Hi everyone! Ive been a bit quiet lately while working on some pretty big changes behind the scenes, but Im finally ready to share them with you.
The main news is:

Scrabdackle: Act 1 will be releasing soon, targeting this fall/winter!

Whats Act 1?

Scrabdackle is divided into 3 narrative acts, which each give the player a main goal to work towards, a bunch of new regions to explore in any order you like, and a capstone final region that you can access once youve made enough overall progress. Each one is pretty huge - I'm expecting a first playthrough of all three acts to land in the 40-50 total hour range at this point. My publisher and I have decided to release Scrabdackle with the Act 1 content first, then update it with Act 2 content when that's ready, and then Act 3 content to conclude the full game (all as one game on Steam - it's not DLC or anything). More on what that means in the next section, I'll stay with explaining the 'acts' for now! Completing a given act brings you to a new narrative plateau going in to the next one, as each act builds on previous ones in both story and gameplay: Act 2 adds to Act 1s map, and Act 3 does again, with later shortcuts connecting back to earlier areas you may have once thought were dead-ends in earlier Acts, and with later spells allowing for new traversal and combat options in earlier parts of the game. Characters from Act 1 might have more to say later in the game about the events of Act 2, or you may find new quests or content in older regions related to new discoveries youve made. You can also leave some Act 1 content for later, and come back to approach it with more spells and resources from later Acts. Act 1: The Way Back Home takes Blue back to their academy to find out why a dark wizard attacked it, and covers about 10 regions and 9 bosses. It takes somewhere between 12-15 hours to complete all the main content on a blind first playthrough, and up to 17-18 if youre looking to find every secret and finish every sidequest. And some other neat stats like: Act 1 has about an hour and a half of music, and about 65k words of dialogue + in-character journal entries. Its a big game - heres a little breakdown!
This act division is how the game has always been structured - were just choosing to release it episodically to match those divisions rather than all at once, because after some discussion, everyone involved thinks its going to make for the best overall player experience. Basically, were trying to treat it less like a whole season of television being dropped at once, and more like releasing an episode at a time with some room to breathe and mull on new understandings and story developments in between. (It also means getting to play through large parts of the game years earlier than you would otherwise! Which is something Im really excited to share.)

How does an episodic release work?

Well be launching Scrabdackle in early access on Steam, with the first third of the games content. Roughly a year afterwards (this is a loose target, mind you!) well add Act 2 to the game, and eventually after that, Act 3 and the finale in a final content patch that will take the game out of Early Access. No future content is going to be restricted to DLC or anything like that. Basically, you still only buy the game once - you just get Acts 1 and 2 early, in this model. In terms of how this affects the full games release date - mooostly it doesnt. Theres extra work I need to be doing for marketing, but a lot of the release-readiness tasks are getting moved from before launching Act 3 to before Act 1, so dev-tasks-wise its more just shuffling existing timings around rather than adding time.

Some other anticipated questions:

Whens the release date? Or when will you be able to say? Were looking at late-ish this calendar year, but not announcing until were fully sure. Theres always room for unexpected delays in gamedev, and thats an order of magnitude riskier with a single point of failure / bottleneck (thats me). If any kind of personal emergency happens, for instance, things have to totally go on hold as no one can really run with the ball without me. So well let you know closer-to! Will the game be releasing anywhere other than Steam? Not during Early Access. For the Act 3 1.0 update, that could in theory change, but that decision is a ways down the line. What languages will Scrabdackle be localized to? For now, just English - the large amount of writing in the game means the cost to localize a single language is pretty high, so thats going to be something we let sales justify or not. Im not opening the door to community localization efforts at this time, but potentially I could revisit that if we still cant finance a professional one after we hit 1.0 (although its presently not my preference). Will the demo be updating for the Act 1 release? Dunno yet! The release build has a ton of optimizations, bugfixes, and quality of life changes that the current demo build doesnt, and Id really like to update the demo before then so that it also gets these improvements, but its not a sure thing. At the end of the day, the launch is my primary focus, and that just might not leave enough time for a demo update. At whatever future point I do update the demo, though, I should (I hope!) be able to keep it up-to-date with various subsequent improvements from that point on. Whats the price going to be? Weve got a working ballpark, but Id rather not set any expectations until that gets locked in. Ill let you know later down the line! Will there be a way to purchase the soundtrack? Yes! But TBD on the specifics, for now. Im a Kickstarter backer - how does this affect my rewards? Nothing should be impacted other than some delivery timelines moving forward, but theres more info here in the most recent campaign update! (Also, thanks again for backing!) Hows development been going? Its been a bit! I havent updated here recently, yeah! Largely Ive just been trucking away at making a (shockingly) large game on my own, but I write a big development update for the Kickstarter campaign every season, and I write about what Im working on pretty continuously on the Scrabdackle discord server! Heres where the KS updates are - the most recent one starts by echoing most of this Steam post, but the back half talks more about ongoing and upcoming development. I really want this to succeed - how can I get more involved? The main thing that helps is spreading the word, but! In the past, weve set up a sort of rally group of voluntary supporters on the Discord to mobilize the community for help with things like the 2021 Kickstarter, and if youre interested in that, then joining the Discord server would be amazing!

Aaaand a LudoNarraCon stream!

Okay, so yes, the Act 1 release plan was the focus of this announcement - but since LudoNarraCon is starting today, and as Scrabdackle is an official selection, I wanted to do something else for that, too! During LNC, there will be a looping pre-recorded video on the store page of me playing through the Duck Castle content, which is outside the bounds of the demo. If youre trying to stay spoiler-blind, you can scroll down and not pay it any mind, but if you want to see some more of how the games looking right now, its about 75 minutes from the start of the recording to the end, after Ive beaten the boss and poked around for some post-boss secrets in the dungeon. This is my first time doing this sort of thing, so its a bit experimental and I erred on the side of simple, but if its interesting I had some other ideas for different types of videos and/or commentary that I could try putting on the store page in the future! (Also, check out the LudoNarraCon page if you havent, its really cool and loaded with neat narrative games!)
All right, thats it for now! Interested to hear any thoughts, questions, and feedback you might have about all this, but overall its a change Im really excited about, and I hope you are too!

[ 2025-05-01 17:04:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Annual Fellow Traveller Publisher Sale starts today with up to 90% off story rich games!

Take me to the Publisher Sale There are plenty of indie narrative titles on sale from Fellow Traveller - so whether you're looking for something new, a bargain, some cool soundtracks and bundles, or even something to play on Steam Deck, we're sure to have something just for you. If you haven't already, make sure to check out the Scrabdackle demo and wishlist below to stay up-to-date with the latest news and announcements! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1578720/Scrabdackle/ Sale ends 24th September, so get in quick!

[ 2024-09-11 17:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fellow Traveller sat down with the solo developer jakefriend to talk about the games development, the influence of Zelda, secret areas, and more.

Fellow Traveller (FT): Who is Jakefriend? Tell us about yourself!

Hello! Im jakefriend, or Jake, a solo developer living near Toronto, Canada. I was a hobbyist game developer (as well as hobbyist musician and artist) back in the 2010s, and never had an intention to make a career out of any of my more creative pursuits. COVID happened, and I decided to make a small demo for my pandemic hobby project for fun, which got strangely popular, and well one thing sort of led to another! Ive been doing this full-time since a successful Kickstarter in early 2021, with a really tight-knit and friendly community thats been with me the whole way.

FT: Tell us about Scrabdackle. Hows development going? Whats it about?

Scrabdackle is a game set in a fantasy world where you play as a novice student wizard, Blue, whos been abruptly thrust out of their sheltered life for the first time, and who comes to learn and appreciate the world and the people living in it. Its all about the joy of exploration, the value and strength of communities, and that its worth standing and fighting for a better world for everyone. Though, it wasnt always about these things! I set out just to make something fun and playful, and it feels in a weird way like a lot of the themes sort of emerged on their own as I spent more time in the setting.

FT: Scrabdackle is described as a zeldalike adventure. To what extent did the top-down Zelda games influence your design?

Im a huge fan of the older top-down Zeldas! Theres a ton of charm to me in a game with a large, open world, discrete screens to get familiar with, and simple controls for combat and navigation. While Scrabdackle isnt evoking the classic Zelda aesthetic, the spirit is definitely there, in its nonlinearity and interest in a large, sprawling, continuous world that slowly opens up to you, filled with challenges and curiosities.

FT: Even the Scrabdackle demo is full of secret areas. How many total secrets are there to discover in the game?

The whole game is pretty jam-packed! A favorite from the demo is a hidden cave full of trash bandits. A few nearby characters hint that theres a bandit lair somewhere on the south side of the river, and theres one spot along the river thats got a bandit guarding seemingly nothing. If you poke around and find the hidden entrance, not only do you have a small challenge event that nets you a secret collectible, but you also meet a major character earlier than you might otherwise, which opens up new dialogue paths with them in the future! Theres tons of optional content hidden for observant players to find throughout every area (and theres a LOT of areas!).

FT: Weve heard that when youre developing a game, people tend to get attached to certain items, NPCs, enemies, and so on. What has been your favorite to design for the game?

Ooh, tough question! Its probably Flamajesty, the duck emperor, who is a giant, prideful flamingo. You dramatically duel them on a rooftop at sunset, and their moveset is really all over the place and a lot of fun sometimes they use their long neck and beak as a blade, sometimes as a jackhammer, and sometimes they spin like a top to close the distance between you! Its a really charming character design to me, although it was quite a lot of work to animate!

FT: Thank you for talking about Scrabdackle with us!

To stay up to date with Scrabdackle and jakefriend, make sure to hit that wishlist button, visit the website, follow Jakefriend and us on Twitter or join in the discussion on the Fellow Traveller Discord server.

[ 2023-09-28 17:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Annual Fellow Traveller Publisher Sale starts today, with up to 90% off narrative games

Take me to the Publisher Sale There are plenty of indie narrative titles on sale from Fellow Traveller - so whether you're looking for something new, a bargain, some cool soundtracks and bundles, or even something to play on Steam Deck, we're sure to have something just for you. Sale ends 1st October.

Along with Scrabdackle, there are two new games joining the Fellow Traveller family; Wander Stars and Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo - read up on each of them below!

• Wander Stars: Follow the story of Ringo and Wolfe as they join forces to collect the pieces of the Wanderstar Map in this turn-based RPG with roguelite elements! Use words to create your own fighting techniques, befriend your rivals, and explore the universe in an adventure inspired by 90s anime.
• Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo: A 3D adventure where you play as Kulebra, a dead snake with a heart of gold that wakes up in Limbo. Use your wits and keen eye to gather clues from the residents and find items that will help uncover the mystery of Limbo and its curse that traps souls into repeating the same day on loop.

So get exploring and grab some great narrative games!

[ 2023-09-18 17:00:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today we can finally reveal that we have signed a publishing agreement with the indie publisher, Fellow Traveller.

[previewyoutube=bR81xdJIVIw;full][/previewyoutube] Fellow Traveller are an indie publisher focusing on narrative video games and who also run LuddoNarraCon. We're delighted to be working with them to bring Scrabdackle to the gaming community. Stay tuned for more details later this year.

[ 2023-09-14 13:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Ducklands region has been greatly expanded, with a bevy of content, features, and gameplay optimizations to boot! Journey further into the woods, plains, marshes, and gardens of the Ducklands, finding new weaponry and allies to help you venture across the Scrabdackle landscape.
New content this update:

• The Ducklands region has been heavily expanded
• A new spell to learn
• Many new lore entries and collectibles to uncover
• Several new enemies, NPCs, and soundtracks
• A scrying-based sidequest rewarding players familiar with their lore!
• A huge amount of new dialogue
• A golf minigame!

The Ducklands are accessible from every other demo region, in the northwest of the current map. The region is by far the largest planned - while many new screens have been added, only about half of the region is accessible within the demo. There are also a few new major features to talk about on their own:
The Challenge Menu:

• This menu serves as a customizable difficulty manager that serves any players preference. Choose between 4 presets to determine how intense you want your experience to be, or open the advanced settings to customize every slider and toggle yourself!
• Challenge Mode presets do not restrict any content, and can be changed any time without judgement. No achievements will ever be restricted to certain challenge settings. Play the way that feels best for you!
• Your existing save file will be set to the way of the Poet, and new game files will prompt you to select a preset on first play.
• Somehow, you begin to suspect even this menu has its secrets

The Sticker Binder:

• This menu, accessible once youve found at least one sticker, can be opened up to browse your stickers and pop them on to your academy notebook for fun, bonus decoration.
• You can also see which stickers youre missing here, as their silhouette will be visible. All visible stickers are collectible in the current demo.
• Share your best covers using F12 to take an in-game screenshot!

Other notable changes:

• Significant optimization improvements
• Hundreds (not exaggerating) of bugs patches and and quality-of-life improvements have been implemented
• The magic casting system has been adjusted to be clearer and more satisfying
• Falling into water or a pit now deals light damage, and correspondingly, a ledge detection feature has been added to prevent accidental pitfalls. (Hazard damage can be disabled in the Challenge Menu).

This work was largely completed by early November last year, but I ended up needing to focus on something new for a while and get away from the mentality of always updating the demo. Its lighter on content than the Blustergust Ridge update, but thats partially because the content Ive been working on mostly will not appear in demo updates, and partially because some of the focus of this update was on depth of systems and polishing the experience, not breadth of new things to do. From here, I am not going to be focusing on further demo work - Id like to eventually add a new spell in once Ive completed it for an upcoming region, but it wont be a major update, just a patch. The demo may receive some tuning and optimizations here and there as I implement them out for the full game, but at the moment the demo is functionally both content-complete and systems-complete. If youre excited about the game, please pop by our Discord server to hang out! Theres a large, active community to talk lore with, talk speedrun strategies, and generally hang around and play games with! Cheers! Jake

[ 2023-03-05 22:27:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Blustergust Ridge region has been added to the demo! Travel to the windy canyons at the base of Mt. Blustergust to find a new part of Scrabdackle, filled with new challenges to beat and characters to meet. New content this update:

• A new region, with its own soundtrack and unique environment
• 4 new enemies
• 1 new miniboss
• Several new unique NPCs and landmarks
• 14 new lore entries
• Many new challenges, quests, and collectibles
• A new spell to learn
• 4,000 words of dialogue
• A new type of challenge/obstacle I'll let you discover for yourself...

To find Mt. Blustergust, make your way northeast from either the Ducklands or the Rubble Ruins. (Note - a major piece of new content may seem like it's not new if you don't have the Dashing Boots yet. If so, I'd recommend going to grab them afterwards for an extra surprise!) Other key changes and improvements:

• A new lighting system has been added to make caves dark and dim areas more atmospheric
• A few older music tracks have been updated with a fresh coat of aural paint
• A huge variety of bugfixes are in place!

This will be one of the last content updates for the demo - I'd like to add in a little more Ducklands content and another player spell ability or two to tie things off in a state I'm happy with for the remainder of update-less development, to better show off the spell swap system, but TB on when that will be. See you on the ridge! Jake

• Join the community on Discord!

[ 2022-10-12 20:01:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

New content:

• 6th star added, found in the Rubble Ruins. If you found the skull island and felt underwhelmed before - head on back and have a fresh look!

Changes and fixes:

• Arena softlocking resolved (arena system entirely rewritten)
• New arena wall visual style
• Adjustments to a few enemies' knockback and hit recoil, like Trash Bandits, so that their charge attack can't be denied.

What's coming up next?

I'm well underway on the Blustergust Ridge region and am preparing to put it into the demo as a next content update, once I'm sure there's no more critical patching necessary for the current build. That should include another miniboss, some challenges and secrets, and a new spell! There's a good amount of small things to tweak in terms of bugfixes and cleanup, but that isn't going to be my priority, for now, until the demo content is resolved. Thanks to all who have been reporting them!

[ 2022-09-21 18:20:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

The "To-Do List" quest system and the S.E.E. hint system are now fully implemented! Open your minimap with Enter and swap from Free Roam Mode to the To-Do List (or TDL) with Tab to see a variety of quests and pieces of information you've learned about them. Quests will auto-complete when their resolution circumstances are met, but will continue to appear under the 'Resolved' view of the TDL. I'd recommend starting a new game to get the best experience of the system. Note that some hints won't always be hearable! You won't get hints for completed quests, of course, but you also might not be able to get some until you progress a quest far enough (try visiting a S.E.E. kiosk after defeating Waking Fossil!) or until you've already encountered the quest elsewhere. 21 quests, 75 entries, and 15 hints have been added to the game, or about 2,500 words all together! Enjoy!

• Join the community on Discord!

[ 2022-09-01 15:25:19 CET ] [ Original post ]