​Hello everyone. I'm happy you're here in the new year. Now that PROVIDER is done and out and the launch craziness has settled, I wanted to take a few minutes to sort of reflect on what went well, what didn't, and how future games can be improved. This is sort of a post-mortem but also a way to talk about future projects. This is all in my opinion, which is more influenced by reception than directly correlating to reception

Things that worked pretty well

• Level Design Tools
  • Image based design tools gave me an excellent leg-up in level creation. I could sketch out new levels in a free-form and expressive way, and players only need Paintdotnet and some patience to re-arrange and play with them. While that's all great, I do talk later about some of the down-sides of the system/
• Episodic Structure
  • Some would disagree, but I think episodic stories are fun. I like seeing a variety of ideas and settings and characters. While I still enjoy a good serial story, I think that weaving episodic stories into a larger tapestry brings a great texture and variety to narratives. Whether or not we accomplished that in PROVIDER is another story entirely. I think it worked out. While Curry will be a radically different game, there is inspiration being taken from what worked and what didn't about PROVIDER
• Hub Area
  • I'm still infatuated with hub areas. Curry is set to feature a similar hub system. I think it gives players a good safe zone, and an out to hopefully avoid burnout.
• Enemy variation
  • While each enemy isn't 100% unique, I was really happy with how well tweaking small elements like timing, speed, and status effects worked for making combat feel different in each area. I would like to experiment more with enemies that steal or impede stamina in a sequel release.
• Fauxpoly Art
  • Still love the fauxpoly or "Sprite Stacked" artstyle. Gives a delightful PS1 crunch to art, and is super easy to pull off.
• Combat
  • It's not up for any awards, and it gets janky at the edges, but I'm really proud of the simple combat system I was able to put together. I don't know how many found that weapons could be switched mid-combo for quick high-damage hits, but I think that extra little dash of complexity came out really well.
  • If I were to do it again, I think the ability to manually aim the firearms would be nice. While the auto-aim works well, it wasn't proper signposted to players, so most thought you had to manually point your character to hit enemies with guns.
• Weather effects
  • I was really happy with how well the snow, wind, rain, and lightning effects turned out. Not perfect, and all using things built into GameMaker, but I think they did a lot of lifting when it came to setting and tone

Things that didn't work so much

• Simple levels
  
  • While the level design tools were great for sketching out levels quickly and cheaply, I did find many limitations of the system. The first and probably worst is that with a limited pallete, many levels without a marquee feature or gimmick feel very simmilar.
    
  • The early 1900's remote Yupik village feels pretty close to the 1700's coastal Dena'ina village which felt only a little older than the 2030's post-conflict survivor's colony. It was a failure of my own design to properly scale and change for new environments. While the system had worked well in ThreeStep, that's partially because that game took place in a single region and had a much smaller scoped story
    
• Limited Dialogue
  
  • PROVIDER was originally intended as an action-centric survival game. The heavier focus on story didn't really come up unitl midway through development. instead of make an actual dialogue system like we'd done for previous games, I elected instead to make it a monologue system. This worked fine for most plotpoints, but left Floyd (the main character) almost entirely mute for the majority of the game, and didn't provide the player or character with opportunities to ask questions or seem more detail.
    
  • Ultimately I think it's a failure of formatting that would be rectified in any sequels or continuations.
    
• Lore Notes
  
  • While the intent was to fill out a zone's backstory and themes without bogging the game down in lengthy dialogue or cutscenes, the lore-note systems seemed more to serve as an easily missable bit of info that left most players slightly (or extremely) confused. It didn't help that several zones like the Mine, Highway, and Bogland had fairly complicated backstories that would make zero sense if the player missed a key note.
    
  • I think in future we'd be best-served with either simpler backstories or more direct narrative in a given level.
    
• NPCs
  
  • NPC's are all static, and with one or two exceptions, don't even really animate. While this was intentional to keep the hub area consistent and make sure players understood the functions and location of each NPC, it also seems to have pushed players into thinking that NPC's were not important or that they werren't worth talking to.
    
  • I didn't help things much by putting NPC's personal quests behind an initial introduction paragraph. The Skinny Dipper, Berry Lady, and Miss Miller all have small fetch/retrieval quests that the player can find by speaking to them twice, but I didn't really signpost that well enough, and most people aren't going to commit that kind of time into a small indie game without a reaaaally good reason.
    
• Nonstandard Structure
  
  • Having a succession of levels that are episodic also hurt the game in some ways. Not having an agressive plotline seemed to push some players away. Feedback said that it felt like chapters that didn't actually advance the Fox storyline felt like filler or pointless. I personally disagree, since the episodes are the whole point of the game, but I do see where the feedback comes from. Thoroughly episodic storytelling is out of fashion right now, and serialized stories are in, so players looking for a throughplot are probably going to be bored or quit long before the serial plot actually kicks into gear.
    
• Inventory & items
  
  • In future, having equipped items still take up inventory space has been pointed out as a flaw or issue. I feel it provides a tactical choice, but I also understand that in a game about collecting and scavenging, the initial low inventory cap can be frustrating.
    
• Level Exploration
  
• Levels were pretty similar and uniform visually, which made it difficult to push players in specific directions without baking it into the level design. As much as we tried to put alternate paths and hidden areas, most people found it more confusing than engaging to explore.

All in all, I feel incredibly proud of PROVIDER. I think it's a strong game with some strong themes, fun characters, and an enjoyable core-loop. Both myself and Jesse would be interested in doing a sequel or second season at some point in the future, but we're not sure when that time will come.  For now, PROVIDER stands on its own as an oddball experience that would only have come from Alaska.

Thanks,
Wyatt White

TLDR; Android, itchio, and Windows Store versions of PROVIDER will be available December 17

It's been a long road to finish PROVIDER. By far the most ambitious game we've ever done, and sofar one of the better-recieved. No matter what the sales say, I'm proud of it and happy that it's been enjoyed by those that have played it. The Steam release was bumpy, several game-breaking bugs were found immediately, but we got it under control and have managed to smash every major, and most of the minor bugs.

Now that the major kinks have been ironed out, we're ready for the other launches. We'll be setting our Android version live in Google Play and itchio this Friday December 17. We'll also have the non-Steam PC release coming to itchio on the same day. We're also planning to launch a UWP version (which includes Xbox 1 and Xbox Series consoles) on the same day. 

With these secondary launches, we hope to get PROVIDER into as many hands as possible and onto as many platforms as possible. 

This should be one of the last updates to PROVIDER for the forseeable future, as we're moving on to our next project, currently codenamed "Curry" which we'll be excited to show off as soon as we've got something cool to show.

PROVIDER is launching! 

It's been a long road to get here, but it's finally time. Any patrons will recieve a code, and if you want to reccomend to friends or family or your mom or your mom's friends, send them to (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1604390/PROVIDER/)

The launch trailer is up! Check it out, and if you haven't already, wishlist PROVIDER on Steam

This was posted for Patreon backers last week. If you'd like to support CakeNeq Games, check out our Patreon. Backers also get early access to prototypes and early access to new games.

Things are beginning to wrap up, but we're not quite there yet.


Originally PROVIDER was supposed to be out this week. In retrospect, that would have been a terrible mistake. Only now is PROVIDER getting in a shape I'm happy putting out into the world, but better late than never right? We've been hard at work making sure we polish edges and add extra little pops of color and interactivity where we can and while it's been great to have that extra breathing room, I'm also looking forward to gettin PROVIDER out into the wild.


My favorite thing we made time for is including things from home. Wether that's frybread, dryfish, moose soup, or friends from back home, it's been really fun to take the extra step to port things from my remote Alaskan upbringing into games.​

I'm also proud of the stories we managed to include. PROVIDER started as a game about flowers that grow from blood, monsters that want to eat your memories, and basic survival/crafting elements; to a game about traumas large and small, and the shapes of life. Sure, there are bits I would change if I could do it all over, but I'm immensely proud of the strange little goblin of a game we've made, and I hope at least some people will be interested in my little goblin as well. 


PROVIDER is gonna be out in the wild on November 26 for Windows, Linux, and Android. (Wishlist it on Steam!)


Thanks, 
Wyatt White

We got the opportunity to do an interview with the SWW Show a week or so back, which gave Wyatt a fun opportunity to talk about indie development in Alaska, Dark Souls, and the challenges faced in developing PROVIDER. 
Also a fun one if you want to listen to a sweatty nerd babble on about existential crisis or how he dislikes survival/crafting games.

TLDR:

• Arctic Comic Con Postponed to April 2022
• PROVIDER release postponed till Nov 26
• This gives us a little longer to put together the most polished and content-rich game we can

So, I had a whole cool post ready about all the cool stuff we're going to be doing at the upcoming Arctic Comic Con at the end of October. Though between posting that post on Patreon, and the day it was supposed to go up here publicly, the Arctic Comic Con was postponed to April 2022(which we're still planning to be doing a booth at). While we'd have loved to do all the cool demo stuff at the end of October, we also think it's probably for the best given the current overload of our hospitals and the danger of a large-scale public event like this at this time.

Either way, ARCC being postponed changes the release timeline for PROVIDER release. We're moving our release from Oct 27 to Nov 26, giving us just over a month of extra development time. I'm confident that we would have been ready for release by Oct 27,  but we're all more than happy to have a little extra time to polish things up and maybe even add in a little more content in to make PROVIDER as good as possible. 

Wrapping PROVIDER in Nov, with 5 more months to go before ARCC will also hopefully give us enough time to patch issues, release on new consoles(hopefully), and get the next game started.

In any case, we hope everyone shows up for PROVIDER's release, and that if you can safely come (get vaccinated, and also maybe wear a mask)  please come visit us at the Arctic Comic Con in April 2022

Thanks, 
Wyatt White
Redbull fueled code-goblin 

Dev Blogs are posted early for Patreon supporters. You also get free access to all of our games. Maybe become a Patreon supporter?

Don't mind the pretentious title, this is just sort of an update on development. As you read this (assuming you're reading this in the first week or so of it being up) we're working as quickly as we can to finish PROVIDER. Our plans for the whole game are complete, and now we're working on finishing scripts, finishing gameplay programming, and making sure the experience as a whole hangs together.

We've also contracted Jackson Miller (A talented Alaskan Pixel and Digital artist) to do an almost total overhaul of PROVIDER's 2D graphics. All the faux-poly stuff (like characters, enemies, and bosses) will be staying the same. I'm still personally and painstakingly modeling and animating each character and pose, but for the environmental art and items, we decided to get an expert in to make everything look less terrible.

On the writing front, Jesse and I have been hard at work making sure the world, characters, and requests all make sense and build in a comprehensible way. We're also doing our best to ensure we deal with the subjects of each episode in a way that's both clear to the player, true to the situation, and in an engaging way.

We've also got Michael White returning to do some slick tunes for PROVIDER's soundtrack. From what I've heard so far, it's a sort of smooth mix of acoustic guitar, atmospheric, and electronic stuff. I don't have the musical vocabulary to properly explain it, but it's rad as hell and I'm excited to be able to once again commission a soundtrack that's like 3x better than the game it's for.

As for final release, we've got an end in sight. The plan for a while has been to release in Q3 2021 (after July but August) but right now it entirely depends on how things hold together. I'm optimistic about getting out in late September, but it's entirely possible that we'll need to push it off till nearer the end of the year. Like everything else on PROVIDER, we're definitely building the track as we go.
​
I think that PROVIDER has grown into something unique and worthwhile, and I really look forward to being able to share the final product with everyone.


Anyway, here's a quick GIF of me fighting John Kinin, recently revamped to be actually not terrible.

Thanks,
Wyatt White

I foolishly thought I had a solid plan for what the rest of PROVIDER's development was gonna look like. Turns out is was wrong. 

We ended up shuffling things a bit. The Toxic Zone (previously Episode 8, now Episode 9) has been pushed back a bit, and we're working on adding a new final monster-of-the-week episode, this time set in North-West Alaska, centering around Project Chariot. It's going to be interesting and based on actual history.

Unfortunately it also means that the release of Episode 8 is going to take a few more days, so we're looking more like a release on April 20 or 21 depening on how smoothly the development goes. 

Anyway, look forward to that, or don't, that's totally up to you.


Thanks, 
Wyatt White

One of the cool things about PROVIDER has been building the game episodically. Apart from the first month or so of building the bare essentials of the game, each episode has been essentially written and implemented in order. The good part of that, is that we can go from "This is a cool idea for an area" to "This area is complete" in just a few days. It's really fun, but also leaves the narrative a bit fragmented, and makes it hard to get a complete picture of the world and narrative.

Unfortunately, we're also planning on having a sort of 3-4 episode arc for the end of PROVIDER. These are episodes that are essentially intended to be played all together. Brightside is PROVIDER's first story is coming to an end (and a pretty cool end if I say so myself) downside is after the next update, we're not going to be updating again until we've finished the last 3-4 episodes.
Episode 8 (the Toxic Zone) will be up and available April 14, but after that we're not going to be releasing any new episodes until May at the earliest.
​
So, long story short, we're finishing up our Episode 8 Update, after which, we'll be going quiet on updates until, all at once, Episode 9-10-11-12 all drop at once in late-May or June.
As with everything PROVIDER, this could change at nearly any time, but we'll do our best to be up-front about any delays and keep everyone clued in on why and when they're happening.
​

This is a mostly boring post about development and other boring things, so please also enjoy this GIF of a trash disposal mech for Episode 8

And also here's a GIF of one of the new Episode 8 hazards. It's kinda gross. . . 

This article ran last week on our Patreon page. If you'd like to help fund CakeNeq Games' mission to make unique and engaging indie games right here in Alaska, please consider contributing to our Patreon on a monthly basis.

Thanks,
Wyatt White