Puzzle Spy International

This game is gorgeous and really tests my brain. Can’t wait to see it fully developed.

A scene all in teal and orange: A giant building with 1950s "googie" architecture sits in the middle of a rainforest. It has a sharply triangular roof, a radar dish, and off in the distance some sort of observatory with a laser nozzle sticking out of it. Agent Epsilon isn't shown here but you can read her dialogue: "This is definitely... the base I’m looking for... but that’s a lot more hiking... than I usually do on a mission!"

What could this new game location be? A secret base, of course! This is what the whole game is building to! I talk more about it in my new blog post on Steam:
store.steampowered.com/news/app/340...

#ScreenshotSaturday #puzzleGame #indieGame #thinkyGame #gameDev #gameArt

STEAM DEV CHEAT SHEET Quick access to a collection of best practices & magic formulas: STEAM CAPSULE (Your Game) The single most IMPORTANT element since it's seen the most Clear Readable Game name Genre Hook(s) Hire on artist! THE DISCOVERY ALGORITHM Get 7,000+ wishlists before launch Get 10+ reviews ASAP (positive or negative, just need 10) The only punishing review status is OVERWHELMINGLY NEGATIVE (the rest are neutral for traffic) WISHLISTS About 15% of wishlists convert in the first week. ALL wishlisters are emailed at launch. Discount 20%+ to email wishlisters after launch. SALES ESTIMATES FROM REVIEWS One review represents about 20-55 soles. It's the New Boxleiter Number! ~30 is good So 100 reviews = about 3,000 copies sold. TRAILER (Viewers skip through trailers) Start strong Omit intro logos Direct to gameplay 60 seconds or less End with ONE CTA: Wishlist it or buy it Made in October 2023 From the author of How to Make a Video Game All By Yourself valadria.com

Happy 2nd anniversary to the Steam Dev Cheat Sheet 🥂

LMK if any info is out of date! Good luck with your game 🎮

#indiegamedev

A scene all in teal and orange: A giant building with 1950s "googie" architecture sits in the middle of a rainforest. It has a sharply triangular roof, a radar dish, and off in the distance some sort of observatory with a laser nozzle sticking out of it. Agent Epsilon isn't shown here but you can read her dialogue: "This is definitely... the base I’m looking for... but that’s a lot more hiking... than I usually do on a mission!"

What could this new game location be? A secret base, of course! This is what the whole game is building to! I talk more about it in my new blog post on Steam:
store.steampowered.com/news/app/340...

#ScreenshotSaturday #puzzleGame #indieGame #thinkyGame #gameDev #gameArt

A reminder that this is tonight from 5 - 8:30. 😁

It's Paris at dusk and Agent Epsilon is standing there, a pretty sunset behind her. She's smiling and gesturing at the bright yellow and orange text on the screen: "Live playtesting Friday October 3 Oakland, California at the MADE."

For anyone who happen to be in the SF Bay Area, tomorrow night we're bringing TWO new puzzles to The MADE for playtesting. Come check them out, along with the dozen or two other indie games that will be playtesting & demoing there. 5pm to 8:30.

#indieGame#Dev #puzzleGame #indieGame #indieGames

A "mood-board" collection of various images that were some of the many influences on our game Puzzle Spy International. It's all mid-century modern illustration, including character drawings from books, animation backgrounds, and character art. Much of it is unlabeled but some of the names called out include Satoshi Hashimoto, Derek Yaniger, Shane Glines, Kevin Dart, and show/movies like 101 Dalmatians, Mr. Magoo, and The Jetsons.

I was asked recently which specific artists or styles made up the Mid-Century Modern influences on the style of Puzzle Spy International. So here's a mood board, and a write up of some of my (Mike's) visual inspirations for the game's art direction...
1/x

#gameArt #ArtDirection #retroArt #art

With the backgrounds, I overall nailed "making the buildings look recognizably similar to how they do in real life" a lot more than I nailed "has the wonky angles and distorted shapes that were a hallmark of Mid-Century Modern animation style." 😅

Scholastic – Embarrassing Treasures Posts about Scholastic written by Amy

Gay is generally a woman's name but even then, apparently there wasn't actually a woman named Gay Head either: It was an in-house pseudonym for Scholastic writers, who used it to pen books on etiquette, dating tips, parties and more from the '30s on.
embarrassingtreasures.com/tag/scholast...

One last thing that just occurred to me to add:
If you're interested in this art style and the mid-century artists and studios like UPA, Hanna Barbera, and MANY more who created it and want to find out more about it, I highly recommend the book 'Cartoon Modern' by Amid Amidi.
8/7

I’ve also tried to absorb some ideas from contemporary artists whose work pays homage to the mid-century look, including Shane Glines, Derek Yaniger, Kevin Dart, and especially Satoshi Hashimoto.

So that’s where the style of PSI comes from, as well as a hefty helping of my OWN art style! 😁
7/7

I’m also drawing inspiration from graphic design of the 50s and 60s, including period fonts & logos, maps, magazine illustrations, movie posters, consumer graphic design and package design. Saul Bass, well known for creating movie titles and posters, is also a great reference for 60s imagery.
6/x

McCracken and Tartakovsky attended CalArts together, where some of the instructors were animators from UPA and both ended up drawing influences from UPA’s animation… So it’s not a coincidence, we’re just all inspired by the same earlier work!
5/x

Many look at the art from the game and remark that it reminds them of 90’s and early 2000’s animation, like work by Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Wander Over Yonder) and Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack.)
4/x

United Productions of America was a big 1950s animation studio and their work was heavily influenced by graphic design. Disney films of the period had a great graphic sense as well, with ‘101 Dalmatians’ (1961) being a particular influence on my backgrounds for PSI.
3/x

The art in the game isn’t entirely typical of other game art and illustration that I do, but once we decided to set the story in the mid-60s, I decided that I really wanted the visual style to match the period. That’s where I landed on the “mid-century modern” art style.
2/x

A "mood-board" collection of various images that were some of the many influences on our game Puzzle Spy International. It's all mid-century modern illustration, including character drawings from books, animation backgrounds, and character art. Much of it is unlabeled but some of the names called out include Satoshi Hashimoto, Derek Yaniger, Shane Glines, Kevin Dart, and show/movies like 101 Dalmatians, Mr. Magoo, and The Jetsons.

I was asked recently which specific artists or styles made up the Mid-Century Modern influences on the style of Puzzle Spy International. So here's a mood board, and a write up of some of my (Mike's) visual inspirations for the game's art direction...
1/x

#gameArt #ArtDirection #retroArt #art

It’s not that we didn’t want to be cozy, it just wasn’t the main goal and it lacks a lot of hallmarks that I (as a fan of cozy games) personally associate with the genre: No gardening, no cute animals, no decorating. I think our next game will be more overtly cozy while still incorporating puzzles.

I’m active in the VN community as Puzzle Spy IS a deliberately a puzzle game/VN mash-up and we even built it in RenPy, an engine made solely for VNs. I wouldn’t call Abbess Garden a VN but it’s fair to say that it incorporates a VN-style dialogue system.

It was mostly you and Edwige (and one other person) who convinced me to consider Puzzle Spy International a cozy game, so thanks for that! 😁

Couldn't help but notice 2 of the 5 games selected for @wholesomegames.com Dev Diaries are spy video games:

🧩 Puzzle Spy International
🌷 The Abbess Garden

Congrats to @agentepsilon.bsky.social and @edwigelel.bsky.social

Just goes to show - spy video games can be wholesome!

#indiegames #indiedevs

A pixel card game showing a unicorn card up against a goblin card

A pixel card game showing a grid of different cards

For #GBJam 13, we made an idle card game where your deck of cute familiars goes head-to-head against enemy monsters!

To fit with the theme, "unlucky", you start with no luck opening packs, but can increase your luck to discover and merge more powerful creatures. 🐈‍⬛

jamwitch.itch.io/familiar-flip

I was just looking on your itch page tonight to share it with someone and I noticed a new game ("Hey, that wasn't there before!") Looking forward to trying it out!

A red room, French architecture, mid-Century light fixture and curvy couch and coffee table, and Pop artists on the wall: Warhols and a Lichtenstein from the looks of it. On the right stands Agent Epsilon - Indian with medium length bob, mod dress, and a compact that doubles as a phone held up to her air. She's talking to Field Liaison Friday, shown in an inset: handsome Asiam guy in a white button-up shirt and orange tie holding a receiver up to his ear. Epsilon is saying "Thanks for the help, Friday. I’m on my way!"

Agent Epsilon has solved another puzzle and - with Friday's help - is off to another part of the world! The "where she's heading" is the area of the game that we've been focusing a LOT on lately, including testing two new puzzles for that locale.

#screenshotSaturday #indieGame #gameArt #VN #gameDev

A few weeks ago almost 150 unpaid interns (playtesters) had the distinguished honor of taking part in our first playtest.

Now YOU have the distinguished honor of reading the fruits of their free labor: our very first performance review!

store.steampowered.com/news/app/331...

Puzzle Spy International on Steam Pursue diamond thieves and a trail of cryptic puzzles in this short ‘60s spy adventure. As Agent Epsilon you’ll choose your path as you chat with (or chat up!) suspicious contacts. Deduce the puzzle r...

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store.steampowered.com/app/3406690/...
by @agentepsilon.bsky.social

Uibolt tp nvdi gps hjwjoh ju b usz, hmbe zpv mjlfe ju! 😄

We played this the other night. It’s a short and rewarding game with great writing and a surprising ending. (It’s also free!) The entire thread has some good recommendations for fans or explorers of narrative deduction games.

A screen with 10 cards with colorful pictures on them, ten grey tags with clues, and slots for the 10 cards at the bottom. A hint window covers up some of the puzzle with some hopefully helpful hints. The hints read "Hint 1: There are spaces on the top of each card. Type in each to fill them all in," and "Hint 2: There are 10 picture cards and 10 tag cards. Can you figure out which ones go together?" Two of the cards have been partially filled in: The ones with pictures of a gazebo and a star have been labeled by the player "gazebo" and "star."

For #screenshotSaturday a throwback to the first puzzle in the game (so this isn't giving away too much!) Hopefully rearranging these cards and tags can give you a lead on the location of the diamond thieves.

#puzzleGame #tinkyGame #gameArt #indieGame #indieGameDev

A screen with 10 cards with colorful pictures on them, ten grey tags with clues, and slots for the 10 cards at the bottom. A hint window covers up some of the puzzle with some hopefully helpful hints. The hints read "Hint 1: There are spaces on the top of each card. Type in each to fill them all in," and "Hint 2: There are 10 picture cards and 10 tag cards. Can you figure out which ones go together?" Two of the cards have been partially filled in: The ones with pictures of a gazebo and a star have been labeled by the player "gazebo" and "star."

For #screenshotSaturday a throwback to the first puzzle in the game (so this isn't giving away too much!) Hopefully rearranging these cards and tags can give you a lead on the location of the diamond thieves.

#puzzleGame #tinkyGame #gameArt #indieGame #indieGameDev