NEWSCAKE: Shotgun King v1.5 is in open beta! Hot Wax and Your Otter Half need further baking time, no charge for august (Patreon)

Hi punks!

The Shotgun King beta is under way! With some 37 new cards currently, 2 new shotguns, some new mechanics and a reworked AI, chess is turning into an even more interesting game yet again!

If you're interested in playing the new content before everyone else, the beta is available on Steam, from the game's properties, in the "Beta" tab, then in "Beta Participation".

There really are a lot of new things in this update, and some of the older systems and cards have been changed as well. This means things are not necessarily as stable as they could be. This is of course why we're doing a beta, and it's why if you play it we'd really appreciate you coming over to our Discord server and let us know what breaks, what doesn't seem to work, but also what you enjoy and how you generally feel about the update!

In any case, working on this update is pretty fun for us. Benjamin is doing most of the work of course, but Eris and I are also helping out giving feedback, reading through the chats on the Discord server, doing technical support and testing and putting the new builds online. All three of us actually stayed in Benjamin's home for two weeks, which has made all this easier and also much more fun!

Beside helping out on Shotgun King, I'm also still hard at work on Hot Wax, my candle-burning demon-summoning puzzle game! I'm quite happy with how the game is taking shape and the gameplay is getting very close to its final form at this point.

I have made a few different powerups to help you in your runs, including the mushroom shown in the gif, but also a "thermite", a mysterious acorn, a hyperflame, and the good old bomb from the Pico-8 version. These powerups can be obtained by reaching little stars appearing on the board, and by sacrificing flames!

I have a few gamemodes in mind to add variety to the challenge of the game, and there will be a selection of colour palettes to unlock and play with!

The game isn't quite done yet sadly. I made a lot more progress during this month than in the previous two, but it still wasn't quite enough. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though, I feel pretty confident about releasing this game during august. Plus it seems we're set to have sweltering temperatures here in France during that month! Topical!!

Eris is also making good progress on Your Otter Half, huge improvements were made on the graphics, a lot of work got done on the narration, and the gameplay is getting better and better.

You'll be playing a cleric otter, going on a small adventure-date with one of four warrior otters. Defeat monsters, complete the challenges given to you by your date-mate to impress them, and chat with them to learn more about them and develop your common relationship!

This one is undergoing some pretty interesting gameplay changes currently, which means it'll be better when it comes out out, but also that it will come out a little later than we previously thought. We'll update you next month, but we're thinking Your Otter Half should poke its head out of the pond in September!

And that's pretty much it for this month! We really have been hard at work, and we also have some surprises coming pretty soon that we can't wait to share with you!

Look out for the Shotgun King update and for the Hot Wax release this month! Since we already charged Patreon subscribers for Hot Wax back in June, there won't be a new charge until September!

Thank you all for your support, have a great month and take care!

-Rémy🍬