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Trash Goblin News

A Video Treat! New Team Members! Important Milestones!

Wowzer, it's been a heck of a fortnight over here at Spilt Milk! Hope you're all keeping happy, healthy and chill - we're trying, but the UK summer is doing its best impression of winter so β˜”β˜”β˜”

[h3]MORE GOBLINS[/h3]

First up, we've expanded the team!

Lesleyann White has joined as our Producer, and Philippa Warr has started work with us as Narrative Designer!

Lesleyann is a multi-award-winning developer, and comes to us from the brilliant team over at Failbetter Games (Mask of the Rose, Sunless Skies, Sunless Sea, Fallen London anyone?! OMG!) so we're over the moon to bring her expertise to our adventures with a certain little Goblin! Also shoutout to UK indies! πŸ₯°

Philippa is someone we've known for some years now, and finally getting to work with her is just so exciting - recently she worked on Little Kitty Big City which is um, too cute thank you, and has a real sense of humour and twinkle in the eye which we think is going to make Trash Goblins's quests and customers 🎡sing🎡.

[h3]GOBLIN GABBER[/h3]
(This title only works as a joke when you get to the next section, my apologies)

So then there's this talk that I gave at Oxford Indies last month, which one of our brillo coders Simon kindly recorded and edited together!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It's about the journey of Trash Goblin and Spilt Milk Studios so far, features an awful lot about you lovely Kickstarter Goblins, and we think it is full of insight and advice (and some jokes) that will be pretty interesting to ya'll.

I hope it comes across as intended - a really honest look at the business side of making games, and the very real and human challenges of it all, especially in the year(s) we're having - worker layoffs, studio closures, game cancellations and the like.

We'll be pushing it all over the internet before long, but you all get to watch it before anyone else, and I'd love to know what you think in the comments, replies and over on our discord too.


[h3]SUCCESS SASS[/h3]
(nope, not yet, this joke is building on the previous one but also needs the last section header to work - when will I learn?)

We've hit a few milestones recently, helped out by the Access-Ability Showcase featuring, and the Cozy & Family Friendly Celebration too - plus another few videos from some amazing content creators like Blitz, Wanderbots and Imcade.

"But what are those milestones? Stop yammering and tell us!" I hear you cry. well we're now sat at a very healthy 56,000 wishlists and that places us in the top 500 of ALL GAMES on Steam for wishlists... which has left the team feeling giddy and excited for sure. Thanks so much for all your support! We can't wait to smash 100k soon enough!

[h3]TAVERN TALK[/h3]
(hey, we got there!)

TAVERN TALK IS OUT TOMORROW OMG! Go wishlist and follow it, and maybe even buy it! The devs are delightful, they've helped us so much, and the game is excellent too.

Until next time, stay Goblin!

Demo Updated

We couldn't resist updating the demo with some fixes for things we spotted in streams and that you all shared with us, plus the features we've been working on! Because we're like that!

[h3]Accessibility Features[/h3]
  • Camera transition speed options
  • Trinket rotation speed options


[h3]Gameplay Bug Fixes[/h3]
  • Upcycling tool no longer disappears
  • Can no longer drop/swap tools during chipping/cleaning/upcycling camera sequences


[h3]Game Options[/h3]
  • Options now fully persist across sessions and scenes
  • Fixed various options text bugs


Enjoy, and as ever please come and talk to us about the game in our discord with all the other goblins!

How the Cozy and Family Friendly Games Celebration went!

Well now, here's a thing. We updated the demo, as you know, in time for the Cozy and Family Friendly Games Celebration and boy howdy did it go well!

Here's how we were thinking about it going in!

[h3]CONS[/h3]

  • it is a sales festival, so most people will be interested in finding games to buy & play
  • we're a fair way from launch
  • we're doing well getting the game out there, but I'm not sure we're as well known as Tiny Glade, Outbound, or our chums over at Tavern Talk (who have a demo out too!).
  • there are a lot of games celebrated in the event, well over 150!
  • we knew we weren't going to get a featured spot (that's all arranged ahead of time)
  • we didn't know what kind of placement the event would get on Steam, if any


[h3]PROS[/h3]

  • the demo is polished & robust (thanks to all you Goblins out there making suggestions and reporting issues!)
  • the demo update went live after the festival had started, so maybe Steam's algorithm might impact it positively in some way, being fresh?
  • this is Trash Goblin for crying out loud, who doesn't love it?! πŸ˜…
  • we've got the lovely folks at Plan of Attack helping with press and streamer outreach


Anyway, I'm sure there's more but you can see we felt that the odds were stacked against us having a brilliant event, but were keenly watching our wishlist numbers for whatever bump we might see.

But I don't want that to come off as defeatist by the way! We just tend to assess and settle on what we think are realistic expectations. So we thought perhaps we'd see a few days of a few hundred extra wishlists.

[h3]WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
[/h3]
Er, we saw the second biggest spike in wishlists since we launched the Steam page, behind only the one-two punch of the Kickstarter & demo launch back in December, and that had the Wholesome Direct boost helping it out too!

Left: launch of the Steam page. Middle: Kickstarter & demo launch. Right: Cozy & Family Friendly Celebration

Ok so technically this was the 3rd biggest spike, but I reckon all those spikes around the Kickstarter count as one; they're certainly as a result of the same event.

Games usually chug along at a low-ish baseline, so we were doing just dandy and then BOOM! It is very exciting, let me tell you!

Seeing this huge uptick in wishlists made the team positively giddy with excitement. There might've even been tears. The past 6 days have seen 6,332 Goblins wishlist the game (compared to the perfectly healthy 221 for the previous 6 days) and now we're sat at an amazing 52,500 wishlists in total!

So it goes without saying we're a happy bunch, and we couldn't have done it without you. Literally as well as figuratively. This is your success, your moment to celebrate as much as it is ours, so at any point in the next few days that the opportunity presents itself please do raise a glass (of wine, or soda, or whatever!) to yourselves. Onwards and upwards!

Stay amazing,

The Spilt Milk Goblins

Brand New Demo - out now!

We've released a brand new Demo of Trash Goblin, as part of the delightful Cozy & Family Friendly Celebration on Steam right now! There's over an hour of content in this demo, and we're super excited to hear what your favourite trinket is, or who your favourite customer is!

Featured in the demo is everything we've been doing for Beta, and a little bit more!

[h3]Upcycling Gameplay[/h3]
This is the big new feature, allowing you to combine Trinkets in all kinds of fun ways! Make a mug better by finding the right handle, or create something completely unique! You'll be given the required tool for this after your 3rd customer, and given a ton of Trinkets for free to play with at the same time!

[h3]11 Customers[/h3]
Featuring some new characters and 2 of them using the early version of our customer paperdoll system! They'll turn up more spread across the day too!

[h3]Cleaning improvements[/h3]
We've reworked the visuals, gamefeel and audio on cleaning!

[h3]Varied pricing for trinkets[/h3]
Customers now pay what they feel a Trinket is worth!

[h3]Music[/h3]
Every gameplay sequence or minigame has its own musical track, plus the general background music changes as the day progresses!

[h3]Accessibility features[/h3]
We've responded to your feedback and added a bunch of features (found in the Settings menu) around text readability and the controls for cleaning and chipping gameplay.

[h3]New trinkets[/h3]
48 Trinkets are in the demo in total. 30 arrive through sack deliveries, and there are 19 brand new Trinkets.

[h3]Controls[/h3]
More consistent controls, with Right Mouse Button used for rotating during chipping etc

[h3]Known issues[/h3]
The game doesn't save progress between sessions, that functionality will come soon!

Please do dive in to play - especially if you've been jealously seeing all the Beta chat - now's the time to enjoy all the polished new features and tell us what you think over on our discord!

Livestream

We've got a nice livestream happening!