Hey everyone, That Fish here! You might have heard a lot about these "Blueprints", but what's it really all about? When Penguin Heist was released into Early Access almost a year ago, we had a lot of plans for the game. However, as we're only 2 people working on the game, we couldn't do everything at once. With time and a lot of input from you - the community - we managed to shape the game into something a lot better than it initially was.

Thank You Everyone!

By now we've sold more than 50 000 copies, and the game has been played by several well-known streamers! Wow! We could not have imagined this when we started. Thank you so much to everyone for supporting us! It's really inspiring to see so many people enjoying the game, and it makes us want to work even harder on making the game the best it can be!

Regarding Current Bugs

Before we dive into what's to come we'd like to clarify what's going on with some of the bugs currently present in the game. We're working on fixes, but some of them are harder to crack than others. Controls and multiplayer lag is a common issue. This is something constantly being improved on, but is one of the harder parts to get right. The reason is pretty simple, and that's because Penguin Heist is a physics game with multiplayer, so every limb of every penguin has to be simulated and synchronized. This can be a bit tricky, but That Other Fish is on the right track to smooth it out with some smart ideas. Also, since the optimization updates came out, you may have noticed some weird lights and flashes. This is due to issues with the lightmapper in Unity, which can go wild when you have intersecting geometry, especially objects that are partly underneath the terrain. We're looking at more advanced solutions to this, because there's no quickfix for this. By the Blueprint Update this should be fixed.

New Level Design

Part of the Blueprint Update is to remodel all maps to include a lot of additional areas, all of which will be optional to the main tasks. This is part of our way to make exploration fun rather than an obligation to complete a level. If you want the best weapons, most rare achievements, find out the real secrets behind the Penguin Heist lore, you'll have to explore. This means that there will be no grinding to get the cool stuff, but at the same time it won't be super easy and uninspired. Furthermore, we're also laying the foundation for the NPC quests which will appear all around the maps, many of which may grant Blueprints or access to special areas. No more weird empty spaces in the maps, now they'll be filled with rewards, quests, content and lore. Below are three examples of what will pop up in the update. In these cases the playable area has at least doubled or tripled. So, a lot more do see and do!
"The Blue Forest" is hidden in the fog beneath Dark Castle.
New part of Research Station hidded away in the mountains.
An old colonial fort sits on the cliffs of Playa del Sol. The whole idea is to make Penguin Heist even more of a sandbox, so you have more freedom to heist, explore, sneak, slaughter in your own way. You can just go in, explore, do side quests, and then extract without touching the main objectives if that's what you want. Another perk of this system is that we can divide the game into several difficulty levels by design. With this we mean that we can make the new areas and challenges much harder as they are optional and often hidden away, as it will not break the game for those who just want to blast through a level. There's a lot more to say, but we'll save it for later after the Blueprint update has been released. As always, we're happy to receive any suggestion, so feel free to share what you think about the game, the updates, and where we're heading. After all, we're here to make the game as good as it can be. It has come a long way since the Early Access release one year ago, but we want to go even further to make it even better! Until then, Stay safe, and keep nooting!

[ 2022-06-27 22:46:10 CET ] [ Original post ]