First of all I want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy new year! It's been a little over half a year since the remake was released and it seems pretty much everyone has enjoyed it. Which I am very glad with. It's still not a perfect game (no game ever is) but I've done my best to smoothen things out and improve it here and there.

NOTE: This news post was originally posted on the Play With Gilbert - Remake community but I decided to release Rainbow Island for A Small Tail as well. It's my way of saying thanks to all the Gilbert community. Love you guys and thanks for the support!

• CatCam activation tweaked - You now have to hold down the CatCam activation button for about a second before it activates. This is to avoid activating it by accident.
  
• CatCam thruster speed increased - The thruster speed for the CatCam has been increased in order to travel large distances in less time.
  
• Gliders saved per level - Gliders are now saved if you found one in a level. I am working on ways to disable them. On Rainbow Island you can disable it by talking to a Cheep Cheep, will most likely move it over to other levels.

Rainbow Beach is very much an odd choice to release during this time of year but I've been working on it for quite some time now, bit by bit and I really wanted to give something to you guys for Christmas. Rainbow Beach is a new take on the old beach level from the original game.

Rainbow Beach introduces new vehicles (Boats, Catski's and a Submarine) as well as new gameplay mechanics. You'll be able to search for treasure chests which may contain catbells or fishies. Some chests are buried and you'll have to find for a big colorful X and dg them up.

And you'll now be able to combine your glider with a big rocket. This combination enables Gilbert & friends to fly through the air. It's quite a lot of fun and I have put rockets in Down Town as well.

Rainbow Beach also adds in the Cheep Cheeps. These cute little birds can be found running around. Some can talk to you and help you out or give information. Cheep Cheeps will get a more prominent role in the future (working on a DLC with them front and center).

I also added two new hats and one new sunglass. I still have a few more ideas for this level but I ran out of time and had to make sure what I had was up to snuff for release.

If you enjoyed A Small Tail then check out the full game. It has more levels and there's new content on the way for 2022! Your support also enables me to keep working on the Gilbert games!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/740040/Play_With_Gilbert__Remake/

For those who might be interested, I've created another game called STARDROP. This was a huge endeavor and pretty much a passion project. If you're interested in story-driven Sci-Fi games with no pew pew I highly suggest to check it out. It's currently on sale too!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/552880/STARDROP/

I've talked about this game before but wanted to highlight it again! I improved on some aspects of the player's movement and some other small improvements which you can check out in the public beta.

DOWNLOAD WHISKERED AWAY (ALPHA VERSION)[joure.itch.io]

If you want to further support development of Play With Gilbert or any other of my new and upcoming games you can check out my Patreon page.

IMPORTANT: I want to make it very clear that I am not selling my games on Pateron directly. Patreon has been set up for the sole purpose of supporting me as a developer. If you want to support me and are in the position to do so, feel free to take a look and see what's what.

MY PATREON[www.patreon.com]

I hope you guys will like the new update. Lot of work and effort gone into this one and I had fund making it. It's nice to run around Rainbow Island and chill out. I'll make sure that next year I'll have a more appropriately themed update planned for the game.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Joure

[discord.gg]

Halloween's being celebrated in Play With Gilbert right now. You'll be able to hear spooky tunes, collect pumpkins instead of fishies and the kitties in the game are wearing their costumes.

New content for the game is in the works and a new Gilbert game is being worked on which is very different from the ones I've done so far (more info below).

For many people, myself included, the last 2 years have been incredibly taxing to say the least and in an effort to keep doing what I love I've set up a Patreon page to hopefully pull in support for current and future projects that are in development. I'll share more info about that at the end of the news update if you're curious and I think it's pretty interesting.

The Halloween event started on October 24th and with the new update will end on November 4th. I extended the timeslot a bit so that players can enjoy the event just a bit longer. Some of you might have noticed there's an overlap between PWG and Spookity Hollow and that's because the two games share the same base. This also means that your customized kitty can be brought over from Spookity Hollow and vice versa.

From here on out the default kitties that the game starts with are Gilbert and Skye. Skye is now based after my daughters customized kitten and is going to be Gilbert's little friend. The two of them actually are going to have their own adventure in their own new game! Of course you can still customize Skye and make your own kitty in PWG but it's a small but important tweak.

I also fixed a few things in the game that were broken during the engine upgrade (Fairy lights weren't working properly) so there's that.

For those of you who have missed it, Spookity Hollow has been released which is a standalone game based on the PWG remake project. It's a full on Halloween themed experience and one which I hope to expand upon a little bit to set it further apart and create a richer experience.

You can check it out here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739150/Spookity_Hollow/

Now this is a project I've been wanting to talk about for a while now but couldn't due to it being in a very early stage. Whiskered Away is a different take on the Gilbert series as you can see it's a 2D platform game with adventure elements to it.

The game has a simple but fun little story attached to it and a simple yet effective dialogue system. This system that I created for the game allows me to create narratives and bring characters to life. On top of that I also developed a simple quest system, which is fully dynamic and will be used in both a linear and non linear way. This means some quests are mandatory while others are optional.

Lastly I also added abilities, which will be unlocked when you find certain characters that will teach them to you. This means that you may have to wander off the beaten path in order to unlock a new ability, which is the an aspect of the adventure portion.

Don't worry, the game isn't complex and the platforming isn't going to be incredibly tedious. As with anything Gilbert related I want people to have fun so I try to keep the game a little bit sand-box-y.

But hey, you can give the game a go right now. As I'm trying to expand the Gilbert community and also build a new one around the new game I've decided to release the early alpha out into the wild for free! This means that you can get involved directly with the game's development either by offering feedback, suggestions and more!

DOWNLOAD WHISKERED AWAY (ALPHA VERSION)[joure.itch.io]

It's been rough, really rough the last two years and this year especially and I know I'm not alone in this by far. But I don't want to talk about that aspect too much but I've decided to ask for support. If you are in a position and thinking to yourself, yeah I'd love to see more games from this developer in the future I would like to ask that you consider, to check out my Patreon page.

I've set up a few tiers and I believe the rewards for them are pretty neat. I've thought a lot about how I would go about this and it's fairly straight forward. I won't bother you too much about it here and just leave a link to a post I made that describes the tier system in general and what you can expect.

Even if you don't want or cannot support me on Patreon, Joining the (New) Discord server will enable you to offer support in the form of feedback and suggestions and being kept in the loop of what I'm working on, because I have a lot more planned than just Gilbert games.

IMPORTANT: Now I want to make it very clear that I am not selling my games on Pateron directly. This is purely for people who want to support me and my games as I do NOT want to compete with selling my games on Patreon. You will get rewarded on Patreon with the end product, but it's important to note that it's not a direct buy. I also want to make it very clear that you should be able to be in a position to even consider it.

MY PATREON[www.patreon.com]

And that's it for now. I should have something fun coming up before the end of the year for PWG. I'd like to thank everyone for being so awesome. And I'll catch you on the next update!

Take care
Joure

[discord.gg]

- Fixed some nav issues.
- Changed pluche toys on Gilberts Neighbourhood and Timmy & Tommy's house from static to physics objects players can pick up and carry around.

I got some interesting Gilbert news for this update, so let's get right to it!

Originally posted on the Play With Gilbert Remake Store Page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/740040/Play_With_Gilbert__Remake/

Play With Gilbert has been upgraded from Unreal Engine 4.25 to 4.26. Luckily it wasn't as much of a headache than I feared it would be. Alongside upgrading the engine version I've also attempted a number of smaller fixes and changes to the game. Nothing you should notice while playing.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
This engine upgrade requires a fresh new savegame. Don't worry, the game will handle it by its own and you can decline but the game may become unstable. This should remain a rare occasion since I am not planning any big upgrades in the future.

I am happy to announce that Fish-Run has finally returned to Play With Gilbert Remake proper! Fish-Run remains largely un-changed from the original game, except that it can now be played in single-player, where the goal is to beat the high-score. Another big change is that the game mode no longer requires it's own dedicated level. You will find Fish-Run within certain levels and just walk up to the Cheep-Cheep and ask to play.

Currently Fish-Run can be played in Gilbert's Neighbourhood, The Park and Down Town. Each level offers a slightly different variant of the game. Ranging from two or Three runners that drop fishies, time limit and the terrain being played in. I plant to experiment a bit more with Fish-Run in the future and see what other kinds of terrain I can play with, I'm currently thinking of trying it out in the water. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

When I created the original I would run circles around my daughter but the tables have turned. While recording the footage for the promo video My daughter beat me 4 out of 4. I'm so proud of her and it's really cool to see how much she progressed her skills from when she started 4 years ago haha. I hope you'll enjoy the new iteration Fish-Run as I have, I'm keen to implement other mini-games as well at some point!

I won't dwell on the Cheep-Cheeps too much here as they will be properly introduced at a later time when the focus is put on them fully but while they are technically introduced into the game through Fish-Run with this update, I have bigger plans for them in the long run. They're cute, funny looking "birds" that whom will serve a larger role in the game going forward.

Their main purpose lies in being able to talk to the player. They'll be the ones offering narratives in future updates sometime in the future. They will also play a significant role in Spookity Hollow, a new stand alone game in the Gilbert Franchise which you can read all about below!

Spookity Hollow is a stand-alone companion-piece to Gilbert, see it as an expansion adding some new mechanics and a big, Halloween themed map. It has a spooky castle, a graveyard, lots of pumpkins and a lot of Cheep-Cheeps. As mentioned above, Cheep-Cheeps add a little narrative to the game and while it's certainly not meant to drive any sort of larger narrative, they do provide with small little expositions and other fun little quirky topics to help with a small bit of world-building. Watch the short trailer below. (Which has some WIP footage, since I'm still doing some art-passes, etc.)

You'll also be able to fly a magic broom, read books with some cute stories my daughter wrote (which I edited for punctuation and very light corrections). There are magic potions and some other gameplay features that I'm still working on.

It's also important to note that Spookity Hollow is compatible with Play With Gilbert. One of the ideas behind the remake of Gilbert was to keep it compatible with offshoots like Spookity Hollow. This means that Customized kitties (and unicorns) are brought over from one game to the other but this also works the other way. You can customize your kitty in Spookity Hollow and bring it back to Play With Gilbert. This also means that certain features that are introduced in Spookity Hollow (such as the talking Cheep-Cheeps) will be brought over and introduced in PWG.

If you're interested in the game you can wish-list it now, The more people wish-list the game the better it will do on launch (and visibility on Steam in general) The game will launch with a discount as well, or just wait until the Halloween sale this year! So any help from the awesome community is always highly appreciated!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1739150/Spookity_Hollow/

I hope you enjoyed the update and will have fun playing Fish-Run and I can't wait to share what's to come as soon as possible! Thank you all for the continued support and stay Meowsome everyone!
Joure

[discord.gg]

Cat's out of the bag! It's tail time! Meowzers, the game's released!

Enough with the silly puns already! Play With Gilbert - A Small Tail is now released! Whether you're a parent, child an older person or anything in between, I really hope you'll enjoy the game. I've spent a ton of effort making the PWG remake and A Small Tail as fun as I can. But now that the game's out, it doesn't mean that's the (tail) end of it!

In fact, staying true to the traditions of (indie) game development, I've been tweaking and adding last minute changes and additions to the base game. Cats can now sleep. You're own kitty as well as the ones in the levels have the ability to sleep. Idle kitties have a random chance when the level starts to sleep. During the day this happens a lot less often but cats will be cats and they love to cozy it up. At night most of them will probably be snoring away. I added this feature yesterday and have been tweaking it today because of course, bugs happened.

Today, however, I added the ability so that kitties are more agile. They are now able to jump up on certain places where they couldn't before. This is a hand placing process and since the features newly implemented it's not featured in every level just yet. This will change within the coming days.

I've also gave cat NPC's the ability to teleport if they get stuck in certain areas. Especially when following the player(s).

If you spot a bug or catch a glitch, please let me know in the forums. I want the game to be as solid as possible and will do what I can to get rid of them. Me and my daughter have been testing the game a lot and I believe the game is pretty steady as it is. Last few play sessions haven't resulted in any major bugs and the one we caught have been fixed.

(actual bug-testing footage)

If you find anything, a screenshot or video with a descriptive report would help a whole lot.
Report Problems Here

As you may know, A Small Tail is a free version of the full game "Play With Gilbert". I hope that with releasing this sampler version people are able to better assess if the full game is for them. I'm very much pro-consumer and I believe that these small samplers (demos, they're just demos) offer the ability for interested individuals to play a game before committing and spending any cash.

For A Small Tail however it's different. the original "Play With Gilbert was released in 2017. It was a personal project I started for my own daughter who was 4 at the time. She's crazy about cats like myself(I grew up with three of them) and after a while my wife suggested to turn that project into a game that could be released and so I did.

It was a fun little game at the time and I added new stuff to it. New levels, game modes all sorts of things to the point things started to just now work anymore. It was clear to me that the game wasn't up to snuff. I could've easily decided to create a successor but that didn't felt right. So, I decided to remake the game from the ground up to replace the original, which is out due on May 12th

https://store.steampowered.com/app/740040/Play_With_Gilbert__Remake/
So here I am, presenting to you the free version of "Play With Gilbert -Remake. I have tried to make A Small Tail content-rich so that it can stand on its own four paws. (I'm not sorry) The game features two levels from the original game which have been re-created from the ground up and have been expanded upon in many ways. Their bigger and have a lot more things to do in them. So, I truly hope you'll have fun with this one and let me know what you think about it.

If you like A Small Tail, you'll love Play With Gilbert!

Take care, and game on!
Joure

I'm super stoked to announce that Play With Gilbert - Remake is going to come out on May 12th, 2021! A lot of hard work has gone into this remake. A lot of new features have been added. Old mechanics have been given an update. More options to customize your kitty, more hats and other wearables. All the kitties can now take a nap, including the one you play as. Vehicles have been added, there's even a glider in some of the levels.

Pretty much every level has been expanded upon, recreated from the ground up with greater focus on exploration and role-playing. At its heart it's still the same game but I wanted to expand on how much players can interact with the world and other NPC's.

Very much like the original, this remake was created with my daughter in mind. She was 4 years old when the original game released and she just turned 8. And once again she was there from the start to help me test, give me ideas and be an inspiration. I believe that the remake will be so much more fun for kids to play. So, to celebrate the coming release I created a simple trailer to showcase a bunch of the new features.

You can find the game over here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/740040/Play_With_Gilbert__Remake/

In an effort to help guide parents and players in getting the most out of the game I have created an extensive Play Guide. This guide will be updated periodically when I add new things or find errors. You can check it out here:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2352598832

I will do a proper announcement when the full game is released! Play With Gilbert - Remake is not just a remake, it's also a long-term investment. There are still features and other mechanics from the original missing, such as Fish Run and parental control options. In the future I also hope to be able to add small DLC packs that extend gameplay and bring in a host of new mechanics, levels and simply even more fun.

For me the Journey is not over, it's about to begin again!
Thank you for reading and for all the support I've received over the years.
I really hope you and/or your kids are gonna love it!

Joure