Caromble! News

Here are some more of the shiny new versions of the commercial assets.

As shown in the first asset update last time around (thanks for the positive comment about them :)), they all now have a nice default version, a proper damage state and color variations.



Building in Construction


Damaged construction building.


Color Variations of the building.


Little extension building


Broken version


Color variations of the extension.


Apartment block - base version.


Destroyed version.


Apartment colors.


Bridge for Pedestrians.


Curve of the bridge.


Color versions for the bridges.


Wagon for a train


Damaged wagon.


Colored wagons


And as a special building with no destruction or colors: An industrial funnel.

Dear Caromble! friends,

We have received questions on whether the development is still ongoing. Well, of course it is! Development is certainly ongoing. We expect to finish Chapter 5 and new narrative content (yes, there will be story!) in December. We plan to release this, with 2 new skill levels, after testing in January. Then there is only one more Chapter left!

Development, though slower than everyone in the world would like, is always ongoing. Always! Thanks for sticking around!

Until our next release Thomas Schmall, the one who likes art, will share some insights on the asset creation process. In this post and the next, an overview of some of the assets in the Commercial theme featuring in Chapter 4 and 5:


Art production for the “Commercial Chapter” of Caromble went to full steam (pun intended) the last months. Most objects were place-holders before, with the fitting shape, but not much details in the 3D meshes and no proper textures. By now all objects have gone though the final process.

I’ve made pictures when I finished an asset, so here is a first collection. One version is always the normal block, the next one is a destroyed version (once the ball has hit the object), and the last is the color variations in an overview).


Building with Trims


Damaged version of the trimmed Building.


Color versions of the trimmed building.


Road with curve.


And the damaged road.


Road colors.


Fence Cloth.


Damaged fence.


Color versions of the fence.


A fence made from wood.


Damaged wooden fence.


Wood fence colors.


Brick Wall


Damaged brick wall.


Colors of the brick wall.

Dearest Caromble! friends,

As Thomas D. mentioned in the previous announcement, as a team we've had a hard time due to several personal circumstances. Last October we had a major content update and released Chapter 4. We also made a new team video to update you on this Early Access adventure. Unfortunately, due to said circumstances, we never got to actually finish and release it.

We thank you for all your patience and we're happy to say that time for Caromble! is finding its way again. We were able to wrap up our update video and are happy to finally share it with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxzZ8yigZhE
We hope you like it and that it shows our appreciation for our community.

Chapter 5 is coming along nicely and we'll show some ingame footage in the following announcement. Stay tuned!

Happy gaming!

Crimson Owl Studios

Our continued absence in communication will have undoubtedly raised some questions. And it is high time we give some answers.

But first the important bit; we are still alive and kicking!

In fact, you could argue we are slightly more alive than before, almost 2 months ago my son Jonas was born. He's doing his job as a small baby perfectly; he's growing like crazy and is highly effective at keeping his new dad away from is laptop. I'm sure he'll soon get the hang of game-development and will proof to be a great asset. But unfortunately at the moment he is not a net contributor.

For the others it has been a challenging year too. One of us has was forced to take some time away from the project. And spread out between the remaining team members, there have been more than a few sick kids and other family members to take care of. And most sadly, in one case even the loss of a close relative.

Being a parttime game developer can be difficult at the best of times, but over the past 5 months it has proven impossible at times for us to contribute as much as we want to. Last weekend we managed to meet up for the first time and months and renewed our pledges to ourselves and the game. And perhaps most importantly, we restated our enthusiasm about Caromble!.

Meeting every Friday as we used to has proven elusive, and the alternative of doing only remote work has not been as productive as hoped. So we made a new deal of meeting one weekend day every month, besides the remote work. That should give us the continuity we are looking for.



As a consequence there might be less updates on Steam Community however. Instead of the 'regular' weekly post we'll infrequent updates here. If we are slow to respond to a question on the forum (we don't get a notification for a new discussion... ) feel free to shoot an email to info at caromble.com.

In the mean time, out of the limelight work is still ongoing! Bossfights are being prepped and crates are being stacked. Thomas S is still cranking out new assets to be put in levels. We are still working on the narrative part of Caromble!. So please give us some time, and we'll 'soon' give you more Caromble!.

As an alert reader you might have noticed a slight dip in the frequency of these posts. We may have missed one or two (alright 11) Fridays.

We are unhappy about this lapse. We are part-time developers and there are times when personal and professional lives interact heavily with what should be Caromble! time. It is something that happens from time to time, and every time we see that after a while Caromble! gets our attention again. We might be gone from behind our keyboards from time to time, but Caromble! is never from our minds and hearts.

But as the winter of 2018 is ending and a new spring is beginning it is also time to have a quick peak at the buds of another Caromble! spring. Don't judge, spring clichés are fine at the end of winter.

Our next release (no dates right now) will focus almost completely on Chapter 5. If our development speed picks up we will look at other stuff too. Besides 4 new story levels Chapter 5 will bring a new Arkatron too. What it will do exactly will be kept under wraps for the time being, but I can share a development screenshot. It doesn't show any of the cool new ideas we are working on, but we will save those for another time!



And another one, the graphics are still in the early stages, but see if you can spot the new Arkatron:




We'll keep you updated on our steam page as we continue working on Caromble!.