GoodBoy News

[p][/p][p]We’ve been working at a breakneck pace to get our next game stood up and ready for release, and we’re almost there!  Good Boy is going into Early Access one week from today!!
[/p][p]We’re excited to share the game, and we hope you’re excited to play!  If you’d like to help us spread the word, here’s what you can do:[/p]

• [p]Go wishlist Good Boy, if you haven’t yet! (And tell a friend! Good Boy is best played with pals.)[/p]
• [p]Go engage with our social media!  We’re talking about Good Boy on Bluesky, X, Instagram, and TikTok, and all your likes, comments, and reposts help raise our visibility. [/p]
• [p]Grab a copy of Good Boy when it drops on Friday the 14th!![/p]

[p]Thank you so much for being a part of our community.  We can’t wait to hear what you think of Good Boy.
[/p][p]The TPG Devs[/p][p]
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[p]I’ve been promising more mobs, and folks, this week we deliver( at least in first draft form!).  The brand new murder parrotI showed you last week is in the game, and so is the explosive-egg-laying slug! [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The Parrot is a walking alarm bell, driving the team noise meter up and making life hellish for players. The slug, meanwhile, doesn’t care about you.. And would be harmless, if not for the explosive eggs everywhere.
[/p][p]We’re not done with mobs yet, we’ve got a few more still in development for Early Access, but for the time being we hope you enjoy fleeing in terror from these little beasties.
[/p][p]While you’re running, though, watch where you step.  We decided murderous pets and deadly impacts with couches wasn’t enough, so we’ve added more ways to die.  Some of the homes you’re looting are now protected by landmines!!  
[/p][p]If you hear the beep, it’s too late.
[/p][p]We’ve also made some adjustments to the new mask pipeline.  Now when you loot an item and pay to have it turned into the mask, it will show up immediately on the table.  And, if you don’t like ANY of your masks, look for the rotary phone in the HQ.  You can use it to call the Burgle Supply company and get them to send you a whole new shipment of masks… for a small fee, of course.
[/p][p]Last big change I’m going to mention is a change to audio.  Since chatting with your teammates is important, we’ve made game audio persistent even if you tab out of the game.  That way you can–oh, just as a random example–tab out to capture a screenshot of an amazing moment and not lose voice access to your crew.  If you don’t love the feature, that’s okay!  You can find the setting to turn it off in the audio options menu.[/p][p][/p][p]As always, we’d love to know what you think, so use that link to the feedback form and drop us a message!
[/p][p]GLHFDDD!!
[/p][p]Jessica - the producer[/p][p]
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[p]Okay folks, we’ve got a fairly significant change to masks we’re rolling out in our latest build for those of you in the playtest!  Previously there was just an available mask pool, but that limited us our options for progression and onboarding the mask and tag systems.  So we’ve got a new system for getting your hands on those sweet, sweet masks.  Players will now loot items that can become masks, and if your heist is successful then you can use team loot to unlock those masks and add them to the pool.  So, if you want different tags?  You’re gonna have to go out and steal them for yourselves.
[/p][p]What else?  The personal voice meter I mentioned last time has been hooked up in game, so you can see how much noise you’re personally making.  We’ve also got a whole library of SFX incorporated now, and our music system is up and running (Draft 1!).  We hope you’ll enjoy the new heist soundtrack. 🙂
[/p][p]We’re still pushing on all the new content as well.  We’re implementing more heist objectives, and more levels, and of course more very good boys.  Don’t hold me to this, but right now it looks like we might have up to four new mobs in game by the time we go into Early Access.  Like this feathered friend!  [/p][p]
[/p][p]Last but not least, we have let more folks into the playtest!  For those of you who want to play, and don’t have any friends in yet, you’re welcome to come look for folks to play with in our Discord.[/p][p][/p][p]Happy Halloween, everyone![/p][p]Jessica - the producer[/p][p]
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[p]Hi everyone!  
[/p][p]First of all, we’re thrilled so many of you have signed up for the playtest–in the past week several thousand of you all have asked to join!  We’ve been trying to let people in on a sensible cadence, so that we can have fresh eyes  for every round of big changes, which is super helpful for us. Today we’re going to let in a TON of you, so if you’ve been waiting check your notifications!  You might be in.
[/p][p]As to what we’ve been up to… 
[/p][p]We’ve scoped to what we absolutely plan to hit for Early Access, and everyone is focused on those goals.  For tech that means wrapping an initial music system, and making sure the beginnings of our character customization works.  It also means a lot of tinkering with our physics system, since tiny accidents can lead to an entire room of lootable items suddenly turning into a bouncy castle.
[/p][p]It’s super fun to see it happen once, but we don’t think it’s really ‘value added’ for the play experience. 😃
[/p][p]Design side, we’re trying to make sure you have something to spend your ill gotten gains on.  The team has HQ unlocks to spruce up your Burgle basement, and for individual players we’re working on implementing some customizations for your character.  My entire team today ran one heist with superhero eyes. It was great.  [/p][p][/p][p]We’ve also been working on updating the way we display the noise meter, in order to make it clear when you, personally, are contributing to the cacophony.  The team meter still stretches across the bottom of the screen, but above that you now have your own personal indicator, so you know when you need to pipe down.[/p][p][/p][p]Aside from that, we’re pushing hard for variety.  More places to loot, with different themes and prop sets, and drafting up more horrifying monsters to wreak havoc on your best laid plans.  Like this lil’ guy!  Isn’t he cute?[/p][p][/p][p]
That’s about all for this week.  For those of you excited for Early Access we expect to have news about timing very soon.  Hang tight, and keep an eye on this space![/p][p][/p]

• [p]Jessica (the producer)[/p]

[p]What’s up everyone![/p][p][/p][p]It’s been a busy two weeks.  Last time I posted we had just gotten our Demo up, but with a week left until Steam Next Fest kicked off, we wanted to try to improve the Demo, if we could.  When we originally planned for Good Boy, we thought it would be awesome to be able to allow for cross platform play, so we’d used EOS voice rooms to support the team’s voice chat.  The thing is, that required folks to log in to EOS, and not everyone loved that idea.  We’re trying some non-EOS technology now for voice chat, let us know if it works![/p][p][/p][p]We also had a lag issue where the game would hiccup when too many items were getting smashed to bits (by players or by Mr. Fish).  Our engineer hammered the problem out, and we had a couple hilarious play sessions where we piled everything in the house into a giant pile and lured the fish into it… for testing purposes, of course.  While we think we’ve improved things greatly, we always appreciate more feedback! [/p][p][/p][p]Some folks are having a hard time finding the Demo button (since we also have a live playtest, and Steam prioritizes that on our page).  If you’re looking, the Demo can be downloaded here:[/p][p]Other new updates!!  We’ve added more voice controls for players.  You can control your mic input and attenuation, which should allow players to adjust their settings to help reduce background noise coming in.  You can also set up a push-to-talk button, mute other players, and see who is talking in the player list in game.
[/p][p]With Steam Next Fest kicked off, we’ve turned our attention fully to the next big milestone: launching Good Boy into Early Access.  We’ve got an aggressive timeline for that, and an aggressive list of things we want to get done!  In the past week, we’ve added new heist levels and new goals, and we’re in the process of implementing controller support.
[/p][p]Playtesters will see two new mobs in game.  One is our adorable yet horrifying Death Bunny, and the other is the long anticipated Good Boy himself!  He’s death incarnate, while also, of course, being a very, very, very good boy.[/p][p][/p][p]I think that’s about it!  Next up for us is getting some unlockable basement and player upgrades into the game, as well as pushing hard for variety.  More mobs, more locations, more stuff to burgle for your team. 
[/p][p]Happy Heisting![/p][p]-Jessica, the producer[/p][p]
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