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

Alright, quick lil' drop here today. Just wanted to put out some external communication that the folks on BISCord have been getting for couple days now.

BISC has a 1.2 update coming soon!
//put cricket noises here

"But what does that mean!?", you ask terrified and trembling at what this implies. "Deep breath, my friend, it just means we're adding a physical home-base to explore, and gener select options."

It's been a criticism of BISC since like week 2 that's practically just menus and mushing. Now I'll admit, my first reaction to that criticism was along the lines of "Well excuse me for making a free game with intentionally non-exploitative microtransactions and not spending an entire year finely tuning the non-mushing aspects. Eat shit." but after some reflection and deep breathing, I really have come to agree with that thought. I should put more BISC into BISC. 

So that's what I've been doing. Since Trident is on ice for the forseeable future, I've decided to go back to BISC and expand on the elements around the core mushing. Right now that just means adding in some cool explorable area around your home base, as well as giving players a lil' avatar to control directly, but in the near future the plan is to create some other characters to live in this lil' area and encourage players to help them out, run deliveries for them, and generally have more diverse things to do in BISC.

Though, I'm getting ahead of myself. For the time being, it's an explorable camp, a lil' avatar, and some fixes to bugs that I've been ignoring, This update should be ready by December 20. I mean, it's mostly ready now, but I really want to take extra time to make sure it's as good of an experience when it launches wide as possible.

IF you really want to try it now, check out our BISCord here, and opt into the Open Testing branch on Google Play.

Thanks,
Wyatt White
Very Tired

Hey, turns out, games are really hard to make. Who knew!? Games with intricate story and character interactions are double hard to make, because if any of those fiddly little details are off, it immediately kinda breaks your investment in the plot and the world. So add on top of that scheduling conflicts with Jesse, the other writer working on Trident, have led to a lot of the strain on Trident falling on me. 

Unfortunately, it's a hell of a lot more than I can really do in a timely manner, so we're postponing it. We still both really like the charcters, script, concepts and basic gameplay, but we also agree that we should do it right if we're gonna do it, and if we can't then we should wait till we can. Now, that might mean it never releases, might mean it releases in 10 years. I don't really know at this point, but either way, don't hold your breath. 

In the mean time, I'm going to be working on updates and expansions for BISC, as well as updating all my tools for the newer updates to the GameMaker engine. I'm aiming to start working on a new project soon, but at this point I'm really unsure of what form that'll take. 

Thankfully, BISC is never really done. In the coming weeks I'll be working on fixing bugs, addding in new features, and  expanding some of the run-elements, so stay tuned for that.

All in all, I'm really dissapointed that Trident didn't really work out in this timeframe, but I'm really happy with each individual mechanic and system, and a lot was learned in the proccess that I'll be sure to apply to future titles.

Anyway, thanks for following my ranting and raving.
Wyatt White Minor Breakdown-haver

Happy November folks (also, hey it's trangender awareness week, so don't forget Trans Rights!) got a quick little update for you all today.

We've been hard at work on Trident, but somehow I haven't written a single line of code in almost two weeks. "How can this be?!" you shout at your screen, since I know everyone reading this is incredibly invested in Trident. Well, I'll tell you, dear reader.

We're writing like a billion pages of dialogue. Litterally (figuratively) 1.87 Billion pages. 

Really though, we're hard at work writing the bulk of the script. Currently sitting at 61 pages of pure dialogue, we're shaping up to be about 150 by the end. It's going to be a long road, but we hope it'll be worth it.

(Here's an early interaction I'm particularly happy with)

Anyway, work on the actual game itself is essentially at a full stop until we can finish the main writing chunk of the story. As much as I like writing, I'm ready to head back into the code trenches as soon as I can.

Anyway, look forward to me emerging on December 15th with a huge beard and a thick script document, wild terror in my eyes and someone's blood on my knuckles. 

Thanks, 
Wyatt White ​

We've been hard at work on our next game, Trident, so as always, we're really quiet. I wanted to take a moment to send out some updates. 

Trident is coming along nicely, we've got some great exploration mechanics, some fun character writing, and some great hazards for the end setup. The improvements on the Fauxpoly style makes the whole game look chunky and unique. 

We've also added a fairly unique fishing minigame. The minigame requires the player to find which bubbles aren't moving, rather than some sort of  frantic button mashing that other games do. Here, you need to use patience and a keen eye to catch a tasty fish.

We've also got all of our primary cast setup and in-engine. They don't really do much yet, but just getting them in game gives us an idea of who does or doesn't fit properly. It's also worth noting that Trident is by far our largest written cast ever. There are 10 characters in the main cast, which bumps up to almost 24 when you count minor characters and peripheral cast. Sofar, we're really proud of the diversity of personality and interesting stories we're plannig to tell with these characters.

Trident is really a strange game, featuring very little action, and no combat at all. Instead, we're trying to center Trident around getting to know the NPC's, fixing thigns, and exploring the environment. Rather than going for a melodrama like WayDown, or realistic depressing conversations like ThreeStep, but rather emulating slice-of-life dramas with just a splash of disaster movies to cap it all off. We've got no idea if people are going to be at all interested in this kind of game, but we're confident we can deliver it and that it's something we want to work on.

We're not just working on Trident though, we're also updating BISC as we go! There's an update (1.1.0) going out right now, so that's definitely worth checking out. It adds some new sleds, new dogs, bug fixes, and some minor features.

Anyway we're going to be hard at work on Trident, and we hope everyone will enjoy it when we're finally done! (We also hope it sells at least 3mil units. That would be excellent.)

Thanks, 
Wyatt White, Eternally Annoyed 

It's been a lukewarm minute since BISC Launched and I'm happy to report that people like it. BISC isn't gonna blow up any charts or make CakeNeq Games a mint, but it's enjoyed by those that play it and I'm still pretty proud of it. 

That being said, any programmer will tell you that basically everything they've previously released is garbage and that the new thing is the absolute coolest shit ever. While this is normally untrue, in our case it's 100% accurate. 

Kinigits? Garbage.
SiC? Garbage.
WayDown? Actually pretty fun, but also Garbage.
ThreeStep? Near and dear to my heart, love this pile of Garbage.
BISC? Still working on updates, so it's not quite Garbage yet.

See my point? Anyway, that means that the new project, currently called Trident is the absolute coolest thing I've ever conceived of. Trident takes place on Trident Station, a deep sea mining and research facility in an alternate 2004. Trident(game) follows the exploits of Ellen Parcelle, an Upkeep Engineer who's tasked with helping keep Trident(the station) afloat. The game will center aroud item scrounging, repairing broken things, and the human connection that sneaks through the cracks of rigid corporate culture. 

I'm using a similar Faux-Poly graphics style to the one used in ThreeStep, except using it 10x as much and at an increased fidelity. The aim is to give Trident a sort of classic PlayStation low-poly look, while also keeping the asset creation and management down to something I can handle on my own. 

I've also got some help this time. not only am I working, once again, with my brother and Long-time collaborator Mike White, I'm also working with former classmate and all around cool guy Jesse Klejka to write the world, story, and characters of Trident Station. ​

Like any new project, we're all full of electricity and excitement about actually making it at least as good as it is in our heads, though it's a big project with many moving parts, so we're giving ourselves till the end of 2021, and aiming for an early 2022 release date. Though, depending on how things go, that might be pulled back for an earlier release, or pushed off for a later one. 

Big takeaways should be

• All our games are delicious and also garbage
• Play BISC for Free on Google Play!
• Trident is in development and coming Q1 2022!

As always, I'l be trying to update this blog regularly with new developments and plans, but I'll inevitably fail to do so until Trident is nearly complete or I need something from you.

Thanks, 
Wyatt White, Perpetually embarrassed child

While technically not for 8 more days, I'm getting an early start on my final post of the BISC cycle. It seems that despite my best efforts, I only manage 3-5 blog updates per project. The development of BISC has proven to be even slimmer when it comes to blogging. I'm not sure if this is my natural lack of long-form thought, or if it's just my laziness. In any case BISC is coming to a close. Kind of.

BISC is the first time I'm really dabbling in what the kids would call a "Service Game", meaning that I'm looking to continue updating in new content and tweaks for the coming months. While this means that BISC is done, it also means that BISC is only ever going to be mostly done. While the official 1.0 release will be on July 24, there will still be content patches with new dogs, new races, new sleds, and maybe even new villages coming for a few months after release. In theory this is to give people a reason to keep going back, but in practice it's likely to be more of an exercise in rewarding those faithful few that stick around and like the game. It also means that even as we move on to other projects, BISC will still be on our minds and under our fingers. 

There are a few projects in the sort of pre-production realm, but we're sort of unsure at this point which has the legs and ambition to make it all the way through to release, and which are cool ideas that'll be left on the cutting room floor. 

All this is my lengthy and rambly way to say that BISC is coming July 24 on Google Play and that you should follow our Twitter and Facebook for news on updates, new games, special offers, all that kinda thing.

Thanks, 
Wyatt White
Future-Former Expat

Work on BISC continues. While we're working on both BISC and Raven's Nest simultaneously, BISC has been taking significant focus lately. We're working with a couple of local Alaskan artists on sprucing up out graphics in preparation of our initial launch in late-May. We haven't said a whole lot about BISC, but here I want to elaborate a bit on the design & gameplay of BISC

BISC is essentially split into two phases, Management and Trail. Management consists of menus and numbers. Using a simple and intuitive UI you navigate menus to feed your dogs, purchase new dogs, select deliveries, and set off on a delivery.

As you can see from the screenshots below, these menus aren't anything fancy, simple background and readable text are the focus here. We're doing our best to include particles and sprites where they fit to keep the menu navigation from feeling boring.

The other half of gameplay is the more intense and taxing mode. Once the player has selected a delivery or race, they're dropped into the trail phase. This is a fairly simple take on traditional infinite-runners. You navigate your sled right and left with your finger, avoiding rocks, trees, wildlife, and other hazards while trying to collect food to replenish your cache back home, or collect dropped packages for extra bounty when you reach your destination. Your stats, like how fast you go, how agile your team is, and how many collisions you can withstand before breaking down are determined by your actions in the management phase. Equipping hearty dogs, or quick dogs, or agile dogs will all affect the corresponding attribute in the delivery phase. Performing care-actions while in the management phase will also allow for certain dogs to perform better on the trail. 

I've included some screenshots and a little gameplay demo of a quick delivery.

Fortunately or not, that's kinda it. We've got some other small stuff. A Dog-shop with daily rotations of available dogs, each with unique stats and looks. Tiered ranks for deliveries, ensuring that new players won't attempt a delivery that's too far and sour the experience for themselves, as well as giving some more concrete goals for players to work towards. We also have weekly races. Every Saturday, players get one chance to participate in a race. These require an entry fee and are the longest trail event available. If the player places in the top 3, they're awarded a large payout. We're also working on special races for holidays and to coincide  with prominent real-world dog races. 

We're aiming to have BISC ready for wide-release at the end of May 2020, we plan to be a cold distraction for players during the hot summer months.

Thanks for all the support, and we plan to make BISC a game you'll love.

Thanks,

Wyatt White
professional space-sailor