Happy New Year everybody! Gosh, so much has happened since I last wrote here. Please excuse our absence, I’ll try to make it up for you! So, first thing first. Our team is constantly evolving AND growing! Our two main collaborators, Blos International and University of Portland State, make it possible for us to expand on our play-as-you-sleep ideas without feeling too large a pressure to push a commercial product on the market.

I know I know, this might sound disappointing to our eager fans, but I mean, let’s be frank here: None of us would feel satisfied with releasing an unfinished game, and even if we were to release Tumbleweed to the public, it is extremely hard to come across a sleep-cell with enough processor clock-speed and voltage consistency to be able to play the game safely.

Having that said, our “procedural guessing” subroutines have been heavily expanded since last time I wrote about them! We are now calling it “brain-wave extrapolation”. One current difficulty is that in order to extrapolate thoughts and emotions into a REM sleeping state, we need to properly seed the procedural algorithms first. Therefore, we are tinkering with different input forms that feed our procedural engine. Do we let the player fill out a survey in a waking state? Do we induce hypnosis before doing so? Do we let the player answer through instinctive reactions in a sleeping state? (such as knee-jerks, the saliva test, or even tooth-clenching)?

All options are on the table! Currently exploring!

Our first year anniversary of our Nevada office! We celebrated with truck-loads of Red Rocket Wursts, on the house!

Even Tuck was invited!

And guess what, we have yet another business partner! Seems our synaptic triggering code and its synchronization with brain-wave patterns has had an influence on sleep-scientists! Prof. Dubois of University of Portland State told us he spent the whole weekend playing Tumbleweed at the Blos International US offices – and we were just a telephone call away!

In the meantime, we have expanded the emotional packs and subroutines to include “procedural guessing”. This basically means that we use brain-wave patterns to extrapolate future emotions of the player. Some of us are thinking whether to keep that pack as a separate DLC to the main game once released, or as in-game loot boxes, but we’re not sure how the gaming community might react with loot-boxes in fully priced games. Any thoughts? Ideas are welcome!

Ok so we’re back from Australia. Shaken but not stirred 🙂
The show went great, several of our staff spent hours answering journalist’s questions and that must be a good sign, right? We’re not having our alpha release just yet, but we have working maps and procedural landscapes, ready to be filled with whatever our story writers come up with! This is such a fun project, because nothing is actually scripted. Our story writers are merely trying to understand what sort of quests different emotions are likely to trigger while sleeping. This is hard-core psychology at play here, thank god we have the brain-wizards over at Blos International to help us out!

Heyaa! Ok so let get this show on the road! Several people have been asking us about our activities and recent updates, but we’ve been so busy with moving into our new offices that this blog is sadly only starting today. But hey, better late than never eh? We are right now working our socks of for the alpha release of Tumbleweed.

Yesterday we received an invitation to hold a talk in the Concepts to Come conference over at PAX Australia. So in three weeks time, we not only need to have a working version of the game, but also to buy air tickets, pack our bags, and then learn how to walk upside down! Ok bad joke. None of us have been to Australia before. Anyway, our sleep-cells are all properly installed, so we really mean it when we say: The Dream Is The Limit!