Negotiations Have Failed! News

[h2]Monday, 3 November 2025[/h2][p]In mid-August, for the first time since starting working on this game, I had no more todo items on my MVP list for Negotiations Have Failed. So the game is ready to publish on Steam, with the demo being accessible directly on Steam during the upcoming Steam Next Fest.[/p][h3]Major work items focused on through the Spring and Summer[/h3][p]Since my last update in March, where I reported that I had to finish writing and implementing the remaining poems in the game, I had the remaining items to work through:[/p]

• [p]Fixing a softlock that occurred in a rare battle circumstance that I had overlooked in my code. (It was a one-line fix...)[/p]
• [p]Mixing and implementing the last few songs that were composed back in Winter 24-25[/p]
• [p]Revamping the game's final story and end credits sequence[/p]
• [p]Implementing a few secrets (my favorite thing to conceive and implement)[/p]
• [p]Computer controlled second player option for Local Multiplayer[/p]
• [p]Adjustments to the balancing dynamics of some sound effects.[/p]

[p]This area of the menu includes the last major feature implemented to the game, the CPU 2nd player. Now when I look at this screen, I'll always think of this as what I saw when I finished a major accomplishment that took quite some time and rewarding effort.[/p][p]Another piece of trivia for the game: I'm a big believer in people playing games together for connection and bonding through shared experiences, so my preference is for people to play multiplayer with one another, in person. If you look at the two player controls, I configured it so that two friends can share one keyboard and have enough room for their hands to be near one another---without touching. (People should be close, but not that close sometimes.)[/p][h3]What's next in preparation for release[/h3][p]Marketing, marketing, marketing... and publishing! I have a lot of the skeleton of where my game's promotional materials will live online besides on Steam, but now I have to work through a little bit of the content production and publishing. In parallel, I have to finalize some of the uploading of the demo and full game build on Steam, as it took a lot of research to prepare for these aspects since this is the first game I'm adding to Steam.[/p][p]I'll challenge myself to share more thoughts on the game here in the coming weeks, but I usually feel anxious committing significant time to these posts because my mind usually screams at me: "Why aren't you working on the game itself?" But with the game done, my mind has changed its self-scolding message to: "Why aren't you finishing your websites, press kit, and other promotional stuff that you need to do?"[/p][p]And while I’m on the subject of getting the word out: if you’re a streamer or content creator who’d like to check out Negotiations Have Failed ahead of release, I’d love to hear from you. Watching people experience the game and hearing your thoughts is incredibly valuable to me, so please feel free to reach out if you’re interested in trying it and sharing feedback.[/p][p]Contact me at goofysocksgames on X if interested.[/p]

Hi, everyone. Tim here with a brief update.

[h2]Battle background artwork complete![/h2]

While my last update said I would focus on releasing the soundtrack and looking at any feedback received from the demo for improvements, I didn't receive any feedback yet and decided to move forward with directly working on what's required for the full release.

I've been working since January on completing the game's background battle art. Three remained, one of them quite larger than the others, and I finished them last week.

[h2]What's next[/h2]

If you've played the demo, you've seen that each battle mode begins with a short poem, and there are a few more that I have to compose for the rest of the game's post demo modes. While I've written a lot of notes on the kinds of themes I wish to explore for each one, I'm also breaking out some of my collections at home to get my line writing muscles loosened up.



So I'm focusing on getting the game's artistic assets all wrapped up so I can get back to the "practical" things I'll need to do to create the launch version of the game. When writing poetry, sometimes the lines come quickly, in a single sitting. And other times I have to just show up every day until it's done.

You can't make the grass grow by pulling on it.

Hi, everyone. Tim here with the latest updates, mostly reporting on music things related to Negotiations Have Failed!

[h2]Play our early demo build and give your thoughts and feedback[/h2]
You can play a good chunk of the game by downloading it on Itch: NHF Demo Page There's a feedback form there that you can fill out to let us know what you like and would suggest for NHF, and you can also join our mailing list there. You can also leave feedback in our Steam community/news posts and itch comment section.

[h2]Short term goals[/h2]

Wrapping up arranging the end credits music. It's about 80% there.
• Making the demo's soundtrack available on YouTube, Spotify, and Bandcamp
  
• Seeing which ways I can make improvements to the gameplay based on collected demo feedback
  

[h2]Last week's progress[/h2]
[h3]Soundtrack is complete*[/h3]
*If I'm being honest, I'll likely going to be tinkering with the songs' smaller details until the day before release.

After a few evenings of multi-hour hyper focus sessions, I've completed the end credits music, which I saved as the last track to fully write and arrange in FamiStudio. Looking through my phone's voice memos shows that the first time the song's idea visited me was in December of 2022, although I didn't finalize its structure (its melody and chords) until December of 2024.

A few of my friends who have provided me feedback on the game, some of them having beaten the entire game experience from start to finish, have been asking me for a while to upload the game's songs somewhere so they could listen whenever they want.

"I'm not going to upload it anywhere until all the songs are done!"

Since my friends have patiently waited, the first thing I did the day after I finished the last song was ready and upload an unlisted YouTube video of the complete soundtrack, with a visualization of FamiStudio's oscilloscope and the tracker that shows the different instrument notes.


The tasks that ended up eating time when preparing this video were completing the track order, figuring out a fix/melody change for a section of the Endless Patrol music that never sat well with me, and then coming up with "endings" of songs once the loop point comes to a conclusion, as opposed to fading out at the start of the second repetition like most game soundtracks do. I'm debating whether or not I want to take this approach with the final version of the soundtrack on streaming services. After listening a few times, I currently feel that some songs probably would sound better with a traditional fadeout.

[h3]More soundtrack details[/h3]
I'm going to make an abbreviated version of the soundtrack, the demo soundtrack, available on YouTube with a similar visualization, probably with songs' names displayed, too. After those are available, I'll work on making the demo OST available on the other noted platforms.

The demo soundtrack will be 7 tracks, and then when the full game soundtrack is out, another 8 tracks will be made available. (The complete soundtrack is technically only 14 tracks, since one of the demo's tracks will be expanded into its "complete" version after release.) 13 of those songs are "full length" songs, and the short track is a quick mode ending jingle.

Importing the songs in the game and across streaming platforms will need some mixing work in the next weeks, as I usually mix the game's tracks into stereo in Audacity. The NES sound chip that FamiStudio is based off of didn't support stereo sound, and while I've have achieved a balanced mix for the songs in mono in FamiStudio, I value a stereo mix for these songs a little more. I like The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds stereo mix more than the mono mix, after all ;)

[h2]Thanks for reading, and stay tuned![/h2]

Hi everyone! My name is Tim, and I'm the creator of Negotiations Have Failed. I'm going to share weekly updates of the most relevant news and what I've been up to regarding NHF's development.

[h2]Play our early demo build and give your thoughts and feedback[/h2]
You can play a good chunk of the game by downloading it on Itch: NHF Demo Page There's a feedback form there that you can fill out to let us know what you like and would suggest for NHF, and you can also join our mailing list there. You can also leave feedback in our Steam community/news posts and itch comment section.

[h2]Short term goals[/h2]

• Wrapping up arranging the end credits music. It's about 80% there.
  
• Seeing which ways I can make improvements to the gameplay based on collected demo feedback
  
• Making the demo's soundtrack available on YouTube, Spotify, and Bandcamp
  

After resolving these, I'll likely start working on the remaining artwork for the modes beyond the demo, which (I hope) is the majority of the work that is before me before the game is complete.

[h2]Last week's progress[/h2]
[h3]Music:[/h3]
I'm wrapping up the game's final credits music, which players will not hear until after they beat the final game mode in the full version of the game. The song is pretty upbeat, especially in contrast to a lot of the other songs in the soundtrack.

This is the last song that I'm arranging for the the soundtrack, as I've finished writing/arranging the rest of the songs on the soundtrack. The full soundtrack is about 13 songs, and some of those songs are multi-part tunes with different sections. The demo contains about 6 of the songs.

The songs are arranged in FamiStudio, which emulates the NES sound chip and its limitations. The songs look like this in the program when I'm arranging them:

A screenshot of the first few measures of the melody in the game's Patrol Mode

[h3]Steam page/cover art on the way[/h3]
While I've made all of the assets in the game, I am collaborating with an artist to make the game's cover art, which will be prominently featured on the game's Steam page. It will be a few weeks before it's added, and I'm looking forward to it.