Dev Blog #08 - The mines are alive with the sound of SAMA

Alpha Testing

It’s been a busy time with our Alpha testers these last few weeks. Lots of feedback and ideas coming in. We’ve just come out with a new update for the Alpha version. This version is including lots of bug fixes and changes from the testers.

One of the larger items in the recent Alpha release is the sound. We hand picked and replaced all sound effects and added many more, and ended up with over 120 new sound effects added, along with 8 tracks for the background music. We decided to pick most sounds from Pond5, as they had the largest and best database of sounds we found.

In Lelantos and Aura we have introduced a new mechanic. ‘Portals’ are devices that transfer the Alien instantly to another location on the planet. On Lelantos the Alien needs to use them to find different areas that can’t reached by mining. On Aura, they are used for portaling into the Puzzle rooms. Once a portal is found, it will be displayed on the mini-map, and each will have a unique number so you can keep track of where they go.

We’ve been playing through the full game now, to try to find how long the game plays for. For us, it takes about 10+ hours to complete, but looking at the Alpha testing data, people are playing it for between 10 -> 20 hours. So it’s looking like it’s easily going to play for 10+ hours.

We are still looking for testers to help us, so if you fancy helping out, follow this link to see what to do: Alpha Signup

Steam

Our Steam / Wish List is doing well, and we are starting to get a nice following on there. We changed our release text to specify ‘Autumn 2019’ as we are now more confident we can achieve this time. The Steam Summer Sale is starting soon, so we are hoping that will bring some extra traffic and adds.

Not seen our Steam page yet? It’s got all the info about SAMA including screenshots and our feature trailer video. Click the link below and check it out. Even give us an add to your Wish List if SAMA looks like it’s for you!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1047870/Something_Ate_My_Alien/

Social Media

Back in May we did our first interview. @IndieRanger asked us if we wanted to do an interview, and we thought that would be a good idea to get out some info about us and the game. It was a bit nerve wracking, since this was our first interview, but it all went well and they did a nice write up about us. If you haven’t yet, go have a read about us.

Click here for the Rob & Kat Interview

We also got our first YouTube streamer, Fred! He is an Alpha tester and has done a few videos about the game and his views on it. With his comical commentary during the game play, it’s a nice start to our You Tube presence. You can find him here: Fred Impossible

Next things

The next phase of Alpha will be introducing some more ideas from the testers. These include modifications to the ‘Somethings’, new upgrades and some changes to the Aura world. Keep tuned to see them soon.
We will continue to interact with our Alpha testers and get as much feed back from them as we can.

Bonus: We also did a quick little ‘fun’ video of some behind-the-scenes development, and how the game looks in the Unity editor with a ‘3D’ look: