Sizzling Summer Grill

Welcome to the six o'clock news, I’m your anchor Outrider and while this may not be a TV broadcast, boy do we have some big news to tell!

First things first, we want to thank everyone who supported us during our two previous big events: The Sammy Showcase, and E3 The Mix. These were a great way for us to get started on showing our work to the world and we are glad to say that so far the response has been positive and with many looking forward to what is coming next. I will spill more details bellow about those events but before I get to that I wanted to make a brief announcement on some of our plans for the future.

So without further adieu *drum roll please!*, ForzeBreak will be coming to Steam in the near future (perhaps sooner than you think). That’s right, based on reactions and anticipation we have decided to give our game a spot on Steam for players to be able to play for free. We’re still working out the details, fixing some bugs, and working on some other polishes but we definitely have some plans to release this baby out into the world. So everyone can rest assured that the sizzle they hear is not the barbeque going on the backyard but rather all the stuff that we’re cooking up for the summer. That being said, ForzeBreak and bacon do go well together!

This will be one of the first steps on building a community and showing the game to a wider audience. Not only that but we will also receive even more feedback as we periodically make some changes and updates to the game. We’re just as excited as some fans for when the moment finally happens. It will be something to look forward to, but for now here is our thoughts on the major milestones that we have reached so far.

As many of you know, the game is being developed as part of our masters program here at UC Santa Cruz GPMMS with the help of our external team members from SFU and CSU Northridge. The months of May and the beginning of June consisted of getting the game ready to be presentable for the school’s showcase, the Sammy Showcase, which is the culmination of all the games developed both from the Undergrad and Grad students for the year.

This was a great experience as it was the game’s first event to be accessible to a more general public. We went in full gear carefully designing our logo, banner, promotion, and even our swag. But as game developers, the best takeaway was to see our audience have a blast and keep coming back for more, especially our young guests asking their parents to let them play more. With these kind of reactions it truly brings a tear to my eye as one of the game’s goals was to recapture the essence of the days when one played with friends on the couch and kept going for hours even. The whole event was filled with people and we couldn’t wait to show everyone all the effort that we put into it. Needless to say we also had the chance to look at some great games, and I would like to give a shout out to the games of our classmates: Dash Quasar, Peace & Order, Major League Magic, Unstable Selection, and Journey Through Memories, since many of them gained a couple of awards!!!

So, overall it was a great opportunity that would help us prepare for the next major event that was going to happen just a few days after, E3 The Mix LA 2018. For those who followed our social media you got a glimpse at a really cool event in which Indie game developers show their projects to fellow devs and press. This is not an event open to the public so we want to thank our professors for giving us the opportunity to attend. We also want to give another shoutout to Major League Magic for helping us setup for the event, especially Sir Castalot for bringing in an audience.

It is not everyday that one has the opportunity to attend a rooftop party in LA dedicated to games. Little by little we tried to make the best out of it by looking and playing other games, making some new connections as we gained some more feedback, and a couple of suggestions of where we could take it in the future. We were glad to know that some of the ideas were already at least in our minds as some things we could implement.

One of the things that is always exciting to watch, especially for new players, is what vehicle they would choose and what sort of playstyle they will develop after playing a couple of rounds. During our first tournament back in May the game had a meta that even we the developers weren’t completely aware of, as well as an exploitable feature as many of you saw during our past update. The Stream Breaker turned out to be the OP vehicle that everyone would chose, after all who needs speed when one is driving an unmovable tank. Nevertheless the updates for balance that we did for both the Sammy Showcase and the Mix proved to be useful as now players usually try the other vehicles and some of them have used Mr. Hover( our light hovering car) to beat the StreamBreaker (the heaviest tank) with style. It is very satisfying to accomplish a feat like that (speaking as a developer who plays a lot) and we’re glad that new players can also achieve similar feats even when they just started playing.

June was a busy month with tons of excitement as we finished the major development for the game in preparation for such wonderful opportunities. These last few weeks have been our ‘Zen’ time as we take a couple of steps back to relax a bit, clear our minds, settle into our new projects, and make some plans including the game’s release for Steam. With all that in mind we have started to take some of the steps to begin that process and we hope that the date comes soon enough. Thank you and stay tuned!