Curious about the origins of the name PuffballsUnited? It comes from some comics I drew all the way back in the stone age (me in highschool). Tomorrow I'm gonna be doing a stream showing them off. This will be the first time I've ever shared these online, and prolly the first time anyone but me has seen them in like 15 years.
It's... finally here! The Henry Stickmin Collection is done, and out for all to play! I've spent over 3 years working on this and it's such a good feeling to finally get it out. I hope you enjoy it! I'm going to take a long break now.
The Henry Stickmin Collection is launching on Steam on August 7th!
That’s less than two weeks away! The launch price is 15USD. I know price is pretty anti-hype, but I wanna give you all the information up front.
Now to answer the question I’ve been holding off on for so long. What are bios?
Here’s a bio:
To unlock a bio you need to right click a character when you see them in game.
Almost every character has a bio, even this guy:
There are some characters that wont register as bios though, because they’re too small, you can’t see their face, or they aren’t on the screen long enough. I tried to keep it consistent but there’s definitely a bit of leeway in both directions.
You can browse through the bios and see which characters you’re still missing. I’d recommend doing it after playing through the game though.
Each game’s bios are considered separate so you’ll need to get the recurring characters in each game. Each game also has its own unique cardback!
The stars in the upper left represent the difficulty of finding or achieving the character’s bio. The people released from their cells in FtC are difficult to get because there are a lot of them and they disappear quickly.
A new character????
I dunno why I added this feature, but I hope people like it!
Ok, I guess I should give you guys an update. I wanted to have all the animation done before I did another update but we’re getting closer to summer. I’ve made an image to help show just how much work is left. Things are getting closer, but there’s still a lot to be done.
The animation is the bulk of the work and that’s getting really close to being complete!
The credits themselves are mostly set up; they just need the final screens.
Music might be a big undertaking. I’ve been working with a few musicians to help write music for CtM but there’s still quite a few songs left, and I’ll be writing a lot of music as well. Some songs in the previous games will also be replaced since I’m unable to reach the original composers.
Bios. What are they? Maybe I’ll share in the next update. Either way, it’s something that I’ll do once CtM is done. The remasters are mostly set up for it.
Achievements haven’t really been hooked up yet. I think only Breaking the Bank has them set up right now. They also haven’t been planned out that much for CtM. This will probably be one of the last things done.
English subtitles are planned to come at launch, with translations planned to come after the game is out. The subs for the previous games are all typed out, but we need to implement a good subtitle system. This one will hopefully not be too much of a time sink.
I really don’t know how much time these things will take until I start doing them. I’ve been focusing hard on just getting all the animation done first. I mentioned it on Twitter but I’ll say it again here, the game will not come out in June. I will give another update once the animation is done on a better estimate for when it will release. It’s still planned for summer!
2020 is here! 2020 is when I've said Completing the Mission will release in. It's finally approaching :O . To clarify, cuz I see a lot of people get confused, Completing the Mission is part of the Henry Stickmin Collection. The Henry Stickmin Collection contains all the previous games, with updated backgrounds and remastered audio. It's planned to release on Steam. A mobile port miiight come, but it would probably be a long time after the Steam release.
Now let's get into some CtM info! I'll start off with some images I've already revealed.
Here's the main setting, a secret Toppat Base. That's right, the Toppat clan is coming back!
I streamed work on CtM once in 2019. You may have caught it. If not here's a screenshot from the area I was working on. You can find my twitch here btw. Is that Ellie? She's coming back too??
Now for some new stuff! I asked people on twitter what they wanted to see revealed and quite a few people wanted to see something from the intro to the game. To that I say.... Which intro?
A lot of people were asking for the total fail count. I'd love to share it, but I don't even know it myself. It's currently over 100 that's all I can say! I'm 2/3s done with the game. Then there's a lot of miscellaneous stuff to do, like adding in the achievements and writing music.
Now for the biggest things people want to hear about.
Release date!! I'm aiming for June 2020. There is a high chance I will miss it but that's what I'm aiming for. I'll know more as it gets closer.
Price! It's hard to say without the game being done yet. Currently I'm aiming for a price between $15-20. I want to find a price that feels worth it for players, but also not selling myself short. You also kinda have to price the game to account for Steam Sales.
Well that's it! Hopefully things go smoothly this year and the game comes out on time. I'm really excited to see what everyone thinks! There's a lot of fun stuff in there already ;)
Recently Stealing the Diamond and Fleeing the Complex were removed from the Android marketplace. Google wanted me to update the games to fix something they didn't like. Unfortunately I can't update the Henry apps anymore. Here's the story:
PROBLEM: I can't update the current games because they were made with an old version of flash. The new version does not accept the certificate file (file used to prove the game is legit and the game it says it is).
"That sucks" I thought. "Guess I wont touch them anymore"
I get emails from Google telling me that I need to support 64-bit by a certain time. I just push it off cuz I know I can't update.
All this time I'm getting Emails from people saying Escaping the Prison doesn't work at all for people. Sorry... Can't fix it :\
Fast-forward to a month ago, Stealing the Diamond and Fleeing the Complex get taken down from the play store. They said I had misleading links in the games (I was linking out to the other Henry games in the Android marketplace).
Now I start to seriously think about options. There's no way to update the games so I decide to upload them under Innersloth (the company i co-founded to make Among Us).
PROBLEM: Adobe Animate does not create apps in 64-bit. I have to buy a license for AIR from a different company. I sigh heavily and grumpily.... Apparently Adobe sold AIR to another company and they don't deal with it anymore. I deliberate for a while and end up trying to use this new version of AIR.
PROBLEM: The ad coding that I use (I bought a package that someone had made for flash/AIR) isn't supported for 64-bit. Welp.
I COULD fix all this. I could probably E-mail the ad guy and see if he plans to update to 64-bit. I COULD pay a yearly license to allow my games to continue on the marketplace. I COULD re-upload the games under Innersloth and lose all the number of downloads I've built up over the years. It's... becoming not worth it.
This comes at an odd time too where I'm working on the Henry Stickmin Collection. It would feel weird to upload the old games again when the remasters are so close on the horizon. I also don't want to spend a lot of time fixing these old games, when I want to be finishing a big new one. Any time spent on this delays the Henry Collection.
THE PLAN: I'm not going to re-upload the old games to the app store. I'm going to focus on finishing the Henry Stickmin Collection. Once that is done and released I will look into the process of getting that game onto the app store instead. I'll be making a news post about the Henry Stickmin Collection around the new year so stay tuned for that!
You may have noticed I didn't even mention apple. Apple sucks for developers IMO. They make you jump through so many hoops and in terms of Downloads, my apps weren't even close what I had on Android. I don't even have a mac anymore so it's EVEN HARDER for me to update things. Not worth.
tl;dr: Apps broke. Can't fix. Wait for the Henry Collection.
Here's a recap for those who don't know. The Henry Stickmin Collection contains:
-Breaking the Bank, completely redone (No new choices)
-Escaping the Prison, Stealing the Diamond, Infiltrating the Airship, and Fleeing the Complex with remastered backgrounds and audio.
-Completing the Mission, a new game, and the final game in the series! (It's planned to be about 3x bigger than FtC)
The release date is not set in stone, but aiming for summer 2020! :o (As long as I can stay on track!) The price will be selected once the release is closer.
So, I missed it by a few days cuz I was out of town but the 9-year anniversary of Escaping the Prison happened recently! To celebrate I’m posting a bunch of things from the remaster of the game. I did this with Breaking the Bank’s anniversary as well!
For those that don’t know, I’m working on a Henry Stickmin finale called Completing the Mission. It will be released on steam in the Henry Stickmin collection, which also features remastered versions of all the games.
I’ll start off with some images!
You might’ve seen this one in a previous newspost but here it is again! I’ve improved on picking colors. Also shading heads.
This is one of the most improved rooms. Everything just looks nicer, and not a grey concrete cube.
The door moved! Also you can see how the colors do so much! Better looking police hats too ;)
Here’s another one that just has too much to even talk about. Notice how the new widescreen format lets you see a lot more of the sides!
Now for some more intense reveals!
Here’s a comparison of the Opacitator scene! Notice how the sound has been improved. Every room has slight background noise. Also notice that I have not updated any of the animations! That would take way too long.
Finally, here’s the big sneak peek!
Lots of things with this! I had to rerecord the cops’ first lines because the original had some annoying background fuzz, but I still tried to make them sound exactly the same. I also wrote my own score for the intro music. Some other songs will be different as well, for one reason or another. Also, I’ve improved the look of the buttons. Oh, I forgot to record it I guess, but all the buttons in Escaping the Prison now have animated rollovers like the newer games. That will be a reveal only in words!
When I made this game I never expected it to turn into a series. I was inspired by a comment my friend left on Breaking the Bank "Better luck getting out of prison then". People liked the games, so I kept making more! It's been a long journey and I'm hoping I do the series justice with Completing the Mission! It'll release someday >:)