Steam Summer Sale

 Citizen!

This post pulls double duty, being both a cryptic progress update and a reminder that The Dream Machine is currently on sale at a 75% discount over on Steam!

Buy your copy now before it's too late. Buy several copies, in fact. Buy one for your mother, and two for your grandmother. You know she'll dig it.

I won't talk about the progress updates too much. That would ruin the fun. Ponder their sacred wisdom at you leisure.

Then go out an play in the sun. That's what I'm going to do at least.

Cheers,

 - a

Merry Christmas and happy Holidays! Enjoy this sneak peek of what's just around the corner. Next chapter 5 will have some Lars von Trier, Tron and Hanzel und Gretchen moments.
See you next year. Love.
-Anders, Erik & the Machine

Autumn Sale

The Dream Machine is currently on sale over at Steam. If you have a special someone you want to impress and delight, then this is the way to do it. If you're all alone and feel that life is devoid of meaning, then consider spending some time with Victor Neff, your new best friend. He doesn't question. He doesn't judge.

And he can be your to control for a mere handful of currency units.

Steam: The Dream Machine

To make it more official...

Find it here!

Mother would like a word with you...

Steam Delay

The Steam version is still some ways off. The delay is mainly due to technical issues. Nothing life threatening, mind you. Just some little niggles. We suck at time estimates so I can't give a hard and fast ETA, but we're working on getting it done as soon as possible.

In the meantime, keep watching and reporting your neighbours' activity to the authorities! It doesn't matter if they're suspicious or not. Just report. And watch. In that order.

It'll feel good. I promise.

Cheers,

 - a

Free at last!

Beginning to see the light...

I'm on my way, dear!

Chapter 4 progress report:

Chapter 4 Release Date

Release Plan

As some of you have already noticed, strange things have started to happen with The Dream Machine lately.

The good news is that we're finally getting ready to release Chapter 4. The final assets are being made as I type this, and testing is going really well. Hopefully we'll have a date very soon.

If you have previous experience doing QA testing and want to help us polish Chapter 4 to perfection, don't hesitate to drop us a line.

The weird news is that we've reshuffled the game a bit, and added a sixth chapter.

Our original plan was that Chapter 4 would contain three small dreams, but once we started working on them they grew in scope and ended up getting very big indeed. This ended up causing some performance problems, so we decided to cut Chapter 4 into two separate chapters, effectively giving the game six chapters.

So, if I bought the bundle back when it was only five chapters do I have to buy the last one separately?
No, you get all of them. This also applies if you bought the bundle on Steam.

We hope you like that piece of news.

Cheers,

 - a

Drag'n'drop Update

We've just released a minor update to the game. Most notably, we added drag'n'drop functionality to some of the close-ups. If you want to rearrange the dream diaries for instance, you don't have to go the long way via the inventory flap any more. You can just drag'n'drop them directly where you want them. It's a minor change, but it really makes rearranging things way faster and more intuitive.

It will become more heavily featured during the coming chapters, but since it's an engine level change it's very easy to retro-fit into the older chapters as well. Which is a sweet perk!

• Engine: Added drag'n'drop functionality during close-ups
• Game: Upgraded some inventory icons to high-res versions
• Chapter 1: Added functionality in Neff's kitchen
• Chapter 1: Fixed the disappearing hole bug on the island
• Chapter 1: Modified mover animations
• Chapter 1: Modified mover dialogue
• Chapter 1: Upgraded some graphical assets to high-res versions
• Chapter 2: Added drag'n'drop functionality to Morton's bookshelf
• Chapter 2: Upgraded some graphical assets to high-res versions
• Chapter 2: Added drag'n'drop functionality to rock puzzle
• Chapter 2: Tweaked blueprint
• Chapter 2: Added control panel
• Chapter 3: Upgraded some graphical assets to high-res versions
• Chapter 3: Fixed minor graphical issue in the maw
• Chapter 3: Added auto save points

We hope you dig these tiny tweaks!

Cheers,

 - a

Mother would like a word with you...

Dream a Little Dream of Me

This is a sneak peak behind the curtains of the game engine. It's basically how we set up every environment of the game. If the view looks unfamiliar it's because most of these objects are normally hidden from your view, but they affect the way Victor navigates and interacts in every scene regardless.

This – the very first thing you encounter – is unsurprisingly the one scene we've spent most hours tweaking. It's the point of contact for most players and therefore establishes the tone and the interaction rules for the rest of the game.

This first area serves several purposes:

• It establishes the dream theme that will become more important later in the game.
• We always wanted to start the game off in a self-contained area so the player could learn the basics before we started to layer in story and exploration.
• We also wanted to give the player a chance to sample the flavour of our puzzles before ramping up the difficulty.
• The most important purpose, though, is to give the player a sense of who they're going to play for the rest of the game. If you examine everything or try to combine everything with everything else, Victor's personality starts shining through.

On a not very related note, we're participating in the Steam Indie Game Sale. If you're still on the fence or want to purchase the game as a gift for a friend/loved one/respected compatriot/inferior collaborator/dull employee/about-to-be-dumped partner/distant yet strangely compelling relative/bribeable governmental official – now is the time!

Find out more here.

Cheers,

 - a

Chapter 4 & 5 progress report

It's tricky giving progress reports without spoiling content, but through years of hard research and development we found the perfect format: awkward squiggles drawn on an index card.

This is exactly how far we've come with Chapters 4 and 5. The orange represents our progress and the white fields are things still left to do.

We hope you like this little insight. Take it for what it is.

Squiggles.

Cheers,

 - a

Mr Morton Exit Left

[Chapter 2 SPOILER warning!]

First draft: Just trying to nail the general composition. We're going for a simple, sombre moment: Mr Morton dying at the foot of a tree. The lines in the image should lead the viewer's eyes towards Mr Morton's face, since this is his moment in the limelight.

Second draft: Combining the elements resulted in a flat image with low contrast range. Everything looks even and brown. Mr Morton is unfortunately lit. His face and body blends with the background, making the image a bit hard to read. It's also a bit claustrophobic. It feels as if we're invading Mr Morton's personal space, rather than kneeling down beside him to listen to his pained last words.

Third draft: Trying to address these problems. Opening the image up to give a sense of depth, making it feel less claustrophobic. Injecting some variety to colour and texture. Trying to establish more of a sense of the location by showing more gnarly roots and background.

We're still not 100% happy with this scene, but the problems now mainly lie with the dialogue (which is too long). Bumping the visual quality up helped, but I'm pretty sure we'll revisit this once the last chapters have been completed.

Do you like the improvements? What would you have done differently?

Cheers,

 - a

The Delicious Update

We've just released a small update to the game. Some minor gameplay bugs have been addressed, some graphics have been upgraded, and some new content has been added. I'll upload a new Steam version as soon as I can. The Steam version of the game has been updated as well.

• Engine: Prevented music from starting during loads
• Engine: Fixed bug that caused music to pause every other load
• Game: Upgraded some inventory icons to high-res versions
• Chapter 1: Added functionality to letterbox
• Chapter 1: Added water effects to Victor's dream
• Chapter 1: Tweaked Victor's dream
• Chapter 1: Upgraded letterbox background to high-res version
• Chapter 1: Upgraded lobby background to high-res version
• Chapter 1: Tweaked dialogue (breakfast scene)
• Chapter 1: Fixed spelling error (breakfast scene)
• Chapter 1: Fixed shower interaction
• Chapter 2: Upgraded dream tree background to high-res version
• Chapter 2: Upgraded Morton close-up to high-res version
• Chapter 2: Upgraded glasses close-up to high-res version
• Chapter 2: Upgraded statue eye close-ups to high-res versions
• Chapter 2: Upgraded stone hatch close-up to high-res version
• Chapter 2: Added will-o'-the-wisps to all dream close-ups
• Chapter 2: Fixed stirrup stone examination bug
• Chapter 2: Fixed basement defragmentation animation
• Chapter 2: Tweaked close-up of monitors
• Chapter 2: Tweaked gas machine close-up
• Chapter 3: Fixed badge graphic showing wrong number
• Chapter 3: Fixed behaviour on backmost deck chair

We hope you go nuts over all these delicious tweaks!

Oh, and enjoy the weekend!

Cheers,

 - a

Pixels or Death Feature

This feature goes into some of the reasons why Chapter 4 & 5 are taking so long. It makes for a great read! We recommend it!

Cheers,

 - a

Chapter 4 Teaser

Progress on Chapter 4 has been quite good recently. So good in fact that we decided to bestow a little morsel upon you, our beloved players.

What's going on in the picture? Well, I guess you have to wait and see...

Cheers,

 - a