Rustday, Newt 7, 244
Day 13 of the Containment Experiment

Played poker with Dr. Fidge and the others. Vermin was obviously cheating but Walls kept jumping to his defense. I don't know what she sees in a sleazy creep like him but I suppose it's none of my business.

Dr. Fidge said that the experiment is going well and the Field is holding. He tried to explain it to me again, but it went in one ear and out the other. All I got is that the experiment is now part of the prestigious Tiny Teams conference and that's apparently a really good thing? Woohoo, I guess...

Note: apparently the powers that be are using an older Field interaction video by some streaming celebrity[www.twitch.tv] to promote the event. Weird!

Fleaday, Newt 8, 244
Day 14

Stuck on guard duty with Stutter again. There's not much to talk about. Vermin and Walls finally finished synthesizing and animating all the required "graveyard sprites": visual attachment points to draw the ectoplasm entities into the Containment Field. "The sprites make the Field come to life and feel like a real ectoplasm habitat", as Walls put it.

I have a terrible headache and can't sleep. Wonder how Mom's doing...

Smogday, Newt 9, 244
Day 15

Dr. Fidge asked me to gear up and enter the Field. Not the best way to start the day, but it's not like I have a choice. Today they were demoing the experiment to a group of military commanders. How many times do we have to update the experiment's parameters for these demonstrations?

We did manage to correct a long-standing fault in the Field's boundaries that occasionally prevented it from responding to the controller's input, so it's not all bad.

Gruelday, Newt 10, 244
Day 16

I had a medical checkup with Dr. Henrietta today. She said there's nothing wrong with me physically, but gave me some sleeping pills.

Something's definitely wrong with Dr. Fidge. Stutter asked him about the experiment's end date and Fidge got visibly upset. "We're all doing our best here! I'll have a date for you soon enough". I wonder what's eating him?

Mossday, Newt 11, 244
Day 17

Apparently they extracted part of the ectoplasm and packaged it into a miniature field with its own dedicated page on the Steam academic publishing platform. The marketing folks even recorded a new "trailer" for it, like it's the latest summer blockbuster.

Walls and Dr. Fidge keep arguing. She thinks the ectoplasm extraction will weaken the Field's structural integrity. Dr. Fidge said he's under a lot of pressure and had to give the Ghost in a Bottle shareholders something to market.

Oh, and the pills worked. I slept like a slime baby, although I still feel terrible.

Rustday, Newt 17, 244
Day 23

No time to update this diary. Really sick and also dealing with the Containment breach. We laid Vermin and Walls to rest today. This isn't what I signed up for...

Smogday, Newt 19, 244
Day 25

I woke up feeling funny. Another tooth fell off. Stutter, Dr. Fidge, and I are quarantined. Dr. Henrietta says it will be alright, but I don't trust her.

Gruelday, Undead 5, 244
Day ??

They're all dead. Dr. Fidge was the last one. I'm sorry. Too hungry. The Field is unstable. Rips in the universe...

I'm coming home, Mom...

TLDR: Unfortunately we had to push back our planned release date again. We don't have a new date yet, but we're trying our best to bring you Octopus City Blues as soon as humanly possible. We're very sorry about that. The rest of the update will go over some of the things we've been working on and provide additional context for the delay.


Starting in April, Marina (benevolent tentacle artist) and I (Firas, malevolent snail) significantly changed the way we work. Previously, art and development were mostly done independently and we communicated on a weekly or biweekly basis. We switched to a virtual office kind of setup where we dedicate fixed hours to working together every day. It's been going great so far and we feel much more motivated and productive.

Our current target is the Robot Graveyard, the lawless wasteland at the base of Gold Tower. We're mainly working on the remaining interior locations such as the Conman's shop or the cyborg club.

By the way, we recently released yet another demo update, based on all the quality-of-life and interaction improvements made since the previous one. These include:

• 🦔 Kaf the Hedgehog is now 33% faster and has 100% more walking frames!
  
• 🖼️ Intuitive top-of-the-line settings menu to crank up your sim's colors to 11.
  
• 🎨 New text background colors to make your eyes bleed. From the grimy "Jungle" to the ominous "Caput Mortuum".
  
• 💬 Switch between the gossip and item menu modes like a pro using Q/E keys or the gamepad's shoulder buttons.
  
• 🎮 Say goodbye to gamepad confusion! The simulation will reliably remember the most recently used controller.
  
• 🍄 Beetles crave mushrooms. Drop the right item in the plaza and watch the little critters go!
  
• 😷 You no longer have to "touch" dirty objects or people to interact with them. Standing close by is sufficient.
  
• 🤖 Sacrificing Mom to science will pay off sooner.
  
• 🪲 And numerous other fixes, copy editing changes, and a host of new potential bugs for you to discover!

I'm also happy to present one of several music tracks that the newest addition to our team, Shannon (omnibenevolent troubadour), has been working on:

There's a lot more happening behind the scenes. For example, Julia (unambivalent wordsmith) went over and helped improve large portions of the script, while Karl (ambivalent doodler) is practicing card tricks.


Octopus City Blues has had a long and rocky journey over the years, so I apologize if the following is too long and boring. Nevertheless, you all deserve an honest explanation for the delays. Back in late 2021 when I was pitching the project to the Midgame Fund, the plan looked something like this:

• Early 2022: Demo play testing
  
• Late 2022: Release of Act 1 in Early Access.
  
• Mid 2023: Steam Next Fest demo
  
• Late 2023 / Early 2024: Release of Act 2
  
• Later in 2024: KS reward fulfillment, possible localization and console ports

After getting funded, the helpful investors at Midgame Fund[midgame.fund] advised against Early Access and recommended releasing both acts together. Much of 2022 was spent on discussions, planning, and extensive play testing that took place in two main rounds. The testing feedback showed us that we still had much to do, particularly when it came to guiding the players.

By early 2023 we were struggling to follow the original plan as we addressed all the testing feedback. That's why I decided to cut a lot of planned content and rewrite the story so that it no longer had two acts. The original acts were separated by a 10-year gap, which would've required a lot of art editing and writing completely new responses for every character.

The next play testing round coincided with the Indigo event. Even after all the changes made, some players were still struggling with certain parts or running into bugs. That's why we decided to participate in the October Steam Next Fest edition instead of the June one. The release date was pushed back to Q1 2024.

The Next Fest event itself was a great success. After years of neglecting marketing, we used 2023 to promote the project and make it more viable financially. On the other hand, the event left us with even more feedback, some of which we were still addressing in January (2024). The release date was pushed back to Q2

In early 2024 the Q2 release plan was still feasible. However, things temporarily took a turn for the worse after our last update. The first roadblock was due to real life developments and personal circumstances that impacted the availability of key team members. Thankfully, everything is back to normal now.

A more general problem is that the more we get done, the more work we end up creating for ourselves. The complex branching quest design means that the amount of testing needed can grow exponentially. Automated testing and play testing rounds can only take us so far.

The next obstacle had to do with the 2023 rewrite. Taking a story with many characters and intertwined elements and completely rewriting major parts of it turned out to be much trickier than expected. Some major plot elements simply didn't work in the new framework, and I had to make additional changes to improve the story's overall pacing and consistency.

At first I thought we could still release the main parts, and then slowly restore some content after release. That would've meant early adopters and our biggest supporters wouldn't get the complete intended experience. There are also many more things we'd like to tackle after release (Kickstarter rewards, localization, porting) instead of adding more content.

To be clear, there are some things that we still plan to add after release (as free DLC). In particular, there are the arcade games and the quests related to them. While not part of the main story, they were in our original pitch (and much of the art is already done).

All of this brings us to our current plan. The story is still in one act, but some previously cut areas and quests will be restored. As mentioned in the previous section, we've adopted a new way of working since April and have been slowly adding the remaining areas and characters to the simulation. While things look promising, it's hard to tell what will happen tomorrow or if additional play testing will require even more changes.

OCB is something that particularly benefits from these play testing rounds, because the more we can anticipate the player's actions (e.g. trying to combine the knife and baby items), the more fun and immersive the experience feels. Obviously, we can never get rid of every bug or address all feedback before release. That's why we'll just have to find the right balance.

We still have to finish the following parts: Graveyard (in-progress), Big Beef, Turkeys, and the ending. Of those, Big Beef is the most involved one. I changed the planned release date on Steam to simply 2024 because that's our goal, but please keep in mind that it's not a release date either. We'll only announce a concrete release date once all of these areas are done and work primarily shifts to testing and polishing.

If you've made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read all of that! We remain as committed to this project as we were on day one, and we're genuinely trying our best as flawed and naively optimistic humanoids. We owe it all to your continued support and understanding.