeing all the joy it brings!

[h3]NEW DEMO[/h3]

Just because we're so pleased with how the demo has gone down, and because we wanted to treat you all... and also a little bit because it felt weird to take all the Christmas decorations out of the demo and not put "January" back in... well we've updated the demo again! It's got lovely dreary rain, but also a bunch more customers for you to meet, and a few other nice bits and bobs too!

Changelist:

• Rain. Yup, January is here and so is the rain.
  
• 4 New Customers have been added, all of whom have unique dialogue and want to buy interesting Trinkets!
  
• Customer order has been rejigged a little bit. We won't spoil it for you though!
  
• Time of Day Lighting. We've overhauled the look so now the morning, noon and evening all look distinct and cosy. It adds so much to the feel of being in the Goblin's little shop, we love it!
  
• Time of Day UI. The pointer now tracks properly showing you which timeslot you're currently in.
  
• We've done some work to ensure it is harder to plop Trinkets and Tools where they shouldn't go.
  

Let us know what you think!

[h3]KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN UPDATE[/h3]
Thanks to your generosity we're chugging along through the Stretch Goals like an unstoppable Goblin train! If you want to support us - there's only 48hrs left to do so - head on over and give a pledge. You can plump for jus tthe game, or level up and get a Collector's Edition (Digital OST & Digital Artbook, or even appear in the game!)

The game is funded, the team is so excited to get into full production, and from here on in it's about getting more bonus content & features in while you can!

We also wanted to show how we listen - after a discussion about a feature in our discord with the community, we've settled on a brand new 'mode' of sorts as a stretch goal! It's basically "LoFi - Cosy Beats to Goblin to" and we'd be delighted if we made it that far.

[h3]THE FUTURE:[/h3]
We're definitely going to be making Trash Goblin as fun and polished and exciting as we can, and we can't wait to get started. Once the campaign is over we'll take a step back and appraise our plans based on the reception of the demo and all that good feedback we've been getting, then make a concrete plan for the game. I'd love to think we're sharing a dev roadmap in the next month or so, but I won't promise anything yet!

Thanks to over 1500 wonderful Goblins we've smashed through our funding goal for Kickstarter with 5 days left to raise funds!

That means you've only got 5 days to back us and get in on some lovely Collector's Edition goodies, or get your face or a favourite Trinket into the game... or even Beta access! Head on over if you'd like to support us, and every new pledge you raise steps the campaign closer to unlocking more features & content for the game for everyone to enjoy when we release it!

And we're not just sat watching numbers go up, oh no! We're working on an update to the demo, responding to a lot of feedback and also adding some really nice stuff we've wanted to for a while...



As you can see we've taken the Christmas decorations down, but also we're getting some gorgeous time-of-day lighting changes in - making it even cosier and feeling more like a real place. This is all tied to the Time Slots, so as you spend time doing work, the day progresses and you feel the atmosphere changing with it!



And we've got more weather in there! It's January, so the perfect time for us to figure out how rain and mist will look. Nice and dreary, it turns out! A job well done.

Keep your eyes peeled for the demo update, and until then...

...stay Goblin!