Greetings adventurers!

Some good news for all you beloved Trberbrook players out there (in case you are one of the lucky fellas that own a Steam Deck of course): Tannhauser's adventure in rural Germany was recently reviewed and got verified for the Steam Deck!

As of now you can enjoy Trberbrook in all its glory on the Steam Deck wherever you are: in the summer sun on the balcony, on top of the highest mountain, in the bathroom (if it takes a little longer...) - just about anywhere!

On to adventure, friends!
Your Trberbrook Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300/Truberbrook__Trberbrook/

Hey friends,

we have some awesome news, which we can finally share with you today: We - that's Thunderful Games - welcome all of you to the premiere of our very first digital games showcase Thunderful World! steamhappy

Find out more in the following press release:


Gothenburg, Sweden - October 28th, 2021 - International developer and publisher Thunderful Games, creator of the multi-award winning and multi-million selling SteamWorld franchise, is welcoming everyone to a new digital games showcase, Thunderful World. The event will be taking place on November 10th at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT / 8pm CET, hosted by Hollywood and pop culture icon Mark Hamill. Tune in to the livestream on Twitch, YouTube and the thunderful.world website.



Tune in to see Mark delight us with a ton of exciting new game reveals and announcements from Thunderful. The event will deliver updates on exciting upcoming titles including the surprise indie hit of Summer Game Fest, Planet of Lana. There will also be more news on Thunderful titles like Firegirl, Cursed to Golf, Source of Madness, Tinkertown and White Shadows.

Alongside Marks headline hosting role, the event will also feature appearances from Thunderful Group CEO Brjnn Sigurgeirsson, Corporate Vice President at Xbox Sarah Bond, plus a few other surprise industry partners.

Thunderful is proud to be partnering with Xbox and The MIX for Thunderful World. To sign up for the event and be the first to know all the important information ahead of the show on November 10th, head over to thunderful.world. As your one stop shop for all things Thunderful World, the website will be updated with new announcements and reveals as the event unfolds.


Stay tuned and tune in on Nov 10th - see you all in the event!
Your Thunderful Games-Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300/Truberbrook__Trberbrook/

Hey friends!

Taking a look out of the window and at the calendar: It's getting summer! So it's time again for the ultimate hotness: The annual STEAM SUMMER SALE! From June 24 to July 8, our entire Headup portfolio is heavily discounted - with up to 90% off:

• Aerial_Knight's Never Yield (20% off)
  
• Bridge Constructor Portal (70% off)
  
• Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead (60% off)
  
• The Fabled Woods (40% off)
  
• Pumpkin Jack (40% off)
  
• Tinkertown (25% off)
  
• Trberbrook (75% off)
  
• Dead Age 2 (50% off)
  
• Cardaclysm (55% off)
  
• and many more!

Unbelievable!

Exactly one year ago, we were sitting here in Berlin terribly excited, because day X had finally arrived: After several years of work, endless overtime and gallons of sweat and tears, we finally released Trberbrook on March 12, 2019 here on Steam! steamhappy

To celebrate this with you Trberbrook is 50% off till March 16, 2020! We also added Steam Trading Cards to the game, and a little stream to the Steam page, where Hans and Florian play Trberbrook and tell you some background information about the game - including some documentary material. Enjoy!

It has been a very exciting year for all of us here at btf and you, of course, have been a big part of this great excitement as well! Thanks to you all for your messages, your feedback, the lovely exchange with you and especially the love with which our first game was showered. We sure learned a lot that helps us for our upcoming projects!

We received tons of emails asking for another Trberbrook adventure based in rural Germany. But we have to disappoint you unfortunately, because there is nothing to announce. But all of us love Trberbrook with all of our heart - and hey, never say never.

Lots of greetings from Team Trberbrook!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

Dear adventurers,

the year is slowly coming to an end and we would like to take this opportunity to say thank you!

Thank you for all your messages, your feedback, the exchange with you and especially the love with which our first game was showered. We sure learned a lot!

It has been a very exciting year for all of us and, of course, you have been a big part of this great excitement!

Have a good start in 2020 and hope for soon!
Team Trberbrook


https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

The fourth update for Trberbrook is live:

New features, by popular demand:

• Implemented chapter selection when starting a new game slot
  
• Implemented doubleclicking to leave scenes
  
• Added saving icon to indicate save process
  

• Snoozy, the always tired squirrel, finally awakened from hibernation
  
• Hung a new painting in the sanitarium
  
• Spiced up the finale music
  

• Fixed an issue with the sound settings
  
• Fixed a small bug at the winter bus stop
  
• Fixed a rare bug that prevented Tannhauser from crossing the swamps
  
• Fixed missing dialogue selections in some languages
  
• Improved Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, French and Japanese subtitles
  
• Overall improvements and fixes
  

Hey fellow adventurers - it's Headups 10th Birthday! To celebrate the day, our developers Simon and Hans stream Trberbrook today at 8pm (CET) / 11am (PST), give some special developer information and would also like to play a round of "The Great Trberbrook Bingo" with you!

The rules are as simple as it gets: Everytime a statement on the bingo card is true you drink a sip of beer (or shots, non-alcoholics or whatever you like). We know, thats not really the way you play bingo but hey, its fun! steamhappy

At this point we would like to thank our generous sponsor Trude and the whole Waldeslust team for their sponsorship!

Yay! This week Trberbrook won the Animated Games Award at the 26th Festival of Animated Film in Stuttgart! We are really really happy, thank you very much! It's such a big honor for all of us who were involved in bringing Trberbrook to life! Lots of greetings from Team Trberbrook, btf and Headup!

P.S. The next Trberbrook update is right on it's way - stay tuned! :)



https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

We are currently working on the next update, which will include bugfixes and overall improvements. Thank you all for your ongoing feedback! We take it all into account and work non-stop to make the game better.

Next update:

• Fixing minor technical issues
  
• Improving sound performance
  
• Improving localizations
  
• Minor content ugrades
  
• Implementing Steam Trading Cards
  

At the German Video Game Awards 2019 (DCP), Trberbrook shined in not just one but two categories. Our adventure game was first awarded with "Best Staging", and at the end of the show it was crowned as "Best German Game" as well. This category is every year's most anticipated award of the German gaming industry.

Thank you so much, we are incredibly happy and feel more than honored! Lots of greetings from Team Trberbrook, btf and Headup!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

The third update for Trberbrook is live:

• Implemented a starting dialogue, adding more resolution settings and graphics options
  
• Improved general performance, especially on MacOS
  
• Steam achievements now trigger ingame
  
• Fixed the achievement "Gotta Light?"
  
• Lore items should now be displayed correctly on higher resolutions
  
• Catched a rogue bird on town square
  
• Added a new "face" to the band
  
• Fixed an issue with Leni and her TV in Chapter Four
  
• Fixed a bug in the Finale
  
• Improved Czech and Polish subtitles
  

The second update for Trberbrook is live:

• Improvements on Chinese, Korean and Japanese localization
  
• Improved video performance on some systems ("black screen intro video bug")
  
• Fixed a bug that caused unlimited supplies of "Bolzenschuss" in the cellar
  
• Fixed the strongman game
  
• Fixed a rare inventory bug when starting a new game
  
• Fixed several of minor bugs throughout the game
  

In our last update our character artist Benny spoke about the creative development process of the Trberbrook characters. After one of the characters is finished on paper, the drawings go to the technical team led by Technical Artist Hans Bhme.

How did you proceed after you received a character drawing?
After receiving Bennys character designs, we try to recognize and understand the the most striking features of the designs and then translate the 2d shapes to 3d ones as close as possible to the original drawings. We do this by sculpting a very detailed version of the 3d model which later gets simplified for the game. We then transfer the details of the high density mesh to the simplified 3d model by baking so called normal maps. Normal maps are textures that "fake" detail on more simple surfaces and makes them look almost as good as the original model but at the same time saving huge amounts of rendering time for the computer.



Next we texture the models, which means we are giving them colours and surface informations such as "How shiny is the surface of a model?" or "Is this surface made of metal or another substance?". We also rig the characters, which means we give them basic skeletons that define which area of a model deforms if a certain part of the skeleton moves. Lastly we animate the characters using those skeletons, which in my opinion is one of the most fun and fascinating parts, because here the characters start to come alive and look like living things. After importing all those different parts the models, the textures and the animations into our engine, we finally have a game-ready 3D-character to use in the game.



And what are difficulties or problems that can appear?
Sometimes things that work in a 2d drawing do not necessarily work as good on a 3d representation of that character. For example the proportions of certain body parts look really cool from a specific angle in the drawings but look kind of weird if you can examine the characters from many different angles in the 3d software. We then try to balance out those proportions or find other solutions to make the characters look good from all angles and still convey the same feeling of the character as the drawings do.

Et voil...This is Barbarossa 2000:



https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

The first update for Trberbrook is live! Thanks to all of you who keep us busy reporting bugs and giving us feedback. We really appreciate that! More updates incoming.

• Added Steam Cloud Save
  
• Fixed some Chinese Localization Errors
  
• Fixed a bug which showed a wrong portrait for Greta in the Prologue
  
• Fixed a bug which kept Hans asking for the cablecar key even after using the key
  
• Fixed a Linux bug that made the Quit button useless
  

Yesterday was a big day for all of us - and we are still pretty excited and happy about how many of you have played Trberbrook already! Thanks for all your feedback and thanks to all of you who keep us busy reporting bugs! We are already working on it and will start fixing as soon as possible. Well keep you updated!

Lots of greetings from Team Trberbrook!

Exactly from this moment on you can buy Trberbrook!

We are overjoyed to finally be able to show you the game weve been working on so hard for such a long time. We wish you lots of fun on your trip to Trberbrook!

Also take a look on out brandnew Lauch Trailer in both English and German language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKeNV7WH0tg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiPU20H1js0

In the last update we reported how the good people of Trberbrook learned to speak. But of course that's not enough for a proper video game character. This update will focus on how they got their unique looks (including: face, body and of course their own style to dress).

So let's get Benjamin Denkert on board, who worked with Game Director Florian on the individual looks in long sessions, then finely handcrafted them with pencil and brought the characters of Trberbrook to life.



Hey Benny, could you give us a little insight into your work life? What does a typical working day look like for you?
"I was responsible for the Character Designs in Trberbrook as well as the development of their visual style; that means I generally spend my day drawing loads of rough sketches and silhouettes for new characters, creating finished illustrations and drinking rather inhuman amounts of tea. But I think that I also spent quite some time trying to sneak some of my mischievous ideas into Game Director Florians scripts. With mediocre success ... for better or worse."



Lets talk about Trberbrook! What was it like when you first heard about the story and the different characters? Did you already have people in your mind?
"When I first got invited to work for Trberbrook I was immediately blown away by all the finished sets and models the team showed me. So there was no question in my mind about participating in that project. I prefer to work with my hands and traditional media so I felt so connected to the team and their vision.

When it comes to the Character style and designs, no, not at all. We all tried to keep an open mind to different approaches and experiments, so I spent the better part of the first month developing different styles that could be used in the game, from very cartoony to more realistic. The game has only one set camera perspective and no closeups, so I had to rely on other features then facial expressions to make the characters distinguished, for example shapes and silhouettes. As soon as we figured out what style we wanted to implement, we started working on the main character. If my memory serves me well, we ended up with about 30-40 heads with different art styles and looks, as well as 15 full body designs of Dr. Hans Tannhauser."



How does the process continue from the first idea to the finished figure?
"Well, in general, I began by annoying Florian as long as possible until he started to list all the features and traits he wished for a certain character to have. For example personality, role and positioning in the story, as well as the interaction with the protagonist. As soon as I was satisfied with the information, I gathered I started to scribble away very loose and fast, not thinking about faces but shapes and silhouettes at first. Yes our characters have faces, haha but what you will see and interact with most of the time are their general shapes and gestures. When I had enough material that contains the right message, I would start to think about features, like little funny gimmicks or clothes and sketch them. After that, I usually created a selection of possible face and the next step was to combine all the sketches and experiments while trying to find a good base for the whole character. If I found something I was happy with, I would start illustrating the character concepts in multiple variations until we had a finished character that we all could agree on. In some cases I continued by filling sheets and sheets of paper with gestures and facial expressions or even turn around drawings of a character so I could pass all the material to Hans, our technical artist for the 3D modeling."

What happens to Benny's designs when he passes them over to the technical team will be revealed in a new update soon!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

The world of Trberbrook is inhabited by a wide range of quirky villagers, tourists and strangers. For example Greta Lemke, the overenthusiastic student of paleoanthropology. Or reclusive inventor and talented card player Lazarus Taft. And of course Trude, the gruffy but warm-hearted innkeeper or old baron Otto-Titan of Trberbrook-Slz.

Besides a credible appearance (more on that in the next update!), each character needs to be equipped with a beautiful and sonorous voice. But finding a suitable voice for a beloved character isnt as easy as you might think.

HANS TANNHAUSER




Protagonist Hans Tannhauser, for example, is an American quantum physicist in his mid-20s, who touches the audience with his deeply friendly nature and relentless curiosity. So we needed a voice that could reflect these traits, a voice soft and kind and curious. A voice by someone who would also be able to master the wide range of emotional states that our protagonist would experience, and preferably an American native speaker.

What a lucky coincidence that Game Director Florian and actor Justin Beard met each other already a few years back in Berlin. Listen closely as he brings Tannhauser to life with his voice.

GRETA "GRETCHEN" LEMKE




At least as curious as Tannhauser is the somewhat overenthusiastic student of palaeoanthropology Greta Lemke, with whom Tannhauser teams up right at the beginning of his journey. Greta is energetic and adventurous, to say the least. It quickly became clear to us whom we would like to ask for this role, so we were very happy and enthusiastic when we got the final confirmation by actress Nora Tschirner. Heres a little snippet:

There are many other great voice actors involved, and some might even sound familiar to you:

• Lazarus Taft is played by Dirk von Lowtzow
  
• Dr. von Streck is played by late night TV show host and satirist Jan Bhmermann
  

Just like our sceneries, we wanted to make the sound of Trberbrook as handmade as possible. We waited for autumn to record the birds singing, the whispering of the woods and much more outside in the local nature. We know that this might sound completely nuts, but these details are really important to us.

At this point once again a huge thank you to all Kickstarter Backers who supported us so generously at the end of 2017. Only this way we were able to create a handmade soundscape.



A little fun fact regarding the music of Trberbrook: The soundtrack was created long, long time before the game was finished. After intensive meetings with the musical directors Sebastian Nagel and Albrecht Schrader, in which game director Florian spoiled the game completely (he reported in detail about the different locations, the unique, provincial and yet sometimes highly exciting atmosphere in our little village Trberbrook and about all the surprising twists and turns), the two musicians created a soundtrack with a playing time of about 40 minutes.



It is an original composition to fit the mood of the game sort of a tranquil doom jazz. Inspirations come from the works of Tom Waits, Angelo Badalamenti, Mark Lanegan, Timber Timbre or Bohren & The Club of Gore.

But why do we tell you all this at all? We have two small snippets for you here. Just listen to it yourself:



https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

Only a few days to go till Trberbrook will be available for PC, Mac and Linux. And yeah, we can't be more happy about it! That's why we want to give you a short overview about all the work we did within the last three years of developing Trberbrook. We hope you like it!

One of the most distinctive features of the game is the unique visual style. The sceneries are purely handmade. 'Handmade' as in: 'Manufactured using real hands!' And fingers!



Not the most efficient way of doing things, but certainly the most inefficient one. We're loving it, though! Look at what we do here, piece by piece, by the sweat of our brows. Every little detail is custom-made.

The models are digitized using a technique called photogrammetry and later retopologized. This way we get highly detailed polygon models that blend perfectly with our digital characters.



It is a lot of work, but also quite exciting! You may ask yourself, how can they reach this level of detail? Are there very tiny people involved? They can't accomplish all of this with mere human hands, right? Well yes, we can! The answer might be our abundance of professional hands. Twenty-four seven at our disposal in all shapes and colors, they get things done!



Every scene gets an individual treatment and is staged with actual physical lighting. This allows us to simulate different hours of the day or weather conditions. Even a change of seasons is possible just by redecorating the set with real tiny little snowflakes, no joke.

This way we achieve an exceptional and magical look that visually reflects the world of Trberbrook.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300

We start the week with great news! Trberbrook is nominated four times for the German Video Game Awards. The joy in the whole team is huge. Thank you so much, we feel more than honored!

Trberbrook is nominated for:

• Best German Game
  
• Best Youth Game
  
• Best Innovation
  
• Best Staging
  

Mark your calendar for March 12th, when everyone gets to explore the beautiful sceneries of the german town Trberbrook and the secrets it keeps!

As we're getting close to release, we're going to give you more updates about how the game came to be and what it has to offer!



See you in Trberbrook on March 12th!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/757300