Post-PAX West update! + Mini Dev Log
almost 4 years ago – Sun, Sep 18, 2022 at 04:48:15 PM

PAX WEST + DEMO!

(4-5 minute read)

Below the Stone just recently got back from PAX West last week, and I want to share not only the experience of Apogee, Seattle, and development on Below the Stone, but I also wanted to share the PAX Demo with all our Beta Testers! We met many of you who supported us last year, and I was happy to get the chance to thank many of you again for stopping by and supporting the project!

Without hesitating further, let me show you what Below the Stone's experience at PAX West was like this year.

 1 YEAR AGO IN SEATTLE: 

It had been almost exactly a year since I last stepped foot on the west coast to show Below the Stone with Apogee. A lot has changed since then, and I wanted to show what the original booth layout and what team Apogee looked like 1 year ago!

Many people reading this got their first looks at Below the Stone at this show, and many more helped support our Kickstarter. I was very excited to see all the same people who supported us nearly a year ago in person again. Many of these people are still with us on the official Discord, even after the big discord security breach that happened at the time.

We've grown a huge amount since then, a lot has changed, and the game has only gotten more polished since all that time ago. Instead of a private demo only at PAX, we can finally release public demos for you guys to try out at home!

WHAT US AND APOGEE ARE NOW: The contrast is surreal!

There were many awesome folks to meet up with this year -- ones we had met at PAX East and West last time, as well as new faces to welcome to the Apogee family. I had an incredible time with everyone involved, and have so much more to show!

Building the booth:

The Apogee booth started as a pallet of unopened boxes, a 20x50 black carpet, and several couches and chairs ready to be placed. I personally arrived as the boxes were first being opened, This is where I met Below the Stone's Apogee Producer, Haydn (Who has been a massive help with testing the game!), as well as Mitchell, Bryan, and Chris (Who would later help me in running the Below the Stone area of the Apogee booth!)

Later on, we had more Apogee devs and producers arrive and help us out. After many hours of building, hanging banners, hooking up laptops, monitors, keyboards, and uploading demos, the booth was finally ready for the event. We spent a good chunk of the day hanging out and catching up after it was all set up.

Chris helped me a lot during these days at the booth, and by the end he became somewhat of a Below the Stone expert! I had several suggestions from him, and fans that came by that I wrote down, and spoke about the week after PAX on how we could implement these ideas. Every time we go to one of these shows, I end up filling a notepad on my phone of all the comments and suggestions we get, because we know they're all important to make sure the game is perfect!

Right next to Below the Stone was Turbo Overkill, our friend Sam's project, as well as the Pokemon booth. Many people came to see both Turbo and BTS, as well as the games on the other side of us (Elements, Dead Fury, Bread and Fred). 

We met many old and new fans of the game. I particularly remember this young group as folks who visited us nearly a year ago at the original Apogee booth. It was awesome to see them visit us again a full year later!

New fans also came, from all walks of life. We had so many people enjoy the demo this time around, and those who played it before loved all the new changes that we featured. Moments like this make us realize we have something special that we're working on, and in the words of Samwise, "it's worth fighting for!"

At parts of the day the booth was absolutely swarmed with people -- the middle of the weekend in particular. By far this was one of the greatest booths Apogee designed so far. Loved every moment of being a part of this show.

Kyle, the announcer in the video above, is one of the big new additions of Apogee, helped in giveaways, and posting about Below the Stone during the entire trip. We'll be working with him on much more in the future! Kyle also helped us all find a special guest for this PAX...

Horn Guy blessed the Apogee booth with his presence, standing in front of the Below the Stone banner. By the end of PAX West, everyone knew his name. Some called him a menace, some a blessing -- to us he was something in-between, a walking contradiction between angel and devil. It was quite a poetic moment for us all to witness.

Dinner with Apogee:

Each night after the event we would go out to eat as one big Apogee family, it always amazing me to be a part of this big group of friends, and to experience all of this because of a game about pixelated mining dwarves.

We spent time together talking about plans for our games, as well as our flights in. We needed a big meal to prepare for the next few days of the event! A lot of great game ideas come from a table and company like this!

Closing thoughts on PAX West:

I often ponder what would be if we had not done this Kickstarter a year ago. -- or if we had given up sometime before that. I truly think it was due to our original supporters that gave us the hope and push we needed to continue working on what we had, which lead to being contacted by Apogee. All of the stories you read above are partially due to all of you reading this -- each of you share a similar appreciation from myself, and my entire team for making this a reality, and we thank you for that.

MINI DEV LOG:

We intend on adding a new artist to Below the Stone, as well as a new Programmer! Both of these people were very carefully selected from, and we have some cool news to give about both of these people.

The artist (whom we plan on revealing soon) had worked on several new enemies already, one which we will show below:

We also are in talks with a potential programmer which will bring a massive surprise to the game as time goes on. Half of you are asking for the feature he may work on in the future, so be ready to have your beards knocked off!

CLOSING & Demo:

I wanted to give another big thank you to all the fans who supported us last year! Kickstarter has changed Below the Stone and its community forever, and we wont forget those who were kind enough to support us at the show, and online!

We will be sending our PAX West exclusive demo out for Saturday as a weekend surprise for all our Beta Testers! Keep an eye on your inboxes, and feel free to share your suggestions and ideas on Discord or on here!

Please visit our Discord for more Below the Stone news between these updates!!!

- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone

Kickstarter Devlog 7: Early Access plans, Explosions, PAX West, & Onward!
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 22, 2022 at 07:48:09 PM

A mighty 'ROCK AND STONE' to all our Depth Dwellers!⛏️

Story below: (2-4 minute read)

We've been quite busy, as many of you might be able to tell, and I wanted to write an update before our travel into Seattle/PAX West in a little over a week. Below the Stone has been keeping us working on many different things over the last month, and we wanted to write an update on all the happenings as we lead up to PAX West, and the entire team is excited to show what we've been working on!

New Content💎⛏️

Lets start this update with an explosion:

Dynamite is just one of the new weapons/tools we will be continuing to add to the Below the Stone arsenal. We plan on having this be craftable by combining Sulfur, Bat guano, and coal. This deadly concoction will creation a super charged mining and enemy detonating tool -- but be careful of the blast radius!

New weapons and tools are going to continue to be added to Below the Stone, including dynamite like you see in the above video, and new weapons like the crossbow and gun which are seen below. Many varieties of these weapons will be craftable and found in the underground of Below the Stone. With ranged combat comes more deadly enemies however!

🍄Biomes-o-plenty🍄

We also have several new environments and creatures to show. One being that of the new derpy shroom that resides in the fungal forest biome. He has no official name yet, but we'd love to hear your suggestions!

So far this is one of my favorite biomes! I am a huge fan of the blue + pink contrast, and I am a huge fan of funky mushrooms in video games. We will soon have Karam composing an incredibly funky new track for this biome!

We also have a new revised Clay biome which will be seen soon as well! We hope to have this done for the new Kickstarter demo we will send out, as well as people who will be there at PAX West this year! Tell us what kind of enemy you think you'd see here!

We are currently testing different enemy assets to see what would look best for this biome, My current top pick is the Mole enemy -- Any game that takes place underground needs a mole! The mole will stealthily move underground to throw boulders and rocks at unsuspecting dwarves who wonder too far.

Animation work is already underway and many of you on the discord will see more of this!

💎Below the Stone at SEATTLE PAX West 2022!⛏️

Below the Stone will be coming back to the surface at Pax West Seattle this September 2nd - 5th!

I will personally be there as the Director for the project again this year. We will not only be there with our great publisher, Apogee who has been kind enough to invite us out for our third big show! -- who will be situated by the main skybridge, but we will be directly facing the Pokémon Company too! So we expect a lot of new folks to find out about Below the Stone this year!⛏️

With this in mind, I had decided to create special giveaway for each day of the event -- For each of the first 3 days of PAX West, I will be giving out a special Below the Stone card, as well as an even more rare Cave Worm card for people who sit down and take the time to play the demo!💎

PAX has always been an amazing event to attend over and over again, and I am incredibly excited to see many of you there this year, including some of you who had supported us there 1 year ago on this very Kickstarter! Since it has been more than a year, I want to lay down a clear path for what we have in mind for our Early Access release:

Early Access Roadmap:

Many fans have been asking, and the entire Strollart Studios team will be putting together a rough timeline for what we expect Early Access to release in. Video games (Indie games in particular) are an incredibly difficult medium to predict timelines for release, as many issues and bugs can pop up randomly and eat away at weeks of time that could be used for implementation of features. As of now, we have spoken about March/April of next year for Below the Stone's Early Access release -- In time for PAX East of 2023.

We have been digging away at this game for a long time, all the way back in late 2019/2020 when all we had was a tech demo and a big dream of being able to say we had a successful Kickstarter. We will continue to work on this game past release, and we hope to make a big impact on the roguelike genre!

Closing⛏️

I make sure to write it in every single devlog I post here -- Thank you for all the support you have given us, and your continued interested in our dream project! Much of our development is due to you supporting us that we continue working on Below the Stone!

I will be posting an update after PAX West with pictures and details of what it was like, and I will be sending out a Demo of Below the Stone within a week of the event's conclusion for everyone at home! For more news please keep up with us on our Discord and Twitter!

Thank you and I hope to see you many of you in Seattle very soon! 

- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone

Kickstarter Devlog 6: TMG, New features, & Preparing for PAX, ~ Oh my!
almost 4 years ago – Sun, Jul 17, 2022 at 03:22:15 PM

TooManyGames, Pax West, and a new demo???

Another month, and another big dev update to get to you guys. We have a lot of fun things that happened between the previous update and now, and we'd like to share some of it in this update!

(6 minute read below)

After attending the amazing OTK Expo, and later the TooManyGames Expo,  we had many new Below the Stone fans join our community, as well as met many new awesome game devs who are on a similar journey as us! We got recognized by so many of the folks who were there at TooManyGames expo, since we got into the OTK expo. (I have to give a HUGE thank Tips Out from OTK, the WePlay staff, as well as the entire OTK team for giving us the opportunity!) We ended up winning Third Place(!!!) at OTK, which came with a lot of recognition for Below the Stone! We came SO CLOSE to winning the prize money at 2nd place, which we hope is a good review of the game by everyone watching the event!

After being part of the OTK expo, we ended up winning Second Place at TMG, which came with a prize pool! Many people came over to congratulate us, and the entire time I was thinking of all the fans that helped get us here. It isn't an easy thing being a game developer, its a lot of stress, deadlines, and seemingly never ending work, but when I think of all the fans who love what we do, it makes it all worth it!

We met up with The Newton Mystery developers earlier in the show and talked about the OTK Expo, and learned that we both won awards at TMG! Placing directly next to one another was an awesome experience, and they totally deserve it for their amazing game! 

We also learned they were running a Kickstarter alongside the event. You can support their Kickstarter here at this link! I already pitched in, and hope you guys do too!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thenewtonmystery/the-newton-mystery

New Features!

Of course we haven't stopped working on the game either, and a lot of new things have come!

We recently added character customization after TMG, and wanted to get your guys opinions on if there are any beard types or hair styles you'd like to see in the game! Please feel free to write any suggestions in the comments, or on our Discord server.

We also added new enemy attacks to the game. More variety of attacks from the enemies we already have add a lot to the diversity of combat. Here are some examples:

We also added a new descent event, where when you are calling to escape the caves, you will need to battle one last wave of enemies. Here is some video:

Beyond what you see here, we are also planning on adding our first boss to the game, as well as floor liquids (such as water, lava, acid pools, and more) And more enemy variety and general polish. 

We will also be filling out the Bestiary of the game, giving additional lore and side quests to complete as you descend into the mines of Below the Stone!

Preparing for PAX West in Seattle, Wa!

We're also announcing our intent on going to PAX West in Seattle this year! Last time was an awesome event, and this time we hope to bring an even more awesome demo. Apogee says their booth will be next to the Pokémon booth this year! We are VASTLY looking forward to seeing many of you in-person there!

Feel free to stop by and chat, as I will be there all four days of the event!

Demo News!

We are also intending on releasing a demo for all our Kickstarter backers in the coming week or two. There have been a few delays, which we will announce the reasons to shortly in more detail. Right now we are focusing entirely on adding new features to test and try out this time around. Remember to check your emails from Backerkit!

Thank you so much for supporting us, and helping us go to events like TMG and OTK! I hope to write again very soon about PAX, and add more devlogs here!

Thank you all for your time, and enjoy your weekends! 

Remember to follow us on Discord and Twitter for more live updates!

- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone

Below the Stone to be featured at the TooManyGames Expo in PA! (24th-26th of June)
about 4 years ago – Sat, Jun 25, 2022 at 01:08:08 AM

Below the Stone will be open -- LIVE at TooManyGames!

For those who aren't up to date yet on the East Coast USA -- Below the Stone is going to be featured at TooManyGames this year!

If you're in the area, please visit the Indie Showcase section of TMG this year to see us with a LIVE DEMO of Below the Stone! I'm thinking we've got a good shot at winning one of the top 3 in the Showcase this year, which will include prize money and a support contact with Screenwave Media, the same guys who work with Angry Video Game Nerd, and brought you Eagle Island Twist, Angry Video Game Nerd I & II!

We are planning on releasing this exclusive demo to all our Beta Testers following the show this year. We want to make sure people who join us at TooManyGames get a first chance to play before we release it to all our Beta Tester fans at home! Keep an eye on your emails from Backerkit sometime next week! 

We can't wait to be at the show, and give you guys an inside look at what it was like to present here in Oaks, PA! TooManyGames isn't quite as big as events like PAX, but for us East Coasters, it is a large event featuring 15,000 visitors from previous years. 

We hope many of you guys come to see us there this year, and we will hopefully welcome hundreds of new fans to our community!

Again, thank you all for supporting us here on Kickstarter, it really is due to you that we are able to bring Below the Stone to events like this one. It reminds us that we're not just making our own dream game, we are working on a game that many others view as THEIR dream game to play too! 

Thank you to all of you!~

- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone

Update: OTK Games Expo x Below the Stone
about 4 years ago – Wed, Jun 08, 2022 at 05:12:13 AM

Huge update for Below the Stone tomorrow evening!

Thanks to many of you whom supported our game, we are going to be featured as a part of the OTK Games Expo, hosted by Asmongold! I'll be doing a live interview with Asmon around 11:30am/12:30pm PT for anyone who plans on watching and who wants to learn some behind the scenes of Below the Stone. Make sure to take part in chat, and join us in what will be an awesome moment in Below the Stone history.

Thank you all for your support, and I hope this update sees you all well! We will be posting a larger Dev-log update soon for everyone this month -- as well as give updates on TooManyGames, which we will be attending later this month as well in Philadelphia.

See you  all very soon!

- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone