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

This is gonna be a loose-one. I've been working on PROVIDER for a bit over 3 months now, and I gotta say, I'm really happy with how it's coming along, but I think it's also important to have something resembling a mission statement for the game. So consider this, that.

PROVIDER is a exploration game about Provider, a deceased soul who's been tasked with helping shepherd souls to the afterlife that have sort of slipped through the cracks. Providers do this by setting the souls at rest, ususally by finding something that meant a lot to them in life, and bringing it to them. 

Excluded zones are places in which tragedy happened. Sometimes big things like a battle or massacre, sometimes small things like a lost loved one or sickness. These places are removed from the natural space of the universe and excluded from the flow of time, to create a sort of cosmic snow-globe of the place. Providers are able to travel between these places using Seal Holes, small rips in the fabric of time, but they can’t stay long. Maqer Energy, refined from M-ENG condensers, is the only thing that keeps a provider lucid while away from their camp, so move quickly and act decisively.

PROVIDER is inspired by a lot. Indie comics where pulpy worlds are explored by stoic heroes who fight strange monsters. Yupik legends that I've been told since I was a kid. Low-budget Fantasy and Scifi like Dr Mordrid, Wizards, and Flash Gordon. Video Games like DarkSouls and Lost Planet (mostly Lost Planet 2 & 3)

The core of PROVIDER is a simple loop:

• Speak to spirits, learn what they remember and any info about what they need
• Find the Excluded zone that matches their recollection
• Fight your way to the item or place they described
• Return to the spirit and set them free

Once a spirit has been released, another will take their place before long. A Provider’s work is never done. 

It’s a weird mix, a little somber ghost-talking, a little swashbuckling adventure, a little battling with esoteric monsters from across the universe, but my hope is that I can bring it all together into a world that, even if not completely consistent, is at least consistently inconsistent.

PROVIDER is available on Windows, Android, and Ubuntu as it’s being developed. I’m putting out new releases whenever I have some real content, usually at least once a week. It’s available for free, but of course any money paid for PROVIDER is greatly appreciated, or if you go to our Patreon you can feel all warm and fuzzy about supporting us through a monthly contribution, you’ll also get your name in the credits of PROVIDER and any other games we finish while you’re contributing and get to see cool new stuff early.


Anyway, here's some cool stuff in PROVIDER right now.

Fight a Terrible Monster

Pet a Cute lil' doggy

Chill by a campfire!

Open a box full of goodie - wait- OH GOD THAT WASN'T A BOX!! IT HAS SOME KIND OF MOUTH WHO-WHY- GOOD LORD PLEASE HELP ME!

Things are happening!! As I write this the biggest BISC update since adding Sleds is on it's way through the Testing pool (Thank you testers, you're cool as hell) after which it'll be dropped into production for everyone to play. 

Before that happens, I wanted to take a few minutes (for the 11 people who read the blog updates) to explain some of the new changes.

If you haven't set your options for the Home menu, first thing that should happen is you get these two screens, which let you choose between the old Menu interface, and the new Explorable interface. If you choose Menu, your experience will be mostly unchanged from the old system. However, if you choose Explorable, you get the new stuff we've been working on.

You also get to select your gender, which really just slightly changes the in-game model for your character. We've decided to include a nonbinary option. If you don't like that or it makes you mad, we reccomend you take a moment to look deep inside yourself and ask "Why do I really care" and go about your day.

Since the new Explorable layout requires a bit more interaction than just scrolling down a menu, we included some quick text about how to navigate the world and interact. All the interactions that were on the Menu interface are now actual buildings around the explorable home

That's most of the big stuff in Update 1.2 at this point. As always, happy people have been ejoying BISC, and I hope that with this update we've addressed some of people's complaints with the game overall. We've got some idea on expanding some of the high-level loops for BISC, but like everything else, it depends on where people's interest leads, and if/when we get a new project into development.

Alright. All that said, BISC update 1.2 will be available 12/15/2020 on Google Play.

Thanks,
Wyatt White
Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla