Garenburg Penitence Announcement / Garenburg Woods Planned Content Update

Hello!

It's been a bit, so I'll cut to the chase. This has been a long while into development, but I feel that now is a good time to announce this news.

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Garenburg Penitence: The Riflebird

The second game in the Garenburg series is in development! Please see here for the official website, here for the trailer, and here for the Steam page.

The gameplay is firing spheres and matching colors. This game is heavily influenced and inspired by a few titles, including Luxor, Sparkle, Tumblebugs and other marble popper games from the 2000s, Irisu Syndrome, and Serial Experiments Lain (for the PlayStation 1). I realize those are weird inspirations, but they are there for a reason.

For those who have played a marble popper game, I want to make it clear that the gameplay of Garenburg Penitence is both very similar with many different mechanics for a fresh and unique experience.

• The player cannot control their movement, but instead movement speed. They will always move on a small loop and have to change their speed accordingly to be more accurate with matching colors.
• You do not need to match three colors to destroy spheres; you only need to match two. While that sounds like the game may be easier, or it may remove a lot of strategy, that is most definitely not the case.
• Powerups are only in Wave Mode and are gained through accuracy.
• You control what colors to fire. There is no RNG involved in choosing colors.
• Levels will be cleared after reaching a certain score. You can get higher scores from matching with higher accuracy, although not required (Note: the footage in the trailers is using the old score system that was purely one point per sphere destroyed. This will be different in the full game).
• Yes, there are 72 total level maps. Story Mode reuses some levels on higher difficulties for more challenge, but there are 72 unique level designs overall (10 per world + 1 No Mistakes level per world + 1 Multiplayer level per world, with a total of 6 worlds).
• There is a story and plot. It is however optional as I know the majority of games similar to this do not focus at all on story. The story is that of the Riflebird, a key character in the history of Garenburg.
• While there aren't plans for official mod support, custom levels will be supported either with the release or in an update after the release depending on how difficult it is to implement (game development can be tricky at times). It is planned to include options for level effects, path creation, custom images for the level background and music as an option if all goes well. Please stay tuned for more updates on this part, it would likely be worked on last for this game so that the base game is polished and fun.
• Colorblind support will be added either late into development or shortly after release; I need to first research accessibility methods and assess how it will be implemented.
• While the previous game, Garenburg Woods, was an RPG Maker 2000 game, this game has no RPG elements. They are two very separate games in terms of the actual gameplay.

For those curious, this game began development back in February 2020, with development being split between it and Garenburg Woods. It took a hiatus in late 2020 to focus on Garenburg Woods again, but since the release of that game, time has been focused back into it and it is the priority for development.

The game is aimed to be released later this year, with a few updates each month to show either the state of the game or something about it such as a level design or unseen mechanic.

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Garenburg Woods: Planned Future Content

Garenburg Woods will see new content at some point in the future. I'm not quite sure when as I haven't begun working on it yet, but I have been planning out what I want to do for it. What will be added is a few QOL changes and more notably, a large, post-game dungeon that will offer a different experience. It will require the true ending being completed, include all previous bosses and enemies, as well as new ones and be climbing through a giant tree.

This may take a while before it is finished due to focus being on Garenburg Penitence, but I felt like it was important to note. This idea was originally for the base release but was scrapped due to complications, scope, and time, so I'm very excited to add it in. It will be a free update.

In addition to this, a patch will roll out sometime in March to add a few fixes to Garenburg Woods and adjustments. I will be looking into Steam trading cards and emotes as well to be added.

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We have a Twitter and Reddit! They are for mainly just news and answering questions. They are r/garenburg and @Creatalsoft and will have more updates on these games in the future.

Well, that's pretty much it. I'm quite excited to continue working on these projects. Thank you for reading, and I'm excited to share more information in the near future. Cheers!