Pixel Noir News

We hope you all are having a great summer! We're excited to bring you another update into the latest developments on your favorite detective RPG, Pixel Noir. Let's dive in!

As we navigate around launch territory, we want to be transparent about our ongoing pursuit of a publishing partner. While we've had exploratory conversations with a number of publishers, we haven't aligned on a deal that we're comfortable with. One common theme we're seeing is that our Early Access launch on Steam has presented a unique challenge that cause most publishers to back away from proposing a deal. We released Early Access to gather feedback from you all, as well as to get the game out to everyone while we finished the rest of the development. However, it was launched with minimal marketing support from our previous publisher. In essence, the Early Access launch has made Pixel Noir appear as if it has officially launched when, in reality, it hasn't. Publishers care about this sort of thing because of the Steam search algorithm prioritizes unreleased games, which effectively means you can market to more people.

To be clear, from a development standpoint, Pixel Noir is complete and now we're using this unforeseen (and semi-unwelcomed) extra time to refine many aspects of the game. The team is committed to continue delivering a great experience by meticulously polishing to perfection and we're determined to find the right launch strategy for the full game.




While the publisher situation is frustrating, don't think for a minute that we don't have any goodies in store for you! We've been working on addressing Steam feedback to make the game even better. We patched the Pixel Noir Early Access. Here's a list of what you'll generally find in the new build:

• Enjoy an even more engaging experiences with improved story events, skills, audio, and user interface interactions
• Experience more difficulty balanced battles, ensuring satisfying gameplay
  
• Discover exciting item effects like Lunar Redeye that boosts your adrenaline, Chili Pepper causing Enrage, and Dive Poster as valuable quest items
• Adding to the city atmosphere as police cars now patrol Pinnacle City, making the environment feel alive with the occasional siren passing by
  
• More dynamic gameplay with custom damage events and environmental hazards that create new challenges.
  
• Have more fun playing CRDTech with smoother and more enjoyable card game mechanics
• Test your stealth skills as enemies now have a cone of vision.
  
• Enjoy a smoother experience as we introduce refined dungeon mechanics in critical areas.
  
• Enhance your combat strategy with the new "Pistol Whip" skill, giving you more ways to approach battles.
  
• Jump into the game faster with optimized backend data that minimizes load times for better seamless gameplay.
  

Here are the known issues for the latest Pixel Noir Eary Access build version 9/12/23.

• Initial load times in selecting New Game or loading saved game data from the title screen clocked in at ~90 seconds. However after loading a game, load times are significantly shorter.
  
• Saved data from previous build versions will be bugged in this version, It's advised to start a New Game from the title screen.
  
• Soft lock in battle with combo tutorial event in ch3 (rare)
  
• Random battles can take place if already in a cinematic which can cause soft-locks or even freezing (very rare)
  
• Premature fade out to enemies in Armory when in mid-room transition (in some instances)
  
• Getting hit by cars next to a roadblock at the end of the street can push the player outside of the environment colliders
  
• Minor issues with graphical asset layering (very rare and can be brief)
  
• Achievements may not be accurate because of a mismatch between old/new build versions
  
• Door SFX can play when failing to fully go through room transition areas
  
• In Ch2: Chapel as a following NPC can step through objects at times
  
• Causing paralysis status while a character (enemy or ally) in battle is going to attack will still allow the character to take their turn. Paralysis status takes effect after the inflicted character's preceding action.
  
• In CRDTech: Using Kato Sheng card’s ability on Deuce's card, causing the use of Deuce card’s ability to back out by pressing Shift (or B / cancel) soft-locks the game
  
• In CRDTech: Kato Sheng card placed last can cause a soft-lock
  
• In CRDTech: Bai Hu card doesn’t use its ability when placed
  
• In CRDTech: Using Meeks card’s ability can cause an opponent to take two turns
  

Since our previous Kickstarter update we've been putting in all kinds of polish.

Hazards: We've added damage causing environmental hazards as well as functionality within story events, allowing us to improve immersion both inside and outside story events.

Watch your step!

Sometimes reality hurts.

More Skills: We've even added a few skills such as Pistol Whip and some more "summon" discoveries for Shade, our masked vigilante, which should allow players to expand battle strategies.

Smack!

Epic discoveries to behold!

Hair of the Dog?

Skill Point Usage: We added skill point costs for skill upgrade levels AND we added cost discounts for using skills depending on the gear you have equipped.

More points to upgrades means MORE POWER... random Home Improvement reference.
Skill Bonuses mean skills cost less in battles!



Finally, we couldn't let this update pass without debuting a new track from renown producer, musician, and all-around-great-guy, Mustin!!!! A while back we asked him to help with some of the music production on the game. He's the reason why the OST sounds extra-polished, why the audio in the game is all balanced now, and why you're going to have fun listening to the Pixel Noir Arrange Album! This latest track from him is featured in the game and is called "Four on the Floor". It's played at a popular club in Uptown filled with a DJ and lots of EDM fans. And no, it's not cool that you spilled your beer on me, bro. Alright?



We're excited about the progress we've made in these last few months and can't wait for you to experience these improvements firsthand. As always, thank your support fuels our passion in delivering a game that lives up to your expectations! Stay tuned for more updates and announcements in the coming months as we figure out how to get this game out to all of you.

If you're excited about Pixel Noir, here are three steps you can take to make sure you're in the know:

• Let a publisher know about us! Whenever you find a publisher you believe would be an excellent fit for Pixel Noir, tag us in a social media post/email mentioning the publisher. We made it easy on you guys--click on the links below to go with a pre-drafted message (or feel free to create your own): 1. X (formerly Twitter) Template, 2. Email Template
  
• Join our SWDTech Games Discord server for a constant stream of screenshots, and granular development updates. You can even chat with the development team!
  
• Follow our daily progress on our official X bot (formerly Twitter bot).
  
• 
  Our next official update will be Feb 8th (unless we have some breaking news before then). We welcome all feedback and thoughts! Please enjoy the updated Early Access build!
  

//Team SWDTech

This is going to be a bit of a rollercoaster of an update. We're going to laugh together, cry together, and probably end up in a pottery class together. But before we jump into it, we wanted to let you all know that a few of us are going to be at PAX East this weekend! Look out for the 30-something-year-old nerds in Pixel Noir T-shirts and say hi if you see us!

It seems like ages since we were at a con! We won't have a booth this time around, but we'll be floating around!

As mentioned in update #72, we ended our business deal with BadLand Publishing due to a myriad of reasons. Here's an overview of what BadLand was supposed to provide and what we've been able to source ourselves:

There are several big gaps we need to close. If we launch without a publisher, there's no guarantee we can accomplish all of this.

As you can see above, since we dropped BadLand Publishing, we were able to successfully fill a few gaps:

• We hired Elevated Play, who is currently helping us in QA/testing the full Steam release. Switch testing will be our next order of business likely starting in May.
  
• We've acquired porting equipment for Playstation and Xbox (Switch is still pending).
  
• We had talks with a few potential publishers, no deal with any of them so far (but we'll keep you posted).
  
• We're still on track and working our collective asses off to finish full development by the end April.
  
• A few of us are starting to transition to backer rewards fulfillment. The team is going to kick this workstream off with finalization of the official Pixel Noir OST.
  

As we have no publisher yet, we're not in a strong position to go live with the finished game. As a result, we are officially delaying our Steam launch to Q4 or earlier. The decision to pull back our launch date was due to the fact that we've poured years into this project and want to have a strong launch for our passion project. To recap: we're on track to finish with the game as promised, we just need to line up marketing support before we can launch.

So bummer: yes, but worth the delay: absolutely yes because it will get into more hands in the long run as well as set us up for delivery of more of the things we had promised with our previous publisher! If you have a publisher in mind for Pixel Noir, PLEASE let either them or us know so we can move forward here...the sooner we get a publisher lined up, the sooner we release!

In lieu of all this info, we will do two rad things:

1. We'll update the Early Access on Steam sometime in May or June. Less bugs + more polish = more fun!
   
2. We will look to accelerate distribution of the OST as part of our fulfillment to backers who purchased digital merchandise. It doesn't fill the void left by a delayed launch date, but if we can't launch, by god, we'll start to deliver on some of the other promises we've made. At the end of the day, you guys have supported us through thick and thin and we appreciate you all. Hopefully you will enjoy some of the sweet tunage from our composers Kunal Majmudar & Hiroki Kikuta.
   

Once we get the OST out the door, we will transition efforts to the Arrange Album, which has some incredible talent on it! Here's a sneak peek of the lineup for the Arrange Album:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Our next stop on the update rollercoaster ride is dev team updates! Because of the work that has been done in coordination with Elevated Play as our QA support, we've been able to identify many new bugs AND we've already managed to fix a majority of them. By the time we update the Early Access on Steam, our goal is to have as few bugs as possible.

"Uhh, I'm stuck.... Alittle help here!?"
Dungeon switch mechanics: We had to reimplement some of the dungeon switches due to issues with saving/loading resulting in soft freezes galore--particularly if you spawn when inside the environment after unlocking some of the doors or extending bridges.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

New item added to game: We added the new item "Chili Pepper" to the game- a minor item that heals some HP but also causes Enrage status, which speeds a character up in the ATB bar and makes them auto-attack when their turn is up. Enrage is similar to what "Berserk" does in Final Fantasy 6:

Woof: "Let's get pissed off and start swinging!!"
Achievements: About a month ago, we added the rest of the trophies into the game. In the Early access there's 10 trophies you can get but in the full game you'll have 30 to try to obtain!

This one goes out to all you completionists out there!
Quality of life: We put in some small quality-of-life features. A simple save data overwrite confirmation and an easier way to erase save data. We also put in a way to equip gear within shops.

Just trying to make things easier for ya!
As mentioned above, we'll keep you guys in the loop if we sign with a new publisher--and in the meantime, we'll get going on some of the backer rewards! As always, we appreciate you all and the journey of epic proporations that Pixel Noir has taken us all through.

If you're excited about Pixel Noir, here are three steps you can take to make sure you're in the know:

1. Wishlist Pixel Noir on Steam!

2. Join our SWDTech Games Discord server for a constant stream of screenshots, granular development updates, sprint summaries. You can even chat with the development team!

3. Follow our daily progress on our official Twitter bot.



Our next official update will be on July 27th, however we will likely put out a smaller update before this one with more details around the OST/Arrange Album as well as an update on a Publisher (if there is news to share).

From our 16-bit family to yours, we hope everyone is having a great 2023 so far!

//Team SWDTech

We hope you've had a great holiday season. We're all very excited about what we have in store for 2023. But for now, we wanted to focus on the progress we made in 2022.

Last year saw a major shift in the game's development. We moved from a very long development to post-production and throughout the year crushed many many many bugs and added a lot of great polish edits, culminating in an update to the Early Access last month!

Let's take a trip down memory lane!



One of the bigger changes to the game was how skills are managed. This included changing how characters acquired skill points, as well as adding skill bonuses to gear, effectively reducing skill cost.



We updated the CRDTech card game, adding in tons of skills, new BGM / SFXs, and even implemented Gambling NPC's throughout the city who will gladly throw down some cards to win your hard-earned cash.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Speaking of NPC's, we put in grifters, traders and bums who you can potentially get some goodies from. We even added some random dialogue to all shops. and we updated all the bartenders in the game, they now sell alcohol!

Time at the bar!

Charitable giving can be rewarding.

Damn inflation!

We implemented New Game + which will allow you to replay the game and carry over things like experience, cash, and gear from your last play-through. You can even see which choices you made on your previous play-through so you can make some different choices and maybe take a different path through Pixel Noir's story!

Yeah you signed in on your first playthrough, remember?

We've added the bounty hunting system, effectively giving players another whole set of side-quests & cases to solve!

Track down some of the most notorious thugs in the city!

We've also made a lot of little changes such as updating the design of the club in Uptown (inclusive of flashing lights, obnoxiously loud music, & all!), varied the typing SFX's for all characters, added more polish to the casino games, and decreased load times. GUI upgrades were another big focus area including "quality of life" upgrades such as highlighting key terms or call to actions with red/green text, the ability to zoom in/out when looking at the the Map of the city, and lots more!

Un tis Un tis Un tis Un tis Un tis ...

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Call to attention highlighting so you don't miss the important stuff.

We even added more ways to fast travel to parts of the city.

The house always wins.......maybe.

Most recently we updated the Early Access build on Steam with another update on the way in the coming weeks! If you either previously played the Early Access or were planning to, give it a shot and drop us a line in the Community Forum to let us know how you like it!


That wraps it up for us in 2022. But as we move into 2023, If you're excited about Pixel Noir, here are three steps you can take to make sure you're in the know:

1. Wishlist Pixel Noir on Steam!

2. Join our SWDTech Games Discord server for a constant stream of screenshots, granular development updates, sprint summaries. You can even chat with the development team!

3. Follow our daily progress on our official Twitter bot.

Our next update will be on March 23rd!

From our 16-bit family to yours, we hope everyone had a great holiday season!

//Team SWDTech

As we close out 2022, we'll get to our usual updates but first and foremost, we wanted to share the news that we will be ceasing our business agreement with BadLand Publishing.

BadLand was providing us with Marketing, QA, Localization, and Porting services. The termination of this relationship is unfortunate, but rest assured we've already made alternative arrangements for some of the services BadLand provided and are in talks with other publishers.

While we can't get into more details now about the termination of the agreement, please be aware that we are continuing to move towards our Q2 launch commitment. If we can't arrange for certain deliverables such as Spanish localization for example, we will let you all know. It's a bummer and we are disappointed, but like most bumps in the road, it's not the end of the journey.

And with that, we're moving on to brighter pastures! Let's kick things off with the long-awaited Early Access update, chock full of new features and goodies!




As promised in our last update, we patched Steam Early Access! Chapters 1-4 of Pixel Noir are playable with all of our updated features. Here's a brief recap of what you can expect:

• Battle updates galore including the new skill system, asynchronous turn-based battle system, loads of new party/enemy skills, and many more battle encounters throughout the city.
  
• The CRDTech minigame has seen a major update with more cards, new music/SFX's, and NPC's who will happily battle you for some cash. We included more card abilities, which will make the game more strategic!
  
• Lots of audio updates including 3D audio, text typing, and more--all this helps Pinnacle City come to life with cars now audibly whizzing by you, doors now sounding like they're being opened, conversations between NPC's no longer sounding monotonous, audio transitioning seamlessly between exteriors/interiors and beat-syncing to transition into battle music.
  
• Loads more NPC's and intractable objects around town. We've added grifters, traders, and bums to add to the atmosphere Pinnacle City!
  
• Updates to graphical assets in the GUI, environments, and sprites--everything looks sharper and cleaner and new character portraits added to boot!
  
• Creation tier content has been added in! Thanks to all our content creation tier backers! In the Early Access version you can expect some of said content.
  
• Tons of back-end optimizations, decreasing load times, ensuring that menus bug free.
  
• More side-quests are now available for you to play through and experience!
  
• And much more!

We can't wait for people to play this new version! Of course, the full game will be coming out next year but, if you can't wait, the Early Access will surely whet your appetite!

*crowd noises* Oooh! Aaaah!

Yes, we're still adding little bits of polish to the game as we continue to work through the bugs in our list. Here's some of the things we've added since the last update in August:

Applied new SFX/BGM to CRDTech card game - Kunal squeezed out more some more audio to improve CRDTech's experience! Check it out...

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Audio Voice Effects - Kunal also added new SFX for character voices. Previously, every NPC and party character in the game had the same typing sounds. Now there are multiple types of typing sounds effectively differentiating the "voices" of characters throughout the city. Check it out in action!!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Gear Skill Bonuses - Skill bonuses from armor & accessories reduce use costs for learned skills.


Menu organization has come a looong way from when we launched the Kickstarter!


Charitable Giving - Outside of being able to hit them up for intel, you can now help Pinnace City's homeless population out! We've implemented a feature where you can choose to give them a few bucks of your hard-earned money. Sometimes they'll give out an item of appreciation. Remember: it always pays to be good to people, so hopefully this adds a small, but fun dimension to the game.

Tis the season to be thankful!


The game is in a polished state but we're still dealing with some bugs. However, we're happy to announce that we've closed out this year with implementation of all of the final features we wanted in the full game!


More launch details will arrive next year sometime in Q1, but we wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who continue to support us--we're excited to finally be at this point! Happy holidays & have a great holiday season!

If you're pumped about Pixel Noir, here are three steps you can take to make sure you're in the know:
1. Wishlist Pixel Noir on Steam!
2. Join our SWDTech Games Discord server for a constant stream of screenshots, granular development updates, sprint summaries, and chat with the development team!
3. Follow our daily progress on our official Twitter bot.


Turn the wrong corner in Pinnacle City and...


Our next update will be our year-end wrap up January 12th!

Later taters!

//Team SWDTech

We hope you've all been enjoying your Summer! We have some big news to share, so let's just jump right into it!



Pixel Noir will launch in Q2 of 2023 on Steam and Nintendo Switch! Additionally, the Early Access will be updated in Q4 of 2022!


Our publisher, Badland Publishing, will be putting out a press release about it next week, but we wanted to let you VIPs know first! Xbox and Playstation won't be too far behind the initial launch, but we are still sorting out the timing. News on kickstarter backer merch fulfillment will be coming in early 2023, so stay tuned for those deets!


Woooo!! Time to party like it's 65,000,000 BC!


Over the years, we've been on the long road of development through countless nights, weekends, and holidays to bring this RPG concept to life. We appreciate all those who have stuck with us through thick and thin!






We will be a part of a Steam event called Another Indie Game Showcase, which will be on September 12th, 2022, @ 3PM EST, hosted by our friends over at the Dual Screens podcast. If you haven't checked in on the game in a bit, we think you'll like what you see since battle mechanics, GUI -- nearly everything has evolved since the Early Access launched in 2019!

Dual Screens Presents: Another Indie Showcase on Steam & Youtube!

Okay, let's keep this party going and jump into some...



[h2]Bounty Hunting
[/h2]
We added a bounty hunting system which is accessible later in the game. You'll be tracking down and apprehending the biggest bottom-feeding scumbags that Pinnacle City has to offer. This feature gives you another way to take on new cases!

Little known fact: Slimey Saul got his name because he uses *way too much* hair product.


[h2]Phone Calls
[/h2]
Throughout the game, don't forget to return to the Detective's apartment to answer your phone! Private-eyes get weird phone calls with even stranger cases to take on.

Clearly, the Detective isn't really concerned with missing calls...


[h2]Buy A Drink!
[/h2]
Ever felt overwhelmed by all the cases you've taken on? Well, here's something small but fun: you can buy drinks at the various bars around the city!

But is the craft beer locally sourced from Pinnacle City??


[h2]Battle Positioning Optimization
[/h2]
In testing, we've noticed that getting into random battles throughout the city still resulted in awkward sprite positioning. Sometimes enemies would wander out of frame, and characters would turn in the wrong directions. We completely overhauled positioning battle encounters in the game, resulting in a much more optimized system that allows battles to play beautifully!

It might not look like much fun, but this was a massive win in terms of optimizing the game and reducing bugs related to battle positioning!


[h2]Other Improvements
[/h2]
In addition to finding and fixing MANY bugs, we also:

• Updated to the 2021.2.9 version of Unity, which helped decrease load times and drove several back-end benefits
  
• Updated colliders, interaction points, and car walk paths/speeds
  
• Added fast travel between the Docks, Boardwalk, & Royal Island
  
• Optimized the layered depth sprite sorting algorithm, putting an end to layering issues between sprites
  
• And made a
• ton* of AI, dialogue, and polish tweaks throughout the game
  

We've got a juicy sample from our brand new CRDTech theme! A couple of pieces of music will play throughout the CRDTech mini-game, but this tune will play during the actual match. "Risky Gamble" features the incomparable Tim Yarborough of the OneUps on guitar. We hope you enjoy it!



::shakes head:: jazz musicians, am I right?


And with that, we're officially wrapping up this update! If you're pumped about Pixel Noir, here are three steps you can take to make sure you're in the know:

1. Wishlist Pixel Noir on Steam!

2. Join our SWDTech Games Discord server for a constant stream of screenshots, granular development updates, sprint summaries, and chat with the development team!

3. Check in on development by dropping by Leo's Pixel Noir development streams on Twitch Tuesday and Friday nights. Also, remember you can follow our daily progress on our official Twitter bot.


Our next update will be on December 15th!

Catch you all on the flip side!

//Team SWDTech