Hi there! So, its Summer of 2024 and Gas Station Story still isnt out. Why is that? A lot of new features have been making their way into the game: another POS overhaul, more portraits, a new demo, secrets galore, and so on. I really want this game to come out in its best possible state, and so Ive pushed release back a bit (again). I dont have an official release date or window yet, but Ill talk about that more down below. Lets start with the good news: (also, to anybody reading this on Steam: hello! there are 5 other devlogs that you can find at the official website) The Good: - Beta Build - Gas Station Story is officially in the Beta phase of development! Im still not up to Beta 1.0 as of yet, but were getting close. All the major systems have been implemented and the game is almost playable from start to finish. Im only a few boss encounters and cutscenes away from a full 1.0 build, and then its on to the ending cutscenes and final polishes. The first four levels have been polished to hell and back, so once these fights and cutscenes are finished all thats really left is polishing the final level, balancing out the variables that influence the ending, and finishing up all the music and sound effects commissions. Alongside this beta version of the game, we have some small improvements to the visuals and gameplay:
Text boxes now have a simple little border around them so they can pop out more, as well as arrows to show that dialogue is continuing. This is a small change, but has required a lot of going back and editing dialogue placement so as not to clip the border (and adding every individual arrow to every text box 0.o).
The advanced functions on your Q Boy now live all together under one menu activated by the Select Button - including an option to re-run the tutorial in case youve forgotten how it works!
You can now ask your customers how much gas they were wanting to purchase, as well as what pump theyre parked at. This function lives on the B Button! This little pop-up is the main reason text-boxes have a border now - they draw from the same UI file and I needed to make sure this was distinguishable from the rest of the Q Boys dialogue boxes.
Both the Clerks internal thoughts and conversations with customers during checkout scenes now print from the top of the screen. This is to help differentiate the overworld dialogue from the Q Boy dialogue prompts. - Demo V5 - I've updated the demo to reflect the new features added, and shuffled some scenes around. The demo runs a little shorter now due to this. Ive also made the decision to officially cut DMG support. There are certain segments in the late game where performance on the DMG is severely impacted, and Ive been able to add in more Game Boy Camera photos due to the increased tile limits of the Game Boy Color. Id like to possibly go back and fix these performance issues before release so Gas Station Story can run on all Game Boy hardware, but my primary targets are Game Boy Color and Steam so thats low on my priority list. The full changelog is down at the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoy the new demo! - Seattle Indies Expo - Gas Station Story recently made an appearance at Seattle Indies Expo, with a public test for the v5 Demo and new POS features. Huge thanks to Seattle Indies for the opportunity and support, and to everybody that played and watched others play! :) The turnout this year was bonkers! It honestly felt like there was always somebody at the booth, I don't think the chair was empty for more than 5 minutes at any point.
- The Spiritual Prequel Official Release - In case you missed it, Gas Station Storys weird(er) little brother, Pierrot la Mode, is now on Steam! This updated version has a lot of bugfixes, a new secret ending, and increased difficulty >:) Ive also slowed the flashing colors down, just to be safe. You can snag that on Steam for MacOS and Windows or on itch.io for Game Boy Color for just $1.99. Im planning on launching a Steam bundle with both PlM and GSS when the latter is finished, so if you buy PlM now youll be able to snag a discount on GSS when its released! I originally made this as a fun 2-week project for the Big Mode Game Jam last year, as a quick and dirty little project using the style Ive developed for Gas Station Story, but cleaned up the code to pop on Steam a few months ago so I could learn how SteamPipe works and prototype a wrapper for the MacOS and Windows release of GSS. I still need to figure out why saves arent loading before GSS releases on Steam, but Im going to actually finish the game first lol thankfully PlM has a runtime of 30 minutes and is designed to play in one sitting. (btw: this spiritual prequel is not at all important to the narrative of Gas Station Story, but it is cute and shows a very small glimpse of whats going on in Divinity City before the events of the Upgrade Virus. Winona, the model for the main character of GSS, appears in PlM, and a character from PlM may appear in a secret scene in GSS if you make the right decisions *wink wink nudge nudge*) - Crowd Funding - Im going to be running a modest Kickstarter for the project here pretty soon, just to raise enough money to finish out the commissions for music and pay for some other expensive development costs. If theres sufficient interest, though, I have some stretch goals in mind as well that will enhance the project without pushing release out any further. You can pre-save the kickstarter here, but Ill make sure to post another update on all channels when it goes live. Backers can get their name in the credits, snag a copy of the game at a discount, and even possibly get their hands on my testing cartridge! The Bad: So. Ive run my mouth a bit about release dates. Summer 2024, Q4 2024 But Im not sure when this game is going to come out, to be completely honest. At the earliest, its done by the end of the year. At the latest, Im thinking it could be midway through next year. I want to do this story justice, and cant justify releasing the project before any and all kinks are ironed out. I want to make sure the project is free of major issues, as the Game Boy architecture will make updating the project and keeping older saves compatible very difficult. (maybe once this is released I wont have to work so many hours at the job and I can focus on storytelling and gamedev I have a looot of plans for and notes about my next project) So, for now, theres no official release date or window. Im going to wait until the project is just about ready to push out the door before I announce when its coming. I gotta get this one right, yknow? I dont want to make another promise I cant keep by setting a date I know Ill likely kick down the road anyways. Until then Coming Soon. Thanks as always for reading this far! I definitely see a light at the end of this tunnel, even if theres still a good bit left to do. Were getting close! - enzi - Changelog (Demo V5) - General: - Some scenes removed for a quicker demo experience - Additional free-roam segment added - SFX updated - Music placement tweaked - DMG support removed - text box borders added - text box arrows added POS: - Q Boy Advanced Functions reworked to a drop-down menu - cleartotal.exe moved to advanced functions - tutorial.exe added to advanced functions - B Button now lets you ask customer how much gas they wanted / on what pump - Clerk Monologue / Dialogue now prints from the top of the screen post-script:
this is Oliver: Winonas cat and my close friend. He doesnt have a portrait in the game, cause the mf wont sit still long enough for me to photograph, but if you get the right endings you might see a sprite of he in a certain someones apartment ;3