[h2]Happy New Year![/h2]
[h3]May all your troubles last as long as your New Years resolutions![/h3]

Before we begin with the update, we want to take a moment to thank you all for your patience and support over the years. We know this project is long past its expected delivery date. So, we are tremendously grateful you are giving us space to finish the development in our own time.

We have used the holiday break to take a moment to reflect on how the development of 3 Minutes to Midnight has been so far, where we currently stand, and what awaits us during the final stretch of development.

[h2]A bit of retrospect[/h2]

Did you know that back in 2016 when the original idea for 3 Minutes to Midnight was conceived, we had quite a different concept in mind? 3 Minutes to Midnight was supposed to be a linear game with one ending, one solution per puzzle, and approximately six hours of gameplay. The initial release date was planned for early 2019. (I know! Can you believe it?!) Its 2023 and the game is still not finished! So, what happened?

After we presented our game at E3 in 2018, we were very confident about the game we had created. However, over time, we started seeing the same flaws in our game as many other games of this genre face. Thus, we looked for ways how we could improve our game and turn it into something more unique. One of the first pitfalls encountered was when we decided to eliminate the infamous It doesnt seem to work sentences that have always bothered both new and old players alike. We thought, Thats it! This is what will bring our game to the next level! and so in 2019, three years into development, we went ahead and began redesigning the way in-game combinations worked up until that point, i.e., essentially rebuilding 3 Minutes to Midnight from its roots.

As a consequence of modifying the in-game logic, we now needed to write thousands of new dialogue lines for all the possible item/NPCs combinations, as well as create hundreds of new animations, many of them unique for very specific occurrences. For example, a lot of puzzles fail cases now trigger their own unique animations and some of them even involve plot consequences that lead to gameplay changes down the road! (But do not worry. Even if it looks like theres no way forward, there is always one. You just need to find it.)

After several sections of the game underwent a complete rework, other sections suddenly felt like they were not good enough anymore. One egregious example of this wasat least in our viewthe NPCs. They were static and flat, which isnt particularly rare in this genre, as they are mostly there to fulfill a purpose and little else, but it was something we felt had a lot of room for improvement. We spent a lot of time going over what made them tick, trying to make them feel more alive than your average NPC. Aside from greatly expanding on their backstories and personalities, as well as their dialogue options, we also implemented a Barking Systema system that allows those NPCs more freedom within the gameplay, letting them interact with other NPCs in their vicinity or comment on the situations currently happening around them instead of just sitting there idling until the player clicks on them. (We call those types of dialogue "barks.")

But we didnt stop there: Originally, Elizas portion of the game was supposed to be about an hour of gameplay with some simple puzzles. Its purpose was only to fill the information gaps in order to help players understand some plot developments. However, we realized just how much potential it had, and Well, you probably know where we are going with this, so long story short: With all the expansions done, you are now getting two games worth of content.

And even that wasnt all: We decided to create a Your actions have consequences system. But not the classic karma-like system (Do good things and good things happen to you. Do bad things, they'll come back to haunt you.) After all, who are we to decide whats right or wrong? We wanted the consequences that stem from your choices to be more unpredictable, just like in real life, while still following a logical pattern, and making perfect sense once you look back at what you have done. This system, given the length of the game, the size of the script, and the number of puzzles, entailed even more changes. One ending turned into three, turned into eight.

All of this meant that our 20-page-long design document suddenly quadrupled in size, which ended up becoming the bane of our programming team, who fought tooth and nail to implement all the new logic and alternative gameplay paths. It was a titanic effort on their part, to say the least.
So, looking back, in 2019 we essentially sealed our fate for the next several years Just like Icarus, we grasped for the sun, only to be burned by it. Fortunately, unlike him, were still alive and kicking.
Just based on what was mentioned above, if you were to ask our past selves, Guys, is it even worth it?, we would most certainly say No! Lets just stick to the original plan! However, now after two years of continuous testing and hearing hundreds of opinions on the game, our answer is Yes, absolutely worth it. And we hope youll see it too when you finally get a chance to play it. It took a lot of effort and hard work to get to this point, and it is honestly a miracle* that we are still up and running.

*miracle = our team of developers


[h2]Back to the present What have we been up to since the last update?[/h2]

[h3]Self-test[/h3]
As mentioned in one of our previous updates, we developed a self-test feature that is able to play the game autonomously. Whenever any of our 30 computers is unoccupied, we use it to run the self-test, 24/7. Some of you asked us if creating this feature, considering that we were already suffering heavy delays, wouldnt possibly do more harm than good. While it did take some time away from developing the game, the AI can test things our human testers would struggle with. From the day it was implemented (August 12th, 2022), it has found over 60 extremely difficult-to-find game-breaking bugs. Of course, it wont replace our human testers (yet), but its clearly a really useful tool to have, resulting in a net positive.

[h3]Preparing the build to work natively on Linux and macOS[/h3]
Our programming team has also been hard at work developing native Linux builds. So far, we have tested on Fedora, Mint, and Arch, and have yet to find any unexpected issues. The same goes for macOS. We are testing the game on two different versions of Mac, one from 2011, and another from 2022. Yet again, nothing came up that we didnt expect. If things proceed apace, we are very optimistic about releasing the game on Linux and Mac alongside Windows.

[h3]Controller implementation[/h3]
Since we are starting to prepare the road to port the game to all sorts of platforms, controller support is one of the issues we had to deal with. (Note: The PC version of 3 Minutes to Midnight will also have controller capabilities. While we cant discuss details yet, we have figured out a control scheme that makes playing with a controller feel as smooth and agile as playing with a keyboard and mouse would.)

[h3]Lots of testing, lots of changes, lots of delays, and LOTS OF IMPROVEMENTS![/h3]
Since January 2021, more than 100 different people have play-tested the game through and through. The testers external perspective helped us turn things we thought were already good into things that are actually good! In fact, during 2022, weve implemented 1,041 suggestions that originated from our testers feedback alone! (see Image 1 below).



Image 2 represents our bug-testing process report: In 2022, a total of 3,025 bugs have been fixed.



[h3]Voice acting[/h3]
One of the most challenging and important things that were left to do was to cast voice actors. As we already mentioned, we spent a lot of time making each character unique, and thus have developed a very clear vision of who they are. This in turn resulted in a very strict casting process. We started casting in April 2022, and at this point, there are still three roles to be cast. In a more positive light, that means that over 95% of the cast is already giving it all to bringing the characters of 3 Minutes to Midnight to life! Regardless of how we look at it, this also implies a near-insurmountable amount of work that is listening to over 80,000 lines of dialogue is still ahead of us! This is what will take most of our time during the following months.

[h3]Localization[/h3]
On this front, we have both good and bad news. The bad news is *drumroll* more delays! The good news is that were talking a few weeks at most. We are happy to announce that as it stands, both the German and Spanish translations are looking superb, and while its taking a tad longer than expected, we are consistently managing to save those pesky jokes that always seem to get lost in translation. Roughly half of the script has already been translated, and we expect it to be finished around February. With a few rounds of LQA testing yet to come, we are looking to conclude the translations by the end of March.


Now to answer your questions

[h3]Will there be any giraffes in the game?[/h3]
No, but we have a fish, hamster, pigeon, eagle, raccoon, cougar, cows, potbelly pig, Kraken, chipmunks, and more

[h3]Which character in the game was your favorite to write for, and why?[/h3]
Its really hard not to have feelings for almost all of them, but if we had to choose, for us, its definitely the two main charactersBetty and Eliza. But we can tell you that our play-testers love Mike the Cook and Ben the Veteran.




[h3]How many Easter eggs are in the game?[/h3]
There are many dialogue Easter eggs really well disguised in the script (those we actually lost count of), but as for the visual ones, there are 85 in total. They are not easily spotted, though, as they are fully integrated into the backgrounds.

[h3]Will there be any in-game hotspot highlighter/hint/help system included? Is so, will there be an option to completely disable it?[/h3]
Yes, we have included a highlight-hotspots function, but since its designed in a way that you cannot hit it by mistake, there wont be an option to disable it.

[h3]What part of the game are you most proud of?[/h3]
Without spoilers, its hard to tell, but theres something around Chapter 4, which has been really challenging to implement. Frankly, its so original and unique that we think its going to blow your minds!

[h3]Are you going to remind people/media/social media that 3 Minutes to Midnight exists?[/h3]
We know you guys want to know more and get updated more often, but every single second we have available and all our effort goes into making this game the best it can be. But don't worry. We'll get back to working on the marketing side of things all in good time.

[h3]What games have you been playing whilst you have been making the game, and have you made any changes after being inspired by other games?[/h3]
To answer the first part: None, the last time we played a game was during one weekend in October 2018, and it was RDR2. As for the second part, all the core game mechanics for 3 Minutes to Midnight were defined and closed in 2021, and since then, we agreed not to make any more changes. As they say, the true game developer, like an artist, is never satisfied but we had to draw a line somewhere.

[h3]How did you decide on the style of art that was used?[/h3]
Simply put, we wanted the game to have a high-definition cartoonish look. We knew that pixel art wasnt the way to go for 3 Minutes to Midnight. And so we started looking for artists, and eventually, we ended up finding one that was a perfect fit for this project.

[h3]Any plans for post-release time? (Bug fixes? New project?)[/h3]
3 Minutes to Midnight will still remain our priority even after its release. We expect to dedicate the post-release time to fixing additional bugs, marketing efforts, and adding subtitles (and possibly even voice-overs) in different languages. But all that depends on how successful the game turns out to be.

[h3]Will you support macOS Catalina and the versions above?[/h3]
Yes.

[h3]How many hours of gameplay does the game have?[/h3]
On average, our testers currently take around 40 hours to complete the game.

[h3]What about Steam Deck support and Saved Games for Steam Cloud?[/h3]
Since SteamOS is a Linux-based operating system, 3 Minutes to Midnight will therefore be fully compatible with Steam Deck. And yes, the game will also support Steam Cloud.

[h3]Will there be any demo/prologue anytime soon?[/h3]
As we have previously announced, we arent planning on releasing any demo for 3 Minutes to Midnight. Nothing has changed (and we dont expect anything will) on that front.

[h3]Has there been any progress on providing another donation platform for those who would like to contribute a didn't take part in the Kickstarter?[/h3]
While we greatly appreciate this, the best way to support us is by purchasing 3 Minutes to Midnight once its released, and if you like the game (which we hope you will) writing a reeeally nice review. :-)
But what you can do right now is spread the word and add 3 Minutes to Midnight to your Wishlist. Thank you!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/832500/3_Minutes_to_Midnight__A_Comedy_Graphic_Adventure/


That will be all for today. Well be happy to answer more questions in the comments below. If you want to join our Discord server, heres the link: https://discord.com/invite/scarecrowstudio
To thank you once more for your unwavering support and for being there for us, we leave you with a little sneak peek of the game (without spoilers)


Until next time!

[previewyoutube=1rIDbAbCKB8;full][/previewyoutube]

Hello, everyone!

With our last update being so long ago, we are sure quite a few of you are wondering what we have been up to these past few months. Well, better get comfortable because we have some news for you!

One of our highest priorities was to wrap up the script so we could move forward with both voice acting and translations and test that all lines show up in the game correctly. With a good amount of blood, sweat, and no shortage of tears (again), we can finally say our script is 100% done!

As a frame of reference, the script for Monkey Island 3 sits at around 56,000 words. Ours is over six times that amount, capping at roughly 355,000 words. That was the main reason it took us so long to finish, review, and proofread, ensuring it was all up to snuff.

Along with the script, testing has been moving forward quite nicely too. Since January, over 40 testers have played through the game, summing over 5,000 hours of testing in total. They have since reported over 2,500 bugs, many of which have already been fixed or are still being worked on. Thanks to their hard work and feedback, we found several areas in which our gameplay (read: puzzles) was somewhat lacking and took steps to fix that.

While many of the games puzzles were praised by our testing team, some, on the other hand, were found to be monotonous or not challenging enough. Naturally, we wanted the game experience to be as enjoyable as possible, so we decided to improve those puzzles. That, of course, was easier said than done, as the complexity of those changes varied significantly. Some puzzles were relatively easy to improve. Others, however, proved more challenging. Much like a house of cards, removing or adding a piece made the whole thing crumble, requiring the entire puzzle to be rebuilt from scratch.

But thats all behind us now! The good news is that the testing team has not given us any negative feedback during the past three months regarding how enjoyable the puzzles are. So, we believe it was well worth the hassle. At last, with all the changes implemented, the gameplay document is now finalized. Now, in the following paragraphs, we could be waxing poetic about how long and complex it is. But, as they say, A picture is worth a thousand words. So, to put things into perspective, check out this side-by-side comparison of the gameplay document for Monkey Island 3 and ours. Let's see if you can guess which one is which.



So, whats next? Our testing team is now using this finalized version of the gameplay document to re-test all possible paths the game can take, doing their best to try to break the game. Theres still quite some work to be done in the upcoming year. We will mainly focus on voice acting, sound effects, and (German) localization. We are also planning on improving our save game and pause features and polishing some of our less stellar animations to ensure the game remains visually appealing all the way through. Oh, and we almost forgot, the final concept for the release trailer is also in the works! Woohoo! Anyway, as always, weve put everything in a list for you:


100% of environments and characters drawn and painted;

100% of cinematics created;

100% of the soundtrack composed;

100% of animations completed (We are just polishing and improving some);

100% of script reviewed;

100% of cutscenes created;

99% of game logic assembled (We are just connecting all the endings and paths);

90% of the soundtrack implemented;

90% of cutscenes implemented;

60% of the game tested;

20% of cinematics implemented (This will move fast, now that the gameplay document is finalized);

5% of voice acting executed;

5% of sound effects implemented.


We reckon that all thats left to be done should fit in a timeline of roughly six months. We are so close to the finish line that we can almost taste it! Looking back, so much has changed. Look at Betty, for example!



AHHH! We simply cannot wait to bring these five long years of development to fruition. Its been a long road to get to this point, and undoubtedly, this project has greatly evolved over the years. What started as yet another indie point-and-click game slowly became something far bigger than any of us could have anticipated. So big that, at one point, it seemed like it had gotten out of hand. But here we are, ready to bring this game to you soon! That said, we would like you to know that the next update will feature the 3 Minutes to Midnight release trailer together with the release date! So, please be patient with us.

Thank you for sticking around, and Happy New Year!

Your Scarecrow Team

Our team is still teleworking, and Spain continues to close municipal borders and restrict travel, making the development process take longer than we anticipated. Thats the bad news. The good news, however, is that the end of development for 3 Minutes to Midnight is in sight! Were both happy and sad to be almost finished.

The first half of the game is currently in the testing phase, and our programmers are hard at work finishing up the second half. Due to all the different paths, solutions, and choices the player can make, testing is a massive undertaking.

We expect it to take several months to complete that phase of the project. To give you an idea of how in-depth our testing process is, it took our team of testers between 8 and 18 hours each to finish Chapter 1. Since our game has five chapters, some more puzzle-heavy than others, its gonna take us a lot of work, coffee, and time to make sure everything is perfect. Dont worrywere making absolutely sure that every option leads exactly where it should.



When we have a better idea of our release timeline, youll be the first to know. (Heck, wed like to know too!) Our crystal ball is on the fritz, and we dont want to make promises we cant keep, so were not announcing a release date yet, but rest assured youll be informed at least three months before it comes out.

Hello, you wonderful people!


As you probably know, we are now live on Kickstarter. However, what you might not know is that our project has already been successfully funded, and what you most likely dont know is that there are only 24 hours remaining on the countdown of this particular doomsday clock and many stretch goals to meet!

See, we really dont want to push you into things, but if you havent backed us yet, now might be a good time!

Now, whether you want to help us meet our stretch goals because you want the game in your native language, are very curious about what this deal with these evil chipmunks is, or because youre just in a generous mood today, please know you have our utmost gratitude!

Just remember, this will be your last chance to get these amazing rewards. Because after the campaign is over, theyll be gone for good!



Scarecrow Studio

Hello, you beautiful people!

Its that time of the week again, where everyone goes home to enjoy their well-deserved rest. However, theres no rest for the wicked. On a totally unrelated note, theres no rest for us, as well be streaming live this Sunday at 10 am PDT // 6 pm CET on Twitch.

You might then ask, what are we streaming? Were back for our Q&A session, this time with a twist! Well be playing a game of your choice during the stream. To decide our fate just hop in on Twitter and vote on the poll! Whichever games highest will be played and possibly completed while we answer all of your questions.

So, you know see you guys on Sunday.

If you haven't checked out our campaign yet, here you go:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scarecrowstudio/3-minutes-to-midnight-a-comedy-graphic-adventure

First things first.. Wow! Over 55% funded in less than 5 days. Thank you all for making this possible. We are so grateful!

Theres still a long road ahead of us until the project is 100% funded, so please help us spread the word just like you'd spread butter on your toast! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues, hell even tell yourself again, just in case you forgot.

Well, that's all for now!
See you tomorrow on the live stream. If you backed the project, thanks again for the support. And if you havent yet, I hope youll consider it and help us make this the best game it can be!

With no further announcement jokes... as we announced yesterday (okay, the last one, we promise)...

We are finally live on Kickstarter! You've been asking us for this for months and we made it happen! Check out all the love and effort we put into this campaign. We really hope you like it!

HERE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scarecrowstudio/3-minutes-to-midnight-a-comedy-graphic-adventure

Enjoy and see you there!

Good news, everyone!

This is an announcement to announce that tomorrow we will make an announcement announcing our Kickstarter launch! Yeah, that's right! We are kicking off tomorrowOctober 8that 5:00 PM (Madrid Time).

Click the banner to check out our pre-launch page. It's just a bit of text, a cover image, and a green "Notify me" button. Ain't much, but it's honest work.

See you tomorrow!

Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scarecrowstudio/3-minutes-to-midnight-a-comedy-graphic-adventure

Greetings, 3M2M fans!

Here's a quick announcement. We are now almost 200 on our 3M2M Discord server, and we are waiting for you! So come chat with us! :-)

We have recently also started writing our development diary that we post every day on Instagram.

To follow us or join our newsletter, simply click on the pics below.


Have a wonderful day!
Scarecrow Team