Ducky's Delivery Service console progress! Chessplosion is 50% off on Steam and itch.io!
Hello again! Steam Next Fest is over, and it's now only three weeks until the Ducky's Delivery Service release date! So I've been busy getting things ready for release. Here's everything that's happened:
It's the Steam Summer Sale! Save 50% on Chessplosion!
The Steam Summer Sale just started and Chessplosion is 50% off! It's also 50% off on itch.io if you prefer buying games there.
For anyone who's new here and hasn't heard of Chessplosion, it's the game I made before Ducky's Delivery Service and it's a top-down action puzzle game about dropping chess piece bombs to create chain reactions and trap opponents. Go check it out if it sounds like your kind of thing!
Ducky's Delivery Service console news
As I mentioned in a previous newsletter issue, I've ported Ducky's Delivery Service to a popular game console that has a docked mode and a handheld mode. I've finally submitted the console version of the game for testing and hopefully it will be approved for release soon!
I still don't know exactly how long it takes to get a game approved for release on this console, as it's my first time publishing a console game by myself. My best guess is that I might be able to release this console version of the game two or three weeks after the PC release if everything goes well, but it might take a bit longer if the console company's testers find any bugs with the port that take a long time for me to fix.
If everything goes perfectly there's a small chance that I might find out the console release date in time for next week's newsletter. We'll see how it goes!
New Japanese logo
When I was talking about the new Ducky's Delivery Service translations in last week's newsletter, I included a screenshot of the Japanese title screen:
Shortly after I posted that newsletter I got lots of super helpful Japanese logo advice from npckc, including all sorts of examples of good and not-so-good Japanese logos for English-language cartoons. After switching the Japanese Ducky's Delivery Service logo font to a much chunkier one, things look a lot better:
I love the improved logo and I'm sure that Japanese players will love it too. Thanks for the help npckc!
Relaxed mode improvements
Ducky's Delivery Service is an arcadey game where you race to deliver as many packages as you can before the time runs out. I love how it plays, but there are lots of people out there who can't stand time limits in videogames.
Because of this, the game has a Relaxed mode that removes all time limits and replaces them with a limit on how many times you can damage the packages that you're carrying:
After watching some streamers test out the relaxed mode in Steam Next Fest, I fixed a last minute audio bug (you could still hear the timer counting down even when it was disabled!) and adjusted the difficulty a bit.
The difficulty of Relaxed mode has decreased a lot over the course of its development. It was originally just as difficult as Standard mode, and it made up for the lack of a time limit by being more strict with how much damage you could take while carrying a package. But the type of people who were picking Relaxed mode usually didn't want the game to be quite as hard as Standard mode, especially when starting out. So the number of hits you can take in Relaxed before a run is over has gradually increased over the last few months, from 6 to 8 to 10 and finally to 12.
I'm pretty happy with its current state! It's still not easy by any means (although assist mode exists if you need it!) but it's much less brutal than it used to be.
Anyway, that's everything I've done. Most of my time has been taken up by the console port, so hopefully it's not much longer until I'm able to officially announce it. I'm going to go check out the Steam and itch summer sales and I'll see you next week!