- Wayward Strand - One Year Anniversary! - 15 September 2023
Hi everyone! It’s incredible to think that it’s already been a year since we put Wayward Strand out into the world. We’ve been so chuffed with the response that you all have had to this experience we created together, and thought it’d be lovely to reminisce about what’s happened during Wayward Strand’s first year, as well as giving an update on where we, the people who made it, are at! First things first, to celebrate Wayward Strand’s release anniversary, we’re doing a pretty big sale - our first 40% discount. If Wayward Strand sounds interesting to you, or you've had your eye on it for a while, but weren't entirely sure about it, now is a great time to get your copy and give it a try! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080450/Wayward_Strand/ One year ago... The team on launch day! September 15, 2022 Our launch party a couple of weeks later. After seven long years, we finally released…
- Spring Sale Discount, GDC Talks, Nominations and more! - 17 March 2023
Greetings, fellow Wayward Strand enthusiasts! We're here to share some exciting news and updates with you about the game and our studio, ghost pattern. We've had a lot going on lately, from GDC talks to award nominations, and we're thrilled to share all the details with you. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080450/Wayward_Strand/ The first big news is that Wayward Strand is currently on sale as part of the Steam Spring Sale, at a discount of 20%. This is a great opportunity to pick up the game at a reduced price and experience the beautiful, interactive storytelling that we've poured our hearts into. Also, if you played Wayward Strand and loved it (thank you!!), leaving us a review, even a short one, is a massive help for us with our first, self-published game! We'd love to create more innovative and truly original experiences like Wayward Strand, and having lots of positive reviews…
- Spring Down Under for the Steam Fall Festival - 22 November 2022
Hello! It's Goldie! I hope you’re cosy and wrapped up in various blankets, hoodies, oodies, onesies or jumpers right now, because it’s time for the Steam Autumn Festival! My very witty title would have worked better if they’d called it the Steam Fall Festival, but I appreciate the language too. Autumn just has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Autumn. Makes me think of all of the best parts. From the chilly, crisp air, to the warm ciders, grey skies…Beautiful golden leaves, darkening evenings. Late season honey, pumpkin soup, apple pie…and of course, videogames on sale uwu. We’re dipping our toes into the world of sales - we’re offering a 10% discount on Wayward Strand this week - not bad! Maybe it’s time to pick it up, or maybe now is a good time to tell a friend or family member about us? Ok I’ll fess up, it’s actually spring in Melbourne! We’re climbing out of winter (allegedly), b…
- Patch v1.0.4 live on Steam! - 28 October 2022
Hi all! We've been chipping away at a bunch more fixes that players have been finding post-launch, and have bundled them into Patch 1.0.4; this includes a few issues that have been found by some diligent achievement hunters on our Discord - thanks to community members unbrokenodds and andre. in particular for the help! Speaking of the Discord, if you wanted to chat with us and other players about the game (or about your favourite '70s kitsch), you can join our Discord with this link: https://discord.gg/KDAMU3N What we discovered when fixing the achievements is that some weren't accessible due to whole scenes not occurring; with over 1000 scenes in the game, we knew that there'd be some that wouldn't play for whatever reason, but it's exciting to say that there are now several additional scenes and sections of scenes that can be found. We don't want to spoil too much, particularly becaus…
- Patch v1.0.3 now available on Steam - 21 September 2022
Hey everyone - first, thanks so much for all the kind words about Wayward Strand so far! It's wonderful to hear you all connecting with it and discovering so much within the game. We have prepared our first post-launch patch, and it's now live on Steam! This is mainly just a few key fixes for issues that players have found in the live version, along with a small quality-of-life feature. Oh, a quick note that while the patch is called 1.0.3, it's the first post-launch patch - we did a couple of additional patches pre-launch. Chapter Select We've added a feature which allows you to choose which Chapter to load into - this will load the game up into the most recent save file for that chapter. This allows you to eg. start your most recent playthrough again from Day 2, or to play Day 3 several times over. This will be handy for folks that are trying to unlock particular achievements, or who…
- Wayward Strand is Out Now! - 19 September 2022
Wayward Strand is now available on Steam - the ship is in flight! You can get it right now, and for the next few days, at the introductory price of 10% off. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080450/Wayward_Strand/ We've been floored by the early reviews that have been coming out about the game - here are a few quotes: "Masterful writing and voice-acting make Wayward Strand a great work of interactive fiction." - LadiesGamers - Two Thumbs Up "The complexity of the simultaneous narratives that unfold around you in real time creates a beautiful experience that should be played by all gamers." - EXP Share+ - 8.5 "A rich, heartfelt story that will leave you re-entering reality with a renewed sense of curiosity." - Gameshub - ★★★★★ "For anyone at all looking for a heartfelt, honest and beautiful narrative experience" - Press Play Gaming Thank you all so much for being on this journey with u…
- Wayward Strand: Best Narrative at the Australian Game Design Awards nomination! - 12 September 2022
Hi everyone! IT IS LAUNCH WEEK First up, check out this short and sweet video which shows some emotional content from the team Second up, It's AGDAs time, baby! We are incredibly honoured to have been nominated in a few categories - as well as given an honourable mention for another. We are nominated for Best Narrative, along with friends You Will (Not) Remain and Wylde Flowers We are also nominated for Best Serious Game, along with friends again (how lucky are we?) Kinder World and RAW: Emotions Unite Us Finally, we have been awarded an honourable mention in the Accessibility category, thanks so much to our fantastic accessibility consultant, Cameron Hopkinson for their work on Wayward Strand there. After many years of developing, plus a few stuck inside, we are very ready to let our hair down and have a boogie at the AGDAs this October. Congratulations to all of the other nominees - i…
- Cast Announcement for Wayward Strand - 15 August 2022
G'day! As per usual, let's get right down to the meat and potatoes of this post: our cast! Here's the announcement in video form We want to start off with a huge shout-out to our four studios - Original Score in Melbourne, ZigZag Post in Sydney, Innenhof in Vienna and Voiceover Soho in London. Making people on three continents sound like they’re in one room is *hard*, but our audio director Maize Wallin and their team have had some of the best quality sound to work with, thanks to the hard work of everyone around the world who collaborated with us! Without further ado... It’s finally, FINALLY time to announce our fantastic cast! We don’t wanna wait one second longer, let’s just do it. First cab off the rank: this one's no secret. Reprising her role from our 2019 demo, we have the inimitable Anne Charleston in the role of Ida Vaughan! Although many of you have recognised her from her ico…
- Wayward Strand - Launch Delay Announcement - 7 July 2022
Hi everyone! There’s been some news, which is a bit of a relief for us. I’ll cut to the chase: we’re delaying the release of Wayward Strand. We will now release on September 15! It was a difficult decision to make, because this project has gone on a long time already - some of you will have been waiting for it since we were in the showcase at PAX Melbourne in 2019, some will have been waiting since we showed it at Freeplay Parallels in 201...7? Really? And on our end, we've been so keen for it to be out in the world! So, why the delay? In truth, very few games like Wayward Strand exist. When you set the timelines for making a new game, you might think about other similar games you’ve heard about or worked on. You might try to compare in your mind how long similar things have taken in the past. So, when we set out to make Wayward Strand, we had a think about similar games... Games with 2…
- LAST CHANCE to play the ‘old’ demo! @ Steam NEXT - 13 June 2022
Hello, It’s Goldie here! Just a short post today, to let you all know that we’re part of Steam NEXT this week. Thank you for having us, Steam! During Steam NEXT, our lovely demo will be live - This will be the last time that this demo is available. Bon voyage little demo! You have been a stable friend~ The strangest part about playing this demo, for us, is just how far we’ve come since making it. I’ve prepared a few screenshots showing some of the visual differences between then and now - it’s pretty incredible! We’ve been working so hard :’) The team did talk about trying to make a new demo in time for Steam NEXT, but I’ll be upfront: we are just so focused on getting the game ready for release (and, in time for the steps which have to happen in the lead up to release - and there are a lot of steps!) that we couldn’t find any spare time to put tools down to switch our focus. Ultimately…
- Wayward Strand announces a July 21st, 2022 release date! - 11 May 2022
You’re here! Welcome! It’s thrilling for our little team to see so many of you coming to visit our Steam page. We’ve just announced our launch date, and we can’t wait to finally be able to share the game with you. I’m Georgia, one of the lead writers for Wayward Strand. First things first: The game will launch here on Steam, on Thursday 21st July, 2022! For any newcomers, Wayward Strand is a heartfelt narrative game developed in Melbourne, Australia. It’s set here in Australia, in the 70s. You play as Casey, a curious and compassionate 14-year-old who’s spending a few days helping her Mum at the local hospital - which just happens to be on a floating airship above a small regional town. For me, this game is all about care. Casey’s task is deceptively simple - sit with the patients in the elderly ward, and take care of them. Like other adventure games, there is the occasional mystery to…
- Wayward Strand featured in the Big Adventure Event! Live-stream, demo, and more - 13 January 2022
Hi everyone! We're chuffed to announce that we're being featured, along with a bunch of other really exciting games, in the upcoming Steam Big Adventure Event, organised by Hitcents! As part of the event, we'll be doing a live-stream to our Steam page and to Twitch - we'll hopefully be doing something a bit different, being interviewed by a lovely person (yet to be announced), as well as playing through the demo live, and discussing it! We feel like this is a great way to introduce the game to all the wonderful BAE folks who might be hearing about Wayward Strand for the first time. If you're visiting us from the Big Adventure Event, hello, and welcome to the hospital! We'd love you to add Wayward Strand to your Steam Wishlist if it looks like an experience you might be into. The live-stream will be happening on Sunday 23rd @ 7pm PDT / Monday 24th @ 2pm AEDT - you can add a reminder for…
- Melbourne International Games Week - NEW DEMO! - 30 September 2021
First of all: We have a new demo, available to play right now! Wayward Strand is a part of the Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW) showcase, which is starting now - Sep 30th, 10am PDT / Oct 1st, 3am AEST. We'd love to invite you to check out our demo, which is available from the start of the event. Here's a handy widget thingie that you can use to go to our page to download it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080450/Wayward_Strand/ It's been quite a while since we updated our demo (our last one was built in October 2019!) so there's a lot of new features in there to have a look at. I've written more about the new demo features further down this post, but I'll tell you about MIGW first. Melbourne International Games Week Affectionately known as MIGW (Mig-Wuh), Melbourne International Games Week is an annual celebration of all things Australian games. During MIGW there are loads…
- Directing Virtual Characters in Wayward Strand, Part 1 - 29 July 2021
After my last post, on how we’ve integrated ink and Timeline, there was some interest in how we use Unity’s Timeline tool to do things like trigger animations on characters. Over the course of making Wayward Strand, we've developed a solution for this that we're pretty happy with. Put simply, we use Timeline to set parameters on our characters' Animator Controllers - but we've developed quite a bit of scaffolding around this, as well as a useful categorisation structure for our animations. There's quite a bit that goes into all this, so I'll cover it over a couple of posts - this first one will focus on the Animator Controllers, and I'll start by going into the reasoning behind why we went for this approach. https://waywardstrand.com/blog/directing_virtual_characters_p1/1_Casey_Looks_At_Photograph.gif Our problem space for animations in Wayward Strand is borne out of our game’s unique,…
- Using ink and Unity's Timeline to make Wayward Strand - 7 June 2021
Hi there - I’m Jason, a member of the team making Wayward Strand. Now that we’re getting closer to finishing and releasing Wayward Strand, we thought we’d start sharing a bit more of our development process as it happens. As we’ve been developing Wayward Strand for a few years now, this post is a mix of what we’re focusing on right now, and catching you up to where our team is at with our tech and development process. So, one of the challenges we had to overcome when deciding to make a fully-3D real-time narrative game with complex, animated characters as an indie team was: how? This is something that’s been a conundrum for indie developers of narrative games for a while now, with some opting to forgo visualising characters all-together. For instance Fullbright, the creators of Gone Home and Tacoma, are only just including fully visualised characters in their upcoming Open Roads, and in…
- Live-stream: Accessibility in Indie Games - 14 May 2021
May 20th is the 10th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day! To celebrate, we're announcing that the wonderful Cameron Hopkinson (they/them) is providing accessibility consultation and advice for Wayward Strand, and that we will be hosting a live-stream where Cameron and Maize Wallin (they/them) discuss accessibility in Wayward Strand, and in indie games generally. The stream will begin at May 20th 10:00 pm PT / May 21st 3:00 pm AEST Having a focus on accessibility during game design and development is incredibly important - it reduces barriers to your experience for so many players. For the other game makers out there, here are a few links to some really useful resources: http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com - this is an list of accessibility feature and improvements for games, grouped by ease-of-implementation! It's an incredibly useful resource - thanks so much to all the access…
- LudoNarraCon is Back - Come and Play our Demo! April 23-26 - 18 April 2021
Hi, it’s Goldie, from Ghost Pattern! #LudoNarraCon is nearly here for another year, and we are very pleased to announce that we’re once again going to be taking part. It’s happening April 23rd-26th! We’ll have a bunch of different streams during the festival which I will outline below, and of course… OUR DEMO WILL BE LIVE!!! You can get it between April 23rd and 26th! Last year, we had such a great time learning about all of the other games involved, and watching their amazing videos, and this year should be no different - there are some extremely cool games in the mix this year and I am sure you’re just as excited as we are to jump into their demos and see all of the juicy, juicy content the teams will be making. Narrative games are really coming so far now - from games like Gone Home and Dear Esther through to the things we’re seeing at this year’s LudoNarraCon. Games like: She Dreams…
- Researching Wayward Strand #LudoNarraCon Stream - 16 April 2021
Our research channel on Slack dates all the way back to 2016 and is chock-a-block with interesting tidbits and influences on the game. Join the Ghost Pattern team as they do some real-time project archeology! Light spoiler warning, even we don’t know what we’re going to find in there. If you’re fascinated by the little things which make a big impact, this stream is for you.
- Music & Narrative Stream #LudoNarraCon - 16 April 2021
Maize will noodle about in their home recording studio, making new music for Wayward Strand. This stream will uncover Maize’s process of composing works on the guitar, through to the next steps towards a finished track. They’ll also be chatting about all things music and narrative!
- Narrative and Set Design: Painting Props with Goldie. #LudoNarraCon - 16 April 2021
Set design and dressing is a key part of the narrative experience. Join art director Goldie as she updates and creates new textures for some of the lovely props in Wayward Strand, and talks about the various influences on our gentle, ‘ligne claire’ art style.
