General News, New Skins for Mig, Custom Skin Support

Back from a bit of a break! Apologies it has been a while, so let's get into it...

Here's an update with what has been happening:

Funding Application

Earlier this month I had to take a break from working on Pawperty Damage, to prepare an application for a local funding program; if I am granted the funds, my next game project might be an experimental horror game.

Note: While some of this info is semi-public, I ask you to consider it confidential, for now—thank you!

Not the best title or tag line, but this is just the very early version of the pitch.

If you want to see some demo footage and info, you can check out this video that's part of the funding application: Watch here!

This isn't actually a "new" project, by the way! Back in 2020 this was one of three projects I kicked off. (The other two projects were: One unannounced walking-sim-kinda game, and a game about giant furries smashing a city—wonder what that's all about.)

I picked this project to apply for funding, because I felt it had the best chances of getting picked up.

Does that mean I'll stop working on Pawperty Damage?

Because people have been wondering: If I get granted the funding and start working on "The Leak" as my next project, it doesn't mean I will drop all work on Pawperty Damage, immediately.

After all, for 99% of Pawperty Damage's development, I was working a full-time day job, too. So it has always been a side-job thing, really.

Regardless of any of that, work on the horror game wouldn't actually begin until September—and even that's assuming it will actually get funded... which is a big if.

I don't actually worry all that much about the new game not getting funded, honestly. If it doesn't, I can always put the extra spare time into creating a Pawperty Damage DLC, instead. No, wait—now everyone is rooting against me, aren't they?

Either way, just to mentally prepare folks a little: Eventually I will want to move on from Pawperty Damage! I understand people are really (really) excited to see updates to the game and see it grow into more than it is now... But I'm also pretty burnt out from it, and after ~3 years I'm starting to yearn for new projects, honestly!

I'm still committed to bringing at least a few more things to the game, because I want to leave it in a good state (such as allowing people to import custom characters), but please don't hope for the amount of content to double/triple still, heh.

New Skins for Big Mig!

I'm currently in the process of adding a few more character skins to the game; starting with Mig!

Can't promise it will be 2 new skins for every character, but let's see how things go.

These new skins will be included in a free update for owners of the Steam version of the game.

Owners of the "pay what you want" itch.io version will unlock the extra skins by paying at least $3 or more, for the game: So it's not a microtransaction, really, but rather a little "thank you" for actually paying for the game!

(And patrons will get the skins for the itch.io version here, free of charge, of course!)

Custom Skin Support

So, Big Mig's new skins are part of the Steam version, but for the itch.io they need to be unlocked, separately? "How is that supposed to work," you might wonder, and the answer is: Custom character skins!

Much like you can import custom billboards into the game, you will be able to import custom character skins. So for the new Big Mig skins, people will be able to download a ZIP file and put the contents somewhere in the game folders, to add them to the game!

And of course you can create your own custom skins, too; which you can do for both the itch.io and the Steam version!

"If Rache is so great, why is there no Rache 2—"

Authoring custom character skins is a bit more complicated than putting together a billboard texture, of course...

Once the update is out, I plan to upload a detailed guide as well as some assets (raw textures, PSD files, the character models, etc.) for Unity Capsule-tier patrons, to help with custom skin creation!

Implementing this feature was import for two reasons:

• Making it possible to offer my extra skins and create an incentive for itch.io users to pay for the game (I do have to pay bills, you know—gotta start 'selling out' somehow)
• But more importantly, this is a first step towards allowing custom character imports and further mod support! With this feature I'm already preparing some of the infrastructure to load more complex user-generated content, which will come in handy in the future

Thanks for your Support!

Again, sorry for the radio silence. Hopefully I will have things to show more regularly, again, from now on!