Well, the time has come (well almost) and Marble Odyssey will be released on the 23rd of September 2020 at 11pm GMT

Please forgive the pun, but it has certainly been a journey (yes, an odyssey!) reaching this point, and much development and play-testing ground has been crossed. But now we move on to a new phase, inviting in a whole new family of players to pit themselves against the foul kidnappers of innocent marbles!

We're really looking forward to seeing you all pitting your scores against others on our world Leaderboards. Even more so, we can't wait to see your gameplay videos, and your feedback so we can keep on driving on development and of course, new levels. Onwards and upwards!

So, we won't keep you any further, we'll see you at 11pm (GMT) on Wednesday, get your joypads ready, and pit yourself against 40 fun, daring and some say devilish levels of marble madness and speedy rolling heaven!

This release brings (mainly) a new GAME DEMO, which can now be downloaded from the Store Page. As well as quite a few buffs to Levels, the Settings UI and much more.

A friend of ours (an ex Bitmap Brother star coder no less!) asked, why no Demo? And he was 100% right. So, a few days later the changes were all in place to build the game with a smattering of levels (10) to give a reasonable taster of how Marble Odyssey plays.

Before this, or focus was on quality and game-play. Whilst working on improving the look of our Settings and Title Menus, a tester asked if we could add Tooltips to our Settings Panel. Well, Tooltips do not work with GamePad control. So the idea evolved to show what all the settings do with a Video. So now, not only does the Settings panel look more spiffy. But its INFO tab, now features an in-engine Video Player, with a guided tour of the settings to kick off this feature.

Further work has been carried out on some levels, with two receiving massive re-works, and others receiving visual and game-play buffs. Beyond this, there were many optimizations which we hope will make the gameplay more smoothly on your PC.

So, please, download the new DEMO and check the game out, and if you like it, buy the full game and enjoy 30 more levels!

• GAME DEMO: Much code was updated to facilitate the game being built with a sample of 10 levels. Demo build also features specific UI additions to support the Demo.
  
• TITLE MENU: Added new Title Music and Updated the nebula effect, And Added a drop-shadow to title text
  
• VIDEO PLAYER: The GENERAL Tab in Settings is now INFO. It features a Video Player, which can play various videos In-Engine. Useful for tutorials etc.
  
• ACHEIVEMENTS: Added 6 new Steam Acheivements
  
• UI: Updated Level Selector, so it now shows a ribband on each Button to show when you have acheived a medal on that level
  
• SETTINGS: Added Checkboxes, controlling ANTI-AILISING, PARTICLE EFFECTS and VOLUME LIGHTING and a Slider to control REAL-TIME REFLECTION update frequency

• LEVEL: Mezzanine - Large update, making use of new Prefabs to replace elements of its set, and game-play improved.
  
• LEVEL: Boot Camp - Completely re-worked, using new modular course elements
  
• LEVEL: The Two Winds - Replaced most of surfaces with rounder platforms.
  
• LEVEL: Bonus - Updated level mesh, added bridges.

• LEVEL: Madness ~ Big Set buff and tweaked gameplay elements
  
  
• LEVEL SELECTOR: Small tweak to ensure levels are displayed correctly based on current LevelSet.
  
• LEVEL SELECTOR: Bug Fix, small fixes to Level Selector code.
  
• SETTINGS: Added LINK and ICON for Settings Tour - AV
  
• VIDEOPLAYER: Title and InGame Music competes with Video audio. Now either music is faded OUT / IN as the Video is Played / Stopped.
  
• UI: DIAGNOSTICS - Refactored all diagnostic display to be displayed by pressing CTRL + I (i for info).
• This keeps it hidden/inactive by default, but available if needed.
  
• UI: DEMO - Worked on RESET to fix issues with end screen when player presses RESTART. Now last level restarts correctly.
  
• UI: LEVEL END - Updated Text fill light, with varying intesities and colours to re-inforce players performance.
  
• UI: Changed all text to use type that receives lighting. It now has a consistent reaction to text fill lights
  
• UI: Set exposure of InGame Camera to black when level loads, removes flash of empty sky as new scene is loaded. But sadly obsucures LOADING and UNFURLING text :/
  
• UI: SETTINGS - Large improvements to appearance, added texturing, work on-going.
  
• UI: TITLE SCREEN - Has had new title music added, also tweaked load animation to be more impactfull.
  
• UI: LEADERBOARD - Updated texturing on the 10 score segments, work ongoing
  
• DEMO: Implemented separate save files for DEMO
  
• DEMO BUILD: Completed initial work on Demo build adaptations
  
• TITLE MENU: Updated Nebulous plane textures to use HDR, and adjusted to give more range to the overall effect
  
• TITLE MENU: Added drop shadows to Logo to help pull it forward from background
  
• DOF: Updated all DOF profiles to use a SMALL kernal, to improve performance, whilst keeping DOF amound consistent between quality levels
  
• VIDEO PLAYER: First working draft of Player. Appears working at this stage, bugs may arrise....
  
• VIDEO PLAYER: Reworked native controlls to work better with our full screen approach. Replaced all icons, and implemented a better Volume display.
  
• VIDEO PLAYER: Implemented Play / Pause, Stop, Forward 10 seconds, Rewind 10 seconds, VolumeUp and VolumeDown methods.
  
• CONTROLLER DETECTION: Refactored, removed repetitive methods, and added EVENT that broadcasts NEW controller type for other components to subscribe to.
  
• ICONS: Updated all icons to be colour and shape coded. Square + Black background for Keys. Rounded shapes + Purple/Blue fill for Mouse and Rounded Shapes + Cyan Blue fill for Controller.
  
• LEVELS: Tweaked completion time and medal scores required for a number of levels.
  
• ACHEIVEMENTS: Extended Medal Type based acheivements, to 20 and 40 of each type
  
• ACHEIVEMENTS: Added acheivements based on number of levels Completed.
  
• ACHEIVEMENTS: Added 6 new Steam Acheivements
  
• MEDALS: Fixed bug in Silver medal
  
• LEVEL: The Two Winds - Replaced most of surfaces with rounder platforms.
  
• LEVEL: Bonus - Updated level mesh, added bridges.
  
• BUGS: Fixed various small bugs in levels
  
• OPTIMIZATION: Optimized the size of a number of Environment Maps, textures and Audio Files.
  
• UI: Updated Mouse Cursor display. It is still forced to hidden in-game, when you have a Joypad plugged in. However, it is now displayed on the TItle and In-Game Menus, allowing faster navigation.
  
• UI: Updated Level End UI, to display NAME over level, rather than its number. This makes it consistent with other areas of the UI where name is used, rather than number.
  
• UI: Updated Level Selector, so it now shows a ribband on each Button to show when you have acheived a medal on that level
  
• OPTIMIZATION: Reduced the size of many of the games bitmaps, to remove extra large files. Also removed default use of alpha channels and mipmapping where not needed.
  
• QUALITY: Raised Bitmap size on LOW to Quarter size, rather than Eigth. This was forcing ULTRA/VERY HIGH to use very high res bitmaps, otherwise they were too pixelated in LOW qual. This has allowed maximum resolution to be reduced slightly, there are no 4k bitmaps, and many 2k were reduced to 1k (256 in LOW..)
  
• PREFS: Reduced default Realtime Reflection rate from 100% to 75%
  
• UI: Stopped Title Screen Mechanism from animating, other than when the menu is actually displayed
  Controls: Added period, to make Joypad presence check happen every 60 frames, rather than every frame.
  
• OPTIMIZATION: Minor optimizations to graphics, to enhance speed.
  
• UI: Added a Checkbox to Enable rendering of Real-Time Reflections (on glass marbles).
  
• UI: Added a Slider to control the frequency at which Real-Time Reflections are rendered. At 0% forces period to 1 second. at 100% can be up to 60fps.
  
• UI: Updated appearance of UI Sliders, adding an in-built frame
  
• LIGHTS: Updated Light Shadow LOD to be driven by host light. This allows Host light to specify if ANY shadows are rendered, with LOD chosing quality of shadows.
  
• BUG: Fixed Ice particles not disabling correctly, when toggled off.
  
• CONTROLS: Removed use of D-Pads X axis for UI Tab control. This leaves it for use with the Y axis for general UI navigation.
  
• CONTROLS: Added Y Axis of D-Pad to VERTICAL group, allowing its use in menus
  
• SETTINGS: Added Checkbox, controlling if in-game ANTI-AILISING is enabled.
  
• SETTINGS: Added Checkbox, controlling if in-game ANTI-AILISING is using Temporal Anti-Ailising.
  
• SETTINGS: Added Checkbox, controlling if in-game PARTICLE EFFECTS are enabled
  
• SETTINGS: Added Checkbox, controlling if in-game VOLUME LIGHTING effects are enabled
  
• PREFS: Added new prefs for the above new Settings.
  
• PARTICLES: Updated MrFrosty and Fan particle effects to observe new PARTICLE EFFECTS Setting
  
• LIGHTS: Updated GreekTorch and CycleLights to observe new VOLUME LIGHTING Setting
  
• LIGHTS: Created GreekTorch class, to control if Greek Torches have Shadows and VolumeLights enabled as an option, with both being false as a default.
  
• LIGHTS: Added Volume Light effect to CycleLights, with it off by default, to bring it inline with GreekTorch on levels where volumetrics make sense
  
• LIGHTS: Added Volume Light effect to NIXIE's, so they can produce volume lighting on levels that use it (dark / misty).
  
• LIGHTS: Added VolumeLightControls, allows for local control of Volume Lights, so enabling / disabling Volumes can be done at the light AND Quality level.
  
• POWER UPS: Bug Fix - Baddies could collect Power Ups, and you'd get the power. Can now only be collected by Player.
  
• FROST EFFECT: Pause Particles when game is paused
  
• FROST EFFECT: Scaled number of particles based on Quality setting
  
• AIR FAN: Scaled number of Mote particles based on current Quality setting
  
• AIR FAN: Pause fan animation and Mote particles when game is paused
  
• VOLUME LIGHTS: Reduced quality of Volume lights to bare minimum.
  
• LEVEL: Mezzanine - Large update, making use of new Prefabs to replace elements of its set, and game-play improved.
  
• LEVEL: Boot Camp - Completely re-worked, using new modular course elements
  
• OBSTACLES: Created a set of track sections and obstacles, for creating obstacle courses.
  
• ROCKET: Created new Consumable, Rocket. Gives a speed boost for a short duration.
  
• CHRONOS: Converted CHRONOS into a Consumable. Needs testing for usefulness