WE’RE BACK!

Happy 2022 everyone! It’s been awhile since we’ve posted a devlog here and what better time to do so than our one year anniversary of releasing Buddy Simulator 1984 to Steam! Below we will be going over many new things including: going 40% off for our Steam Spotlight Sale, new merchandise, some info on our next game project, and a bit of a "diet" post mortem of Buddy Sim and its development process. Buckle up, you’re in for a wild read!

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SALE AND CELEBRATION!

On February 18th, 2021 we released our first full game title, Buddy Simulator 1984, to Steam. We had no idea what we were doing and what to expect, but we are so damn happy you all took this giant leap of faith with us. Buddy Sim has far exceeded our expectations on Steam and has pushed us to start brand new projects with all of the hard lessons learned along the way. We will talk more about that later in this devlog!

Buddy Simulator 1984 is now 40% OFF for the next 3 days. You aren’t going to see this high of a discount for a while so grab it while you can! Those that already played it, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We ask that you please leave an honest review of what you thought of the game on Steam when you get the chance! If the game undoubtedly resonated with you, we would also love it if you could share that feeling with a friend by gifting them the game! Every review and every gift helps more than you could ever know.

NEW MERCH AND PLUSHIES!?

By popular demand and countless “Bean plushie when” requests, we are excited to announce brand new merch and the official Bean Plushie! Unfortunately at the moment, the plushie will not be available to order until we finalize a few more details with our partner. In the meantime, check out our official store page on Ownaj where you can find new posters, stickers, shirts, and hoodies! https://www.ownaj.com/collections/buddy-simulator

We have partnered with the wonderful merch site Ownaj to create some of the most high quality and exclusive Buddy Sim merchandise we can get our hands on. There is a limited supply of each product with the sticker pack being limited to only 50! Grab them before they’re gone! While they might not be gone forever like our original batch of merch on Etsy, if you would like to see more Buddy Sim products on Ownaj, please support us and their store by clicking the link and representing Buddy Simulator by sporting a pocket friendo tee or a hoodie with all of your favorite characters!



COMMUNITY TRANSLATIONS

Translating Buddy Sim into other languages has always been a dream for us, but we could never find the time with new projects starting and other big things happening behind the scenes. Many have asked to help be a part of this process, and some have already started. One of our mods, noCruse, would like to start helping make the process a bit easier.

We want to state right off the bat that this is not our biggest priority at the moment. This will be quite a long term project with a lot of tedious effort put into it, but if you would like to be a part of it and help get Buddy Sim into your native language, please DM or ping @noCruselisch#1707 in the general chat so we can start gauging some interest before we get things more organized and moderated.

OUR NEXT GAME

A lot of people have been asking what’s next for Not a Sailor Studios. I think it’s time to reveal a few things to start easing expectations while still teasing our next project for loyal fans.

To address the elephant in the room: there are currently no plans to develop more content for Buddy Simulator 1984. We are extremely satisfied with how Buddy Sim ended and turned out that we feel it doesn’t need any more conclusion or predecessor. While we have our attention on other big things at the moment, additional Buddy Sim content in the future is never off the table.

With all that being said, we would like to confirm that things are going well for the prototype for our next game, REDACTED. You all will be happy to know that we are carrying on the horror game experience and bringing a unique game experience to you all. We will reveal more in due time! Stay tuned and enjoy this next section all about the post mortem of Buddy Simulator 1984!

BUDDY SIMULATOR 1984 "DIET" POST MORTEM

Working on Buddy Simulator 1984 has been such an incredible journey. For those of you that have stuck around this far, thanks a million. Without further ado, here is our project's "diet" post-mortem.

Not a Sailor Studios started alongside the release of our first game, A Game About Literally Doing Your Taxes. The game was made during a 48 hour day Game Jam, and to our surprise, the game did really well, amassing tens of thousands of downloads on itch.io, and even getting a small cult following with the help of large Youtubers such as Markiplier and Jacksepticeye. With this new following and a few generous donations by our followers to get the company off of the ground, we decided to tackle our next project, Buddy Simulator 1984. The goal of this project was to complete a fully fleshed out game and sell it on Steam with just the four of us.

The project originally started before AGALYT. Brandon Hesslau (concept creator, programmer, and sound designer/musician), Vince Weiss (artist/graphic designer), and Jake Breit (text adventure writer) had worked on a good chunk of the “demo” portion of our game, mainly focusing on the early relationship you build with your buddy. The project was eventually shelved, and didn’t pick up steam again until Josh Eckhart (Producer/Community manager), and DeMarco Scarnegie (artist/animator) were brought onto the team to what we now know as Not a Sailor Studios. While Jake Breit didn’t stick around as a member of the team, we still kept a majority of his work, with his permission, in the project since he knocked the text adventure section out of the park.
While developing the game in its early stages, one of the things we had talked about was that there weren't a whole lot of games that developed as you played it. To achieve this, we wanted the narrative and visual style of the game to get progressively more complicated as the relationship with you and your buddy grew until eventually collapsing. While this was the core idea for the entirety of the project’s development, we took on a rather improvised style of writing. DeMarco for example, would design characters before they were even written into the story, and Josh would mold them into the game's universe. Another example of this was how the “endings” for the game weren’t concrete until they were being developed and coded by Brandon–ideas often being thrown around as sections were in development. This was both beneficial to how the story’s chaotic and unpredictable nature unfolded, and detrimental to the team’s sense of scope as we had no clear direction for what to work on and how long it would take. Regardless of this approach, it proved to be more of a positive than a negative given the game's outcome, but it’s definitely something we plan on discussing further and getting under control with our next project.

Because this game was developed during Covid, we often found ourselves spending a lot of time in our bedrooms while working on this game. To stay in touch, we often had to hop in calls together to get work done, pushing one another to work on the project with no real concrete work schedules. Working in one space for so long could sometimes feel cramped. On top of working on the project, Vince and Brandon also had to worry about finishing up their Senior year of college, often needing to balance their work and school lives
As the project was nearing its completion, and after a couple delays, our team had begun to face our next greatest challenge: release. Not only was the pressure of releasing a product into the wild completely terrifying for all of us, but we were also encountering numerous bugs that playtesters had come across that made us clench our teeth, as we were just days before release. We’ll never forget how much our hearts raced upon seeing early livestreamers run into softlocks or various other strange bugs. We often had to hop in Twitch chats to explain that we were devs and that we were looking into the issues various streamers ran into right away! Thankfully, things got progressively more calming for us as the big bugs were squashed over the weeks after release. Still, nothing will ever change how anxiety-inducing the weeks leading up to release were for us.

One of the more noteworthy moments from our bugs was caught live on Twitch. We were watching German streamer Gronkh, in front of thousands of viewers getting softlocked. Amidst the chaos and chat exploding, I eventually made my presence known and give him a hotkey for getting unstuck. It ended up being very humbling as he and his community were very patient with everything, but it’s still a moment we will never ever forget.
Overall, the release of the game has been truly magical. Reviews seem to tread the line between Very Positive and Overwhelmingly Positive, and we couldn’t be more grateful. Looking back, and taking careful note of the constructive feedback given, it’s clear to see what people liked about our product, and what we could focus on bettering in the coming years with our next project. We love our community, and we couldn’t be more grateful for the amazing comments, fanart, and engagement with our game. As a couple guys out of college, this was probably the best way to kickstart our careers and hopefully deliver something in the future we’re even prouder of.

CONCLUSION

Time and time again we keep coming back to thank all of you. You’re all such loyal, supportive, loving, caring, and absolutely wonderful fans. We could not be where we are now, doing all sorts of new and adventurous things, if it weren’t for everyone here to follow us on this epic indie dev journey. Thank you. From the bottom of our hearts.

It would mean the world to us if you could keep spreading the word about Buddy Sim and it’s one year sale, as well as the awesome new merchandise we have out now! Keep on being the incredible community you have always been from the very start. We hope you join us on this new journey as we tackle new challenges, reach new heights, and grow our Not a Sailor Studios family together and stronger than ever before. <3

With Love,
Brandon, Vince, DeMarco, Josh