Heya, everybody!

• Reworked intro!
  
• New (voiced) characters!
  
• New quests!
  
• New attributes and perks!
  
• Character creation! (and premade archetypes, too)
  
• UI update!
  
• Performance and stability improvements!

The full game is still in development and is far from complete, but I hope that this will give you an idea of what I've been working on and adding to the whole experience. I'm hoping that this updated version will give people a better idea of what the actual game will be like, so please keep up the feedback, bug reports, and thoughts in the community page and in reviews!

(This is the build that was shown at PAX West 2023, with a ton of added content on top of that. I'm very tired, and I'm going to sleep for two weeks now.)

Heya folks!


Been a while since my last update - things have been pretty hectic lately!

The big thing coming up (for me, at least) is PAX West in Seattle, WA! I'll be there showing off a new and improved demo for Clam 2, so if you're going, come say hi and try it out! The booth number is 3026, so hope to see you there.


The second big thing is that once PAX is over, I'll be updating Open Mic with all the new features and polish that Headliner's been receiving! This means:

1. Three new stats!
   Assertion, Deadpan, and Luck have all been added to the game. The reasoning for this is twofold - firstly, four stats was great conceptually and helped me reduce scope for the prototype and initial release, but it's very limiting in both character building as well as leveling up. After a couple of in-game days and level-ups, most players will have above average stats in pretty much all four. The second reason is to vary in-game checks and dice rolls a little bit more - doing three consecutive checks in Detection is a lot less interesting than doing Detection, Deadpan, and Luck. More reactivity, more choices to be made.
   
2. Big UI update!
   I'm honestly astounded that the old UI made it into the demo now that I get to compare it to the new - it's way cleaner, nicer, and better in every way. Huge layer of polish.
   
3. Character creation rehauled!
   In the original demo, you picked your stats through a simple dialogue - this time there's both premade character selection and a much deeper character creation screen, including perks that give you bonuses and penalties to certain stats!
   
4. Entirely reworked intro!
   Probably the biggest point of feedback I got from the demo was that it felt too rigid and railroaded. Not anymore - now you'll be able to explore Snacky Bay Prime Mayonnaise and even do a couple quests, if you get the right or wrong roll results.
   
5. New voice acting!
   Along with the reworked intro comes a whole swath of freshly voiced characters. The voice actors did an amazing job and I'm excited to see reactions. Still not voicing the entirety of dialogues - only the introductions will be voiced!

Keep an eye out for the update sometime after PAX - there's still a few changes I'll need to make to Open Mic, but in general it's ready for release!

Have a good one,
//marafrass

Hey again folks,

I'll try to post these updates a little more frequently - both to share development progress outside of twitter and also to keep track of development publicly! Sometimes it'll be smaller things, sometimes bigger, and I'm hoping to get some general feedback and comments from anyone looking forward to the game!

1. Production Planning
This past month or so has been a decent amount of planning for the full game. I'm currently aiming for six in-game days, meaning that the final game will be approximately six times as big as Open Mic. That should end up being about 10-12 hours per playthrough, which I think is pretty perfect for a game like this. The idea is still that you should be able to replay it and see new things every time (provided you make different choices and try a different character build) but I also feel like going over 15 hours or so might cause the game to overstay its welcome.

2. Tons of Art
Besides planning, I've been doing tons of new art for the game - all the art for Day Two is now completed, and some of Day Three is already done as well. Every scene in the game is hand-painted (on a tablet, granted) and every frame of animation is drawn and painted separately, so it does take a little bit of time but I feel like I've made pretty swift progress, which feels great.

3. Reworking the Intro
One of the most common points of criticism was that the intro was too slow, or felt railroaded. I didn't initially think it was, but enough people mentioned it for me to reconsider. As a result, the opening scenes are getting reworked to be a lot more interactive. In the final game, you'll get up from your desk and walk around almost instantly after you're done with...

4. CHARACTER CREATION
...which is also something I've been reworking completely! Not only is there now an actual dedicated screen for character building, but I've gone ahead and added three new stats along with a choice of eight perks, which makes your build a little bit more unique. This does mean that a lot of pre-existing dialogue will have to be re-written or heavily edited to make use of all these new features, but I feel like it's worth it at the end of the day to keep the entire game a lot more fresh.

Don't worry about the UI for now - this is all WIP and will be polished for the final game!

That's all for now - next report will probably be ready in a month or so! Next, I'll be finishing the intro rework (should be another week or so) and revamping all the dialogue currently in Open Mic. After that, I'll move on to dialogue for Day Two, which might end up being even more than Day One. (which I think say at around 100,000 words, which is far too many)

Have a good one,
Martin

Heya folks!

I already posted a brief update in the Steam forums, but I forgot to post here as well. This won't be a long post, but hopefully good news for anyone excited about Headliner!

The game now has funding and is back in full development!

Oh cool, who's funding it?
Clam Man 2: Headliner got picked up by Fig Portfolio Shares, which is a initiative that raised a couple million dollars in order to invest in indie titles. Unlike typical publishers, the FPS doesn't oversee development and instead provides funds for development for a share after release - that means the project still very much is in my hands, and the creative process begins and ends with me. That said, however, they have been suggesting I look into porting the game to other platforms, which I'm more and more interested in.

Wait, I thought the game was already in development?
Unfortunately, no - I initially sought out publishers to help me go solo with Clam 2 and pay the bills during development, but although I had a few interested parties, publishing a solo dev is generally considered a risky undertaking. For the last two years since the release of Open Mic, I joined another indie studio as director and writer for a prequel to their debut game, so with the massive amount of work that came with that there hasn't been much time to work on Clam 2. As of now, however, I've officially wrapped production on that project and I'm back to Clam 2!

That's all good and well but when is it actually coming out?
I'm not sure yet - to give you an idea, the funding I have is roughly for two years of development, but I'm hoping to have the game out sooner than that. More news on that later!

That's great! Congrats!
Thanks, me!

So what are you going to work on next?
One of the main criticisms Open Mic got, both in reviews and time played, was that the intro was too text-heavy and felt railroaded. I'm reworking the intro, and along with that, I'm having a look at some of the internal systems of the game. The stats and dice rolling work in a way that I'm happy with, but there's a lot of features I've wanted to add that don't necessarily work with its current implementation. If it takes a month or so to rework those systems and the final product has far more depth and variety, I'd consider that effort well worth it.


That's all for now - huge thanks to everyone still excited for Headliner. I'm happy to be back on track, and I've got tons of plans for the full game. This thing is a passion project, and since I'm developing this one alone, there's no one to stop me from making it as weird and unique as I want it to be.

Much love,
Martin

As you've already seen from the title, I decided to overhaul the skill check system in the game. Truth be told, it wasn't very exciting - just a click and then a result. Beyond that, a few players have mentioned that the percentage system was a little obtuse; a skill of 70 needs to roll over 30, and so on.

Tabletop RPGs have always been a huge inspiration for Clam Man 2, so what better way to improve the skillchecks in the game than adding the classic d20!


Skillchecks are now decided by a d20 (a twenty-sided die) plus your modifiers, and rolling that against a target value! For example, rolling over 7 is easy, while rolling over 16 is a whole other ordeal!

Since a few people have asked about stat progression, I thought I'd give you some detail:
Every "morning" of the game (after a night of heavy, sweaty standup) you'll be able to allocate more points into your stats! For every 5 points, you'll get an additional +1 to all dice rolls with that stat! The scale starts at 50 - for every 5 points above or below, a +1 modifier is either added or removed!

Oh, and another thing; you can now CRIT your rolls!

Rolling a 1 [(A critical failure) will immediately fail the check/b], no matter your modifier, while a 20 (A critical success) will automatically succeed, no matter what! A ton of new lines have been added to the game as a result of this!

Other than the d20 overhaul I've also fixed a number of bugs and conditionals that people reported! Thanks to everyone who keeps reporting the bugs, you're a huge help! <3

One last thing - the update is massive and unfortunately not compatible with previous saves. You'll be able to play it from where you left off, but all your modifiers will unfortunately be set to 0. I recommend finishing any run you're currently doing and then updating, or just restarting! Sorry about this - this should be the last major update to Open Mic so this is the last time it'll happen!

Personally, I think this is a way better and way more fun system. Dice rolls are more exciting and the numbers simple to understand. I hope you all feel the same way! Let me know how you feel, either in comments here or in the community hub!

Much Love,
Martin

WE'RE LIVE!

Thanks to everyone who helped during the development of this, and thanks for all the early testers on itch.io!

Hope you enjoy the game! If you do, feel free to wishlist the full, upcoming project HERE:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1278380/Clam_Man_2_Headliner/

You can also check out the LAUNCH TRAILER HERE:
Have a great weekend folks!