I’m pleased to announce that the next 3 Halves Games title, Sincerely, Stampy, is now available to wishlist on Steam!
It has been quite some time since our last update in March, so let’s discuss what has happened since!
Game Developers Conference
March was a busy month for both myself (marimo) and the art lead (gelatobear) in more ways than one. If you didn’t know, the two of us are regulars at various art shows and anime conventions, so sometimes that work takes priority over game development. In addition to this, another big event happened: Game Developers Conference, also known as GDC.
I brought an earlier build of the game with me to GDC for public playtesting. It’s funny looking back at the above image from mid-March, as a lot has changed! The Hallway Room shown in the game is far more decorated, and the game’s logo has been revamped to something a lot cleaner.
I recorded a lot of feedback from all the types of players who tried the game at GDC. Some of them were OG 3HG fans, too! I was surprised (and humbled) when people asked me about Eons Lost: Arrival. It took me about a week after GDC to address the large amount of early feedback I got on the game.
The Pre-Steam Rush
In addition to multiple local art shows, April was focused on getting the Steam store page up for wishlisting. Wishlists are the most important pre-release metric, so we wanted to ensure our visuals were as close to complete as possible!
As a fun comparison, scroll up briefly to see what this room looked like at GDC! Our primary focus for art was to address elements that would show up in screenshots on the Steam store. This, however, was not the only art need. We needed to prepare GIFs, UI art, promotional art, and more. Most of the pressure of this month was on the art pipeline, but the end result? Well, we think it looks great.
One Month of Wishlists
We released the Steam page on May 1 to a small amount of buzz! If you wanted, you could boost the announcement post I made on Bluesky. Wishlists help a ton!
One fun piece of promotion I whipped together for the game was to go through and document, via photos, an old stamp stockbook that I inherited. This photo thread was also posted in May and can be viewed on my Bluesky.
Beyond that, the month was busy with even more events! I gave a panel at Fanime about video game localization, both in my personal and professional career. I also got to promote Sincerely, Stampy more!
Finally, atop of all the above, I participated in two separate mahjong tournaments. The above photo is me sitting with four Japanese professional players: Sonoda Ken, Mizuhara Akina, Hinata Aiko, and Shibukawa Namba. What a busy few months it has been!
The Next Steps
With all that behind us, and with the Switch 2 release imminently ahead of us, this leaves us with the question: what are the next steps for the game’s development?
My primary goal is clear: deliver a build to internal playtesters by the end of the month. This build will cover the first 4 of 13 in-game days, including divergent plot events that happen after the 4th day, but before the 5th day.
In order to achieve this goal, the following work remains:
- Implement one more remaining quest in the game
- Expand the game to store up to 99 save files
- Create unique art for every single Stampy variant, from all angles
- Create talksprite art for every character in the game
- Implement the four planned human NPC mini-games
As you can see, there is a good mix of what’s left: programming, art, game design, and more. June still looks like it will be a busy month, but we have confidence that we will hit our development goal.
Thank you so much for taking a break from playing Deltarune to read our latest update. We look forward to sharing even more in the future!
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