Good day everyone, Aaron here.

As I prepare to start playtesting using steam (instead of Game Jolt as it has been until now- thank you for your service GJ!), I need to further tackle the checklists for steam and make sure the one I had already taken care of are correct. Among them, and in particular mixed with some previous attempts, there is the topic related to Linux and Steam OS.
Despite my good intentions, I am working on the game alone, and there's already a lot of obstacles I am facing in Unreal Engine thanks to my lack of programming and computer literacy. I am just a simple idiot trying to make a game. I had attempted to install some Linux components on my Windows machine to allow me to package the game as a pure Linux build, but I have failed,

and thus I will not be officially supporting Linux nor Steamdeck.

Official is a key word, because I will still do my best with my time and ability constraints to deliver a product that is still compatible and well performant with Steamdeck and Linux, mostly thanks to the mega heavy lifting that Proton, Valve and the Linux community has done and is doing everyday. As a steamdeck owner myself I want it to run on it well. And it does, the controls works, the resolution is there, all the text is big enough to be read. It is serviceable. I hope, after the game's launch, I can revisit the choice of support with more time, skill, or even help.

Thank you all, and I wish you a nice day.

[ 2025-05-09 10:57:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mandatory short introduction

Hello, and thank you for being here. I am Aaron "Koss" Parpaiola, the solo developer behind 'TOWST: The One Who Sees Things', writing you from Europe. This is my first game and I have no particular skills in game making or game design, or anything tangentially related to it. The game want to be a love letter to the puzzle and adventure games I love the most, while also adding other themes I find fascinating or make me who I am. I also want to clear any doubt that, despite being a humorous play on words inspired by 'The Looker' (By Bradley Lovell) 'The One Who Sees Things' is somehow taking itself seriously, at least enough to attempt to evoke a lot of feelings and emotions (positive ones, I hope). This, thankfully, does not exclude humor from being present. A tragicomedy, if you will.

So what's the state of development?

Between highs and lows (mostly the latter) development proceeds, albeit slowly, and the plan remain for a 2025 release. It will be on Steam for Windows and, thanks to Valve and Proton, for the steamdeck and Linux too. It will be in English, and I hope I can find solutions to add other languages, but I have no news regarding that for now. A lot of recent focus have been introspective: have my goals changed? Have I derailed from what I had set out to do? I did not like some of the answers, but I acknowledged them, cleared my mind and gathered strength. There are a lot of things I cannot show- this being a puzzle game where "the least you know the better". I am trying to discover the balance between sharing, not too much, keeping interest, and making the actual game. Soon I hope to have a new playtest version available which will focus on the story/narration. I plan (so many plans) to post a devlog update here on steam sometime later related to this very topic and how I decided to approach it after some trial and error, and how I made it work both in-story and in-gameplay (at least I hope so).
Until then, you can find me slightly more active on Bluesky @theonewhoponder, and/or you can join the game's official discord (can click the discord icon at the bottom).
hank you for reading, I wish you all a nice day. -Aaron

[ 2025-02-04 20:43:38 CET ] [ Original post ]