Puzzle Club-blog

We’ve renumbered the episodes for an upcoming site redesign - we realized that it might make more sense to people if the first episode we released was Episode 1, not 0. Many updates and shared links have been retroactively changed to reflect the new numbering.

I’m late! I’m late for a very important (up)date!

We have been busy playtesting Episode 4’s game and finding ways to make the gameplay more clear. One of the ways we did this is by hiding the other keys that don’t need to be pressed - we found that the game was already challenging enough without the extra keys floating around to obscure the keys that need to be pressed.

Additionally, more of the art has been integrated, which not only makes the game look awesome, but it also gives the player a lot more feedback about what’s happening.

Chez made the time tunnel between levels look good! We’re also highlighting the goal object more clearly on this screen, and letting players decide when they’re ready to start the level. (The art for the buttons and text is temporary)

We’ve also added some in-game text to help teach the player how to play the game. Here’s a screenshot of one of the early levels:

Not EVERY screen will have this text, but we made sure to teach the player everything he/she needs to know in order to play the game.

Another problem players were having was that they weren’t sure how, why, or even IF they were failing. So, we stepped up the feedback to be absolutely clear. Now, not only will the screen will flash to red, but it will also explain what went wrong so the player can try to avoid that mistake in the future.

The remaining work to be done some level tweaking, bug fixing, and last second polish to make the game as solid as possible before we launch.

Tick tock!

Happy post-turkey day, everyone!  As we are nearing the wrap-up period of production on Episode 4, it’s time for another audio update.

It feels rather appropriate for me to do a post after a poultry enhanced holiday, as a similar feathered creature was a main part of this episode… of course, I refer to the time travelling chicken. The winning community submission for the ‘sound of time travel’ was very enjoyable, and we did our best to blend the rest of the audio sound scape to match that feel.  In addition to time travel empowered poultry, we got to play with clunky gears, electrical storm portals, dropped “swiss army marbles”, falls, breaks, and dramatic music. 

One day I came across a ticking stopwatch sound sample. It felt like something that might work for the base of a game music track so I started mixing in some bass, tuba, accordion, and our chicken friend.  We ended up going a different route with game music, more techno and faster paced, though the “Time Loop Chicken Polka” still lives on in the Episode 4 credits sequence. Want a sneak preview? Click the link to check it out!

Something smells… fowl.

Just a short update this week (we have a short week here at the studio for Thanksgiving) - the animation for Episode 4 is completely finished! All attention is now on the game, and the current focus is to make it look as nice as possible.

One of the issues we’ve been running into during playtests is that players are initially having a hard time understanding what the goal of the game is. The game is actually pretty simple, but we need to better communicate the rules up front. The other feedback we’ve been getting is that there needs to be more feedback within the game - some people aren’t sure if they’re winning or losing (which is bad!), so a lot of the art treatment and audio treatment is geared towards giving the player a sense of whats happening in the game.

That’s all I have for… oh! I almost forgot. A few of us on the team are still participating in Movember, and we have some new photos for you.

I’m not doing it right. Everything BUT my mustache has grown.

Matt is looking goooood.

Mike T has won at mustache.

Okay, NOW I’m done. We’ll see you after the holiday!

Hello friends!

The team is wrestling with some larger questions about the future of Puzzle Clubhouse, but work on Episode 4 continues!

We’ve finished the game prototype that’s more aligned with the original winning design - you can play it here! 

The goal is to press the two adjacent keys, forming a chain to grab the goal object(s) at the very end. Pressing the wrong keys or not pressing any keys when you need to will trigger a failure, causing the level set to reset. We have four levels increasing in difficulty.

After playing it for a bit, we had some discussions about how to improve it and where to take it from here. Here’s some of what came out of our meeting:

Current Issues:

• Lack of triangularity - the game currently has no risk vs. reward in it, which is common to a lot of rhythm games. This is sort of an additional thing that would be nice to have, but probably wont make its way in.
• Right now, this game requires you to look at the keyboard most of the time - Unless you’re a superstar typist, you’ll need to fairly often look at the keyboard for the key combinations.
• The keys that you press should be close together - right now they seem random and difficult to press. This can be ironed out fairly easily.
• Time changes are too slow - the right pace for the game will become apparent through playtesting.

Next Steps:

• Add the ability to make longer chains of characters. (Can reuse characters so there are duplicates of Jasper, Cornelius, etc.) Currently the game only supports 11 total, want more.
• Press spacebar to “engage” time machine - do we want to use three keys?
• Levels can be made up of smaller mini-chains; Completing part of the level will poof out the characters, clearing the board for the next group.
• Have a time machine that flies across - represents accuracy, like most rhythm games
• Time period should last fewer than 3 seconds – maybe 1.5 seconds. This will be variable based on the difficulty of the levels (earlier levels = longer)

That’s about all we have time for this week - we’ll check back with our progress soon!

Toodles!

Hello!

This is my first blog post here, so I’ll  start things off with a (brief) introduction. My name is Patrick, and I’m a designer for Puzzle Clubhouse. I work closely with Dave and Laura to do the Episode writing, documentation, and game designs for the episodes.

But this blog entry is going to be all about animatics, and how we get from a hastily written script to Chez’ final animation!

Part 1: Planning the Community Submissions

Even though we release an episode a month, we actually start planning for an episode 6 weeks before its release date. By T-4 weeks we need to be writing the script, so any community submissions that determine the “what happens” part of the episode need to be done by then.

Part 2: Writing the Script

By the time 4 weeks from release rolls around, we need to have the script pretty much thought out. Dave and I have 2-3 days to write the first draft. It’s pretty intense, because we’re also still finishing up the previous episode! The lines are numbered to make it easier to identify dialog and lay it into the animatic quickly.

Part 3: Storyboarding:

As soon as we get a workable version of the script, it’s passed off to me to storyboard. Each episode has between 80 - 120 panels, churned out over the course of a day and a half. Storyboards let us rough out the camera angles, cuts, and rough posing for the characters in a quick and disposable way. The script is usually revised and changed even as the storyboards are being made- so it’s important that no one panel take long to draw. (My personal goal is that no storyboard panel should take more than a few minutes to draw).

At this point, Brittany takes the storyboards and begins making the real art assets for the episode, and Chez develops any new characters.

Part 4: Animatics- Revisions, Revisions, Revisions!

While the storyboards are being made, Dani is reading through the script and sifting around for the appropriate sound effects, and Dave gets “scratch” (temporary) recordings of all the lines of dialog in the episode. (Fun fact: Usually before Jasper and Cornelius’ voice actors are even shown the script, the whole animatic is made using Dave’s voice for every part.)

It takes about a day to throw together all the storyboards, sound effects, and dialog into the first animatic! Then it’s shown to everyone, critique is given- and it’s back to the drawing board again- often literally. There are typically between 4 and 6 revisions of an episode animatic made, and all within about a week. During that time somewhere between a tenth to a fifth of all the storyboards are tweaked or redrawn to reflect the new changes (Which is why it’s so important that they be quick to make!).

Part 5: Blocking and Beyond!

Because Puzzle Clubhouse is made so quickly- the animatic is often changed slightly after it goes to blocking. The latest revision to date is given to Chez (our Animator) to block, and another copy to Bonnie (our awesome sound person!) to make everything sound like it wasn’t thrown together in Premiere over the course of four hours.

Then the episode is fully into production, and I shift focus to helping Dave out with the game development! Tweaks to the animatic, blocking, and sound continue to be made throughout the whole process, and the week after we’re already working on the next episode!

And that’s pretty much how we cobble everything together. Feel free to ask any questions!

Current Voting:
Anne Tagonist 

Current Submissions:
Chews Your Own Adventure! 

Current Brainstorms:
Laz0r Frogz - The Next Generation
Movemeber Madness!

You know what they say: “Time flies when you’re having fun…” or working so hard you can’t stop to think! This past week really has been a whirlwind! It feels like just yesterday when we were writing our last Ptuesday update, so I’ll try my best to get you guys caught up!

Let’s see, what has happened…

We released Episode 3: May The Horse Be With You! with special guest Anthony Daniels (some of you might remember him as C-3P0 from  Stars Wars®). This is our spo0o0okiest episode to date so make sure to check it out and let us know what you think!

To celebrate the release of this episode, we are hosting a sweepstakes for the chance to win one of ten signed C-3P0 figurines! For more information on the sweepstakes, click here!

We barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief that Episode 3 was complete because we were all already knee-deep in Episode 4 production. We’re trying to keep things short this time around, since we felt that our last episode really pushed the upper limits of what we can accomplish in our short production timeline. Our goal was to keep the animated segment under 3 minutes and keep the art/animation assets to a minimum (giving Chez and Brittany a chance to catch up). For the most part, we’re doing really well! Brittany is pretty much all done with episode art and has now moved on to game art, which keeps us right on schedule! Chez has finished with the blocking in record time and right now the episode clocks in at about 2:10 min! Wowzah! Today he worked on some special effects for the time bubble that Jasper and Cornelius find themselves stuck in. Check it out! (Click to watch the animation)

All in all, the animated part of the episode is really shaping up and we’re hoping to have final animation done around the end of the week!

Some of the bigger complications we are facing this time around is with the game. To refresh your memory, here’s the winning game idea for this episode:

When their respective keys are held down, [J]asper and [C]ornelius hold onto a time-machine object while looped backdrops in time phase in and out. Play twister with your fingers to hold onto strandees like [Z]ed and [P]am, chaining up the monkeys or scientists to bring them back to the present day.

We came up with a game design based on this idea that, in retrospect, was probably too complicated and ended up veering away from the original submission. After some really good conversations that came up on the  forums we decided to rethink the way we were approaching this game. We decided to modify the game so it more closely resembled the original game idea, while still incorporating the community submitted content that we had collected for the game.

This situation brought up the bigger issue of our game development process. Are we cutting it too close? Should we be expanding our time line to create games? Unfortunately, with our current production cycle, we don’t have a lot of time to prototype and test our designs before they need to go into full on development and art/audio integration. We’ll be having a meeting later this week to discuss our current cycle and see how we can make it better and how we can get YOU more involved throughout the whole process!

Stay tuned PCH fans and as always thank you for your feedback and your patience as we work out the kinks and try to make this the best experience we can!

Phew…and now time for dinner… :)

Hey everyone!

   Animation for episode 3 is now done! This one was a doozy, and I ended up coming in with the finished animation pretty late in the cycle. That was kind of the plan too, as this was a special episode for us, and we wanted to put in a good bit of TLC to get it just right. We got all three user-submitted rooms introduced. We also got in all the decorations for the house, and all the fish silhouettes for the aquarium! And, of course, there was our special guest star! I think this episode turned out really well, and I can’t wait for you all to see it!

   I took after Brittany and did a screencast of some of my animation process. It starts off with me finishing off Jasper and Cornelius’s facial acting and lipsync for scene 2. Then you get to see me add all the fish, the squid, and some watery type effects to the aquarium. Enjoy!

-Chez

Current Submissions:
Anne Tagonist 

Current Votes:
Howl do I sound?
Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

Spicy!

With Episode 3 finally in the can, we are all looking to the future! And the past. And everything in between. Since this episode is fairly Halloween…ey, keep an eye on the site tomorrow for something terrifying.

Patrick has finished most of the storyboarding (and animatic) for Episode 4 - take a look at the beginning of Episode 4!

CORNELIUS: “Ah, here we are!”

CORNELIUS: “By any chance, do you have experience with… time travel?”

JASPER: “Okay, sleepwalking gnomes I’ll believe, but time travel is nothing but science fict-”

JASPER: “… Whoa.”


Jasper and Cornelius looking at themselves in some sort of time loop.

Moving in closer for a better look at the time machine.

ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY TIME CHICKEN.

Speaking of which, Brittany has finished some early passes of both the Time Machine and our favorite trans-temporal poultry.

Now THAT’s a time machine.

Look at those birds!

HE CAN SEE FOREVER.

Meanwhile, Matt and I are working on the Episode 4 game - we have some very early (ugly) screenshots for you to take a look at:

This game is all about jumping through time, trying to solve puzzles.

You can pick up various things/people from one time period…

and take them to another, which is needed for creating new objects in the present (or future).

As you can see, none of the art is implemented, but we have the working prototype ready to go, so we’re busy at work making some interesting puzzles for all y’all.

That’s all for this Ptuesday! Chez will be sharing some sweet animation stuff tomorrow, so watch out for that!

See you next time!

As some of you may recall, we had our big Beta site launch during PAX Prime, this past August. For those of you weren’t able to go to PAX, you missed a few great Puzzle Clubhouse moments! 

Check out some of these pictures our very own Jesse Schell took while he was there:

People playing Laz0r Frogz!

What do you think of when you see this picture? Creepy? Stay away from this guy? NO! You should be thinking about our amazing puzzle piece fliers!One of our promotions during PAX were these sweet, sweet puzzle piece fliers that actually fit together! Jesse also wore his PCH fez. If you came up to him with one of our fliers while he was wearing this fez, you would get a special prize!

Puzzle Clubhouse’s favorite Seattle hotel!

Current Submissions:
No Time Like the Present
Sounds Like Time Travel

Current Votes:
Close Encounters of the Historical Kind

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Also ghosts.

Our team is growing! Mike V (that’s the third Mike, for those that are playing at home) has joined us as a web programmer. He’ll be tackling the website, making sure that it’s super radical.

We also have Matt K back on Puzzle Clubhouse! He was shuffled to a different project for the past few months, but he’s returned to us! And there was much rejoicing.

In other news, we’re almost done with Episode 3! Chez is finishing up the animations, and Mike T is beginning his search and destroy mission for bugs. Otherwise, the game is basically finished, and we should be good for launch on November 1st!

The rest of the team has moved on to Episode 4. Brittany is PCH-ifying Rollins, Patrick and I have finished up the first draft of the script, and now he’s moved on to drawing up the initial storyboards. Meanwhile, Matt K has begun prototyping the game for the episode so we can see what this weird time-travel meets twister style of game feels like.

Writing Episode 4’s script was an interesting challenge - we tried to see how simple an episode we could make while still keeping it funny / fun to watch. Episode 3 was a great test of our limits - it’s the most involved episode by far (especially for poor Chez), so we want to see how far we can rein it in while still keeping it awesome. Ideally, we’ll find that happy middle ground and make episodes that are juuuust right.

That’s all for now! See you next week. Or maybe LAST WEEK?

Time travel hurts my brain.

Spooky Soundscapes

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out the ‘type’ of spooky we were going for in Episode 3.  This was definitely a situation where art helped direct the sound design.  There were a couple scenes in the early animatic, pre-art, where sound direction started towards the ScoobyDoo end of the spectrum, with a hint of Munsters, but then when some of the scenes were drawn we turned on our heels and went down a darker path.

In a world such as Puzzle Clubhouse, and in an episode such as this, we were given the opportunity to explore the vastness of the mansion, while accenting the truly bizarre rooms and how, to a 'normal’ person, such as Jasper, would react to such things.  The surreal ghost sequences in the episode continue to feel like a live action horror film, dragging us further into a serious landscape, so that when quirky comedy sfx and words pop in we are caught by surprise.  

Special “Ghast” Stars

One of the greatest pleasures of Episode 3 has been working with a cameo appearance by our 'ghast’ star, who for the sake of not spoiling the surprise we shall call “REDACTED”.  While working on Episode 1 we became aware of an opportunity to feature the one and only REDACTED in a future episode. The catch was REDACTED, being the very busy man that he is, had a very limited timetable to work with us, and it would be within the week. We had one afternoon to record whatever we could invent for REDACTED’s voice, so a quick mock-up of a possible script, with detailed lines for REDACTED had to be created immediately.  This would be a one-shot recording session, with little to no chance of callbacks so the writers had to work speedily before the big day.  Many valuable gems were captured, including some hilarious lines that made it into the video game, and helped shape the episode.  

We hope you really enjoy what is in store in Episode 3, the episode and game. To give you a bit of a taste, check out the “Episode 3 Teaser” audio file at the top of this post.

Current Submissions:
Time to Draw

Current Votes:
Bingo Was His Name-O… OR WAS IT?

When this blog hits 88 Miles per Hour, you’re gonna see some serious updates.

We’re at the tail end of Episode 3 - Art, Animation, Sound, and Programming are all coming together to make a beautiful bouncing baby episode.

Bonnie is cleaning up all the audio (and adding sweet sound effects) for both the animation and the game. She’s been adjusting levels, removing hissing, and making sure this Episode sounds as awesome as it can be. She’s also whipped up a background track for the game, which is spooky. Listen… IF YOU DARE.

Chez has his plate full with the animation - he’s completed one of the scenes, and is now fleshing out the character animation in the rest. He’s just about finished animating our SPECIAL GUEST (which we will totally tell you about soon, we promise), and Jasper and Cornelius are looking fly as always.

Meanwhile, Brittany is still doing her art thing - she’s finalizing the various art assets in the episode, as well as handing off the game art assets to Mike T. Take a peek at these:

The PCH Foyer!

Look at that rug!

… and that ghost!

… and that ghost trail!

As we’re about halfway through the month, that means Episode 4 is now officially in the pipe - Patrick and I are working with the winning game submission to draft up the game design document, followed by the script. As this episode is all about time travel, I’m pretty excited about where (and when) we can take this one! We’ll also be incorporating at least one of Cornelius’ prized possessions - I’m sure he’ll find a way to solve any problem with it! Lastly, this episode SHOULD have the first appearance of our faithful (if absent) butler, Mr. Rollins. Hopefully he doesn't run into anything that scares the daylights out of him in this episode.

That’s all I’ve got time for this week! I need to write some bad jokes now.

Great Scott!

Some of you might remember the sweepstakes we held last month for the World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle: Double Retrospect. This contest was for PAX attendees only, in celebration of the fact that we were launching the website AT PAX. 

Well the 5 winners were randomly chosen and the Puzzles have been sent! Some of the winners have sent us pictures of them with their prize. Take a look!

Amy with her gigantic puzzle!

Lars was sure to capture the hand cart that was included!

Charles somehow managed to snap a photo with the puzzle next to a rare 600-lb Siberian Tiger!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the sweepstakes! Stay tuned for more contests and giveaways. After all…ANYTHING can happen at Puzzle Clubhouse!

Current Submissions:
Flea in Terror

Current Votes:
Let’s Undo the Time Warp
Puzzle Club-Home Decorating

Current Brainstorms:
The Essentials

Ptuesday? ALREADY? Oh jeez, I hope someone wrote something…

Episode 3 is going swimmingly. Chez is blocking up a storm, Patrick and myself are creating levels for the game, and Mike T is moving from prototyping to full-on game development.

Now, you might be wondering: what’s difference between prototyping and proper game development? After all, they both involve writing code and, well, making the game.

In the prototyping phase, it’s assumed that any/all code will be scrapped at the beginning of development. If there happens to be usable code, that’s great! However, the main focus is to bring the game to life as fast as possible. By quickly incorporating all of the base features of the game, we (the team) can check if the game is actually fun much earlier on. If the game isn’t fun we can make quick changes, or scrap the prototype altogether. Because it was made quickly, we don’t have to worry about throwing away a meticulously crafted piece of code.

Real game development has the actual, careful planning, and this is where we make sure everything is efficient and running. During the transition from prototyping to development, any working code is saved, or incorporated into the Puzzle Clubhouse API for future use in other games. As an example, we took the grid-based level design/loading of Laz0r Frogz and actually used it for To Gnome Me is to Love Me’s game.

Elsewhere in the episode, Brittany is making everything look fancy. She’s almost finished all of the community content for the episode!

Check it:

The finished Fattening Cage:

The Kennel:


The Transplanar Bat of Whiffling (charged and uncharged)


The Woe Goggles (non-slimy AND slimy)


G-g-ghosts!


Outside of the episodes, we’ve had several serious discussions about the current state of the website. Laura is hard at work identifying problem areas of the site, as well as better ways to not overload new visitors.

We’re completely committed to making the website the best it can be - if you have any thoughts about how you want the website to look, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Alright, that’s enough for now. We’ll see all y’all next time!

Current Submissions:
Ghost Sounds
Puzzle Club-Home Decorating

Current Votes:
Spectral Bat of Whiffling
Room of Reckoning

Current Brainstorms:
Aquarium Room Fish

Let’s Undo the Time Warp
Make your own Laz0r Frog Levels!
Future Game Prompts

Boo!

October is here! Well, it arrived yesterday, actually. But that means Episode 2 has been released! We’re really excited about it - be sure to check it out and let us know what YOU think!

No time to pat ourselves on the backs though - we’re already waist deep in Episode 3, and things are lookin’ spooky.

Mike T. has got a pretty spiffy prototype going for the ghost game. Did I write spiffy? I meant HORRIFYING. (It also turns out that Mike T’s last name is TERROR)

We’ve got Jasper (the blue dot) running around with a flashlight, reavealing ghosts.


I think Jasper’s found one of the ghost’s trails. If we just head into that room…


OH NO THE GHOST FOUND JASPER RUN

Meanwhile, Patrick has just finished up the animatic, Chez is busy at work making the various characters for this episode, and Brittany is back from vacation and is now arting up the place.

It’s a good thing Brittany’s back, too, because Episode 3 is our most art-heavy episode yet. With the variety of props, spaces, and characters (including our SECRET GUEST), Brittany and Chez have their work cut out for them. Luckily, we have you guys to help us out!

All of your art submissions are super valuable - not only do they give us actual art assets, but they also give us specific ideas for what the assets need to be. So, as an example, here’s one of the winning room descriptions from Location, Location Location!:

“The door to the Fattening Cage is an unsavory discovery in the bowels of Puzzle Clubhouse. Undeniably secure yet airy, this portable cell swings in a snug kitchen built of gingerbread and candy! One cannot miss the kitchen’s homey fire beneath the cauldron or the cavernous oven. Those who enter the Fattening Cage (and live to tell the tale) recall motion sickness, regular and substantial feedings, warm buttermilk baths, considerable cackling and the heady scent of cinnamon.”

… and here’s a totally sweet (groan) rendering of the room by Brittany! (still in progress)

Delicious. Or is it?

As we get more comfortable incorporating community content, there will be more ways for you guys to contribute!

That’s enough horror for one day. Come back again soon!

If you dare.

Hey PCH folks!

The animation for episode 2 is finished! Woohoo! Right under the wire again, too. We had tried out a new method for doing the animatics this cycle.

Instead of the traditional method of timing out the storyboard panels, I tried to make an editable animatic file in Flash with the actual character projects, to kind of condense the animatics/animation keyposing steps into 1.

It may have turned to be more trouble than it was worth, though, we had a ton of timing changes with this episode that would have gotten ironed out quicker the traditional way.

Oh well… we’re still getting the hang of this thing!

          

No time for a breather now, either… today I get to start on the character designs for episode 2’s special guest character! 

It was a lot of fun incorporating all of the community’s garden elements and gnome designs into the world for this episode, so I can’t wait to see what gets in for episode 2!

Current Submissions:
Ghost Sounds

Current Votes:
Ghost Art

Current Brainstorms:
Room of Reckoning
Episode 3 Game Prompt
Make your own Laz0r Frog Levels!

Howdy!

Episode 2 is nearly in the can! Chez is putting some finishing touches on the animated segments, Mike T. is squishing gnome-related bugs, and the rest of the team is moving on to Episode 3. You’ll be able to watch Episode 2 on the website come Monday (10/1)!

The script for Episode 3 is shaping up nicely. We’ve got the first pass of the dialog recorded, and Patrick is hard at work getting the initial storyboards mocked up. Laura also took the time to write up the game design document for ghost whiffling.

We’re pretty stoked about this episode - Jasper and Cornelius are going to be interacting with the three rooms that won the Location, Location, Location vote, and it was fun to figure out how to incorporate them into the script. We’ve got a few more Episode 3 submissions coming up, so be sure to keep out an eye for those!

We’re also excited about the special GHAST star (see what I did there?) appearing in this episode. We’d love to tell you who it is… but we don’t want to ruin the surprise.

Yet.

After the electro frenzy that was Episode 1 (Laz0r Frogs),  Episode 2 was a joy in that it had less actual ‘scenes’ to work with, though it still had its own challenges and obstacles to explore.

One of the tricky bits we encountered was how to treat the first half as a prequel, and a sequel at the same time. In audio land that meant figuring out ‘what can we nab’ from Episode 1 to give enough of a 'last time’ feel, and then to explore what would best symbolize flashbacks to one of our characters glory days…and in quick short segments.

Fanfares and dramatic stings were a big part of sound design this time around, plus exploring what would be the musical equivalent of “strangely attractive” gnome love stares.  Kazoo was also experimented with briefly, though the main usable results are present in the game portion. Don’t worry, I’m sure the kazoo will be better implemented in future episodes.

PS: We hope you enjoy the soothing voice of Purrcival.

Here’s another installment of the Ptuesday update, brought to you by your devoted dev team!

Current Submissions:
Ghost Art

Current Votes:
Location, Location, Location Story Input
Mr. Rollins Concept Art


Episode 2 Updates

In case you might have forgotten what community assets are being incorporated into this episode, here’s a quick recap:

• 1 game idea
• 12 Garden Gnome Art Assets
• 2 Adjectives Describing Gnomes
• 5 Garden Elements
• 4 Gnome Battle Cries
• 1 Pink Slip Text

We’re in the final stages of development for Episode 2: the audio is being integrated into the episode and a final animation pass is underway. The rest of this week is really all about making small tweaks to timing and cleaning up assets as needed.

The gnome game is also wrapping up nicely! Brittany has been hard at work getting all of the final art assets ready for this last stage of integration. One of the biggest tasks she had was incorporating the community submitted gnome artwork. After reviewing all of the submissions, we picked out some that would work the best in the game atmosphere. (Don’t worry! All 12 of the original community submitted gnomes will appear throughout the episode). Unfortunately it was difficult to distinguish some of the gnomes at the size we needed them, so we decided to create simplified versions, based off of the original submissions, that would read well on the screen. Here are some examples of the in-game gnomes (with the original submission on the left):

 

 

Last week, Dave mentioned some of the interesting challenges we’ve faced with this particular game.  Well since then we’ve implemented a few new features and made some other small changes to the game play – things we only realized needed to be tweaked through continual iteration – and we’re really happy with where the game is now! We can’t wait to hear what you guys think!

Episode 2 Update
The community has voted and chosen the game prompt that will be used in Episode 2:

Ghosts drift through PCH phasing in and out of the visible spectrum. Use a device to turn the Spectral Regret they ooze into a visible trail. Track them down and beat them with the Transplanar Bat of Whiffling to make them quit their haunting ways. If they find you 1st they will bemoan you to death.

This week, Patrick and Dave are working on the first pass of the script, as well as fleshing out the winning game submission into a full-fledged design document. We also might have a celebrity guest for this episode, so stay tuned!

Until next time…

Here’s your weekly Ptuesday update!

Current Submissions:
Mr. Rollins Concept Art

Current Votes:
Gnomish Battle Cries
Better Gnomes and Gardens
Episode 2 Game Design

The animatic and blocking pass of the animation for Episode 2 are just about done, and almost all of the voice acting is complete. We’ll begin full-on animation within the next day or two.

Brittany’s been busy making some fancy backgrounds.

The game is going well. We’re fairly deep into development, and the team is in the process of making levels for the game. Check out those prototype screenshots!





This particular game has been interesting to work on – it’s an unusual twist on tower defense, in which the player can only affect the attackers indirectly. We didn’t find other games we could reference to see similar mechanics in action, which is something that can be helpful, particularly on a short time frame like ours. Something that game designers learn very quickly is that iterating (testing and then changing) your game is crucial to making a fun experience, so we did our best to iterate with a few prototypes before moving into full game development.

In our initial prototype, we made gnomes try to get to specific tiles located in the corners of the maze (think a mouse going through a maze to find a piece of cheese). It worked for the most part, but sometimes the gnomes would travel through the game in an unexpected way, making it frustrating to play.

Our programmer, Mike T, continued to improve and tweak the gnomes’ behavior. However, it quickly became apparent that it would take more time than it was worth to get the gnomes to behave in a sensical way (gnomes are pretty strange, after all). An important attribute of a good game designer is the ability to improvise and work with what you’ve got. We knew we didn’t have time for several more iterations to make the gnomes behave, so we had to think of a new way to get the same relative effect.

After discussing it with the team, an idea was had - instead of having the gnomes do the thinking, let’s make them respond to directional cues embedded in the game board. These cues will be invisible to the player, so if the tiles are placed in a way that make sense, the gnomes will appear to be smart.

With that, we’ve begun experimenting with different types of gnomes: strong gnomes, fast gnomes, ghostly gnomes, and so on. This was okay, but we realized that we wanted to change a behavior inherent to all gnomes. At the moment, when two gnomes collide, they enter a fight (kerfuffle). In most cases, this makes it very easy for a player to stop the gnome parade by clogging up their spawn area, forcing a fight very early on and making the level pretty easy. Many of the solutions we’ve come up with (make gnomes of the same type not fight, for example) could solve this issue, but would involve drastic changes to the way the gnomes navigate tiles.

As we continue to deliberate our options, we’re still experimenting to find out what kinds of levels are fun with our current systems. Whether we choose to implement the new gnome behavior will remain to be seen!

So there you have it! We’ll let you know how it all pans out next week.

Episodic!

Gamasutra wrote up an excellent article about PCH, and gave a shout-out to both @Palenoue and @MadMik3!

Check out the article here!

Why, hello there!

The past few days have been quite productive! Our site launched into Beta, Jesse was at PAX talking up Puzzle Clubhouse, and Episode 1 was released! And all of it happened relatively smoothly! Dang.

To celebrate launch, Dani decided to bring in some lovely in-theme cookies.

This one was my personal favorite.



On the episodic front, we are hard at work making Animatics for Episode 2. We have some sweet concepts of Purrcival, the cat that will star in both the animation and the game! (He’s the cursor.)





In addition, we’re already planning out the community submission sockets for Episode 3. Considering Episode 3’s projected release is around Halloween, we’re keen on keeping things spooooooky

That’s all for this week! Be sure to check out the website and take a gander at current submissions and voting rounds that are running!

Sayonara!

The new website is up! Go check it out!

Do you hear that noise? Thats the sound of Puzzle Clubhouse launching in two days.

Things are, to say the least, pretty hectic over here as we scramble for launch. Jesse is heading off to PAX (Dev and Prime), and we’re putting the finishing touches on Episode 1. As we mentioned last week, if you’re going to PAX Dev, be sure to check out The Secret Mechanisms and Crowd Sourcing Your Design – Jesse will be speaking at both!

Episode 2 is underway - the initial script passes are finished along with the game design document. Once we launch the site, we’ll begin prototyping the game!

Other than that, we’re all eager to have the website go up! Be sure to check out our site on August 30th (10 am, EDT) to see the awesome changes we’ve made since the early Alpha. Back to work!

See you on the other side!

After 3 exciting rounds of voting for Episode 2 game ideas (titled “Short Tempers” on our website), you, the community, have chosen your champion! Here is the game design idea that will now go into prototype phase for the first official episode of Puzzle Clubhouse:

Gnomes are a surly bunch, and although they’re out to get you, that doesn’t mean they don’t have quarrels of their own or that they’re ready to forget past grievances. Gnomes stream through your garden down a number of twisting paths that cross each other at various points. Your mouse is a cat who can hold gnomes at bay, but only in one lane at a time. The trick is to hold up some gnomes so that when you do let them progress they’ll run into other gnomes at the intersections. When two gnomes collide, they get into a terrible kerfuffle and remove themselves from the game. It’s like having a continuous plinko machine that you’re trying to jam. Players are scored on the number of gnomes they let through and bonuses are given out for special events like getting 3+ gnomes to collide at once.

Now that we have our game idea, we are going into full-swing production on episode 2 TODAY! And don’t worry if you didn’t have a chance to submit your genius game idea, there are still more ways to participate in Episode 2! Right now we are looking for your best Garden Gnome artwork (“Create-A-Gnome”) as well as some inspiration for what these gnomes are really like (“The More You Gnome”). So log-in to the PCH Site and submit your own content for Episode 2 today!

“That’s great and everything, but what about Episode 1?” you ask. Well, we’re still making it! We just finished an animation blocking pass on the entire episode, which is looking really good! After reviewing it with the whole dev team, we have a few tweaks in terms of timing and now we’ll be moving on to finalize the episode animation!

Laz0r Frogz (the game) is also shaping up quite nicely. The game is fully functional, and we are working on integrating art and sound, as well as incorporating fun and interesting levels. Gotta make those frogz look good, after all.

The website is also moving right along. We are making some tweaks to the voting and submissions pages, to make them more intuitive. We are also working on revamping the “Games and News Page” so that it is a little more clear what you can do on the site! If you have any comments or suggestions for the website, don’t hesitate to hop on to the forums and let us know!

And if you thought that wasn’t exciting enough, our very own Jesse Schell will be at PAX Dev ( August 29-30th) and PAX Prime (August 31 - September 2nd), both in Seattle, Washington.  He will be speaking at 2 panels during PAX Dev: The Secret Mechanisms and Crowd Sourcing Your Design.

“Wait! Isn’t Puzzle Clubhouse LAUNCHING at PAX?” Why, yes. Yes we are. And it’s no coincidence that Jesse will be at the conference during our launch. Stay tuned for special give-aways and promotions that we’ll have at PAX!

That’s all for now! Puzzle Club-Blog awaaaay!

Or: How we Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Vote.

We’re only 16 days from launch (!!) and we’re busy making sure everything works! Last week, you helped us test the submission system by signing up for an account and submitting your own game idea. This week, we have started our VERY FIRST VOTING SERIES, and we need YOU to vote on your favorite entries! 

All of the entries have been sorted into rooms, and it is now up to you (and your friends!) to vote for the game design ideas that you like the most! Laura wrote up a really nice explanation on how the voting system works, so you should check it out (and then get voting)!

As for Episode 1 news, things are coming along nicely. Voices have been recorded, animatics animaticated, and we have a working prototype of Laz0r Frogz! We’re now hard at work turning the prototype into an actual game.

Here’s a screenshot of the prototype (with VERY TEMPORARY art assets):

Brittany has also been rocking out with the environments for the animated segments of the episode. Here are a few (in-progress) assets:

Other than that, we’re just excited to be launching soon! Anxious, but excited. Anxcitement? In any case, we’re thrilled that you guys helped out with the submissions, and we look forward to seeing what game design wins. So go vote!

That’s all for this week! We’re Puzzle Club OUT.

Here’s the prompt for Episode 2’s submission:

Come up with an idea for a Puzzle Clubhouse game in which the player fends off garden gnomes. A Puzzle Clubhouse game is a small, 2D game revolving around a single, fun core mechanic. Each game takes about 5 minutes at most to play through, and is PG rated.

Head on over to the Test Site, sign up, and submit your idea! You have until Monday, August 13th (10am EST) to submit your idea!

Pi Cappa Eta! (PCH) – Beta beta beta!

Sorry - we can’t help but greek out. Especially with all the awesome stuff happening here at PCH.

As of TODAY, we’ve officially opened our test site to the public! “What does test site mean?” you ask? Well, faithful fans, it means that we are ready to show you some awesome stuff that’s not quite finished yet! So, don’t pass final judgement just yet, as we’re still flushing out site content (a.k.a and making things look goooooood).

“So, what IS finished?” you ask as you scratch your head. Right now, you can go to the site, create an account and start submitting content for the FIRST OFFICIAL EPISODE of Puzzle Clubhouse! This week, we are taking submissions for a game idea, and next week we will open up our voting system so YOU can start voting on what YOU like best out of all the fantastic submissions!

In other news, we’re continuing our work on Episode 1. We are officially in week 2 of our six-week production cycle, which means we’re about to start blocking, recording audio and properly developing the game.

Since last week we’ve finalized the script, created storyboards and the beginnings of an animatic, as well as started an initial prototype of the almost-soon-to-be-super-famous LazorFrogz!

The frogs are looking good. And full of Lazors. (Click for Big)

Here are some frames from our storyboard of the episode! (Click for Big)

Yesterday, we started our 25-days till launch countdown in true PCH fashion – with puzzles! Each day at 3PM, EST, we’ll be tweeting a puzzle or some sort of fantastically strange riddle and the first person to tweet the answer will win a 6-month subscription to Puzzle Clubhouse! Wowza!

Alright, that’s all for now - keep an eye on our sites as we get closer to P-Day (Puzzle Day?) on August 30th.

ALPHA BETA bye.

IT HAS BEGUN!

Puzzle Clubhouse officially opens its doors on August 30th at 10 AM, Eastern Standard Time at PAX Prime!

Now, we asked ourselves: what would be the best way to launch Puzzle Clubhouse? We had to think about this for a bit. Something about club sandwiches, maybe? Or how about some sort of fabulous, house-based makeover?

Suddenly, it hit us: Puzzles! We could do Puzzles! So, starting sometime next week, we’re going to be posting daily riddles and puzzles on our Twitter Stream - the first person to tweet us the correct answer will win a free Puzzle Clubhouse membership. Exciting! So definitely keep an eye on that.

If you haven’t already (or, if you want to watch the clock tick down closer and closer to launch), be sure to head on over to http://puzzleclubhouse.com.

PCH OUT.

Show me a Puzzle Clubhouse!

As of yesterday, we have officially begun production of Episode 1. We have early scripts written, and we are busy fleshing out the Laz0r Frogz game.

Also, the results of last weeks survey are in! We asked you for the Name of The Labyrinth deep within Puzzle Clubhouse as well as an object of great importance within the center of it. Our winners are:

The Forbidden Maze of Welcoming and A Map to the Center of the Maze! Huzzah! We’ve already incorporated both into the script, and once we have more we’ll definitely post it here on the blog.

Last Ptuesday, we mentioned that the very first survey was super helpful in determining our process for making episodes. Here are the results, with the most popular at the top:

1. Game Concept (High Level) - An idea for the core mechanic, goal, or theme of a mini-game.
2. Game Concept (Detailed) - A detailed idea for a mini-game.
3. Story Decisions - A suggestion for the direction of the story of Puzzle Clubhouse.
4. Story Content - An idea for a specific object, location, or event in an episode.
5. Character Design - An original concept for a character (visual and text).
6. Game Prototypes - A playable prototype for a mini-game.
7. Artwork - An original piece of artwork to be used directly in an episode.
8. Story Dialog / Lyrics - Original dialog or song lyrics to be used in an episode.
9. Art Design (Image) - An original rough sketch to be re-interpreted by a PCH artist.
10. Art Design (Text) - A text description, to be drawn by a PCH artist.
11. Audio (Music) - An original music track to be used in an episode.
12. Audio (Sound Effects) - An original sound effect to be used in an episode.
13. Audio (Dialog / Lyrics) - Submit dialog or lyrics (recorded by you).

As you can see, the things that you, our faithful survey takers, want to contribute to are the games. Which is good! We can’t really go around claiming that Puzzle Clubhouse is “Where the Players Make the Games!” without expecting the players to want to… well, make the games. At any rate, this confirmed our suspicions, and we made sure to include more game-related sockets in our episode planning.

Close on the heels of the games proper, we were surprised/pleased to find out all y’all wanted to help with various story decisions of PCH. As you can see, items 3-5 all involve the story in some way, and we are more than happy to oblige.

Something that (pleasantly) surprised us was item 6 - game prototypes. While we expected many people to want to help us with the design of the game, we didn’t think there’d be as big of a response for creating the actual prototypes. This is radical, because further down the line we hope to support ways for you guys to submit full-on games into PCH.

Finally, we have all the art and sound assets. We’re still going to include these, though! Just because they’re low on this list doesn’t mean that they should be excluded  - despite their ranking, each result had at least 1 person voting it as their favorite. The important thing for us is to make sure that all interests (within the community) are represented as we make games together.

This really gave us a better idea of how spread out community sockets for each episode. Episode sockets are an evolving thing, and as we get more community feedback from you guys we’ll be adjusting the kind of input and contribution (i.e, the proportion of each type of socket) for each episode.

Well, that ran long! Thanks for reading this week, and we’d like to say thanks again for taking the time for filling out the surveys we’ve been sending out. These early surveys are super important for us, and your opinions and contributions really do matter.

Until next time!

Hello again, soon-to-be survey takers!

The last survey was incredibly informative! It helped clarify exactly what you guys want to contribute to an Episode of Puzzle Clubhouse, and for that, we thank you!

We have returned with a second survey - a survey of great importance. We’re beginning to test the way we make episodes here, and a large part of that is the way we incorporate content that you guys generate. However, the infrastructure for submitting and voting is still under construction, so we’ll have to improvise.

Follow this attractive looking link to the survey, and select your favorite choices. Whichever options receive the most votes will determine how we write the script for our test episode!

So go forth, select your favorites, and we will all find out together if our episode-making schedule actually works!

Whos-day? Ptuesday.

Exciting news! Starting next week, we’re beginning production on EPISODE ONE! For this test episode, we’ve decided to use “Lazor Frogz” as the game, an idea that has been much discussed on this blog.

“But, why Lazor Frogz?” you might ask. Well, why NOT Lazor Frogz? They’re too cool not to be made.

“That’s not a real answer!” you shout in frustration. Well, okay, that’s fair. The real reason is that we want to pretend as if we had already run a Game Design submission and voting round for the episode, and Lazor Frogz fits the bill perfectly.

Basically, we need to know what kind of game we are making before anything else - it allows us to write the situation the characters are in, followed by script and storyboards. For the Test Episode, we know now that the episode will center around Lazor Frogz and how the characters react to them.

We want this test to be as true to the real thing as possible, and that includes incorporating community content. Therefore, we’re going to be asking for more calls for content related to this episode in the coming weeks. So be sure to read the blog regularly (which I know you do already).

We’ll see yous-day next Ptues… time.

Hark! A Ptuesday!

We’ve been getting a lot of good feedback from our survey we posted last week! Once we have given it a little more time, we’ll be sure to give you some insights on the results.

Meanwhile, our artists have been hard at work getting things all fancy looking for launch. In fact, these things are SO fancy that they can’t be contained on our computers, and have exploded onto this blog!

Keep in mind that these are still works in progress, so it’s quite likely that these will change as we approach launch.

Brittany, our lead artist, has been hard at work getting the look and feel of the website finished. If you want bigger versions of anything shown here, you can click on them for bigger versions.

Here are some of the mock-ups for the navigation bar that will be appearing on each page of the webpage. Here’s what it would look like if you were logged out.

Here’s what it would look like if you were logged in, but a free member.

And here’s what our subscribers would see!

She’s also just about finished with the Profile page, as well! This is what you’ll see when you click on a user’s profile.

Mike, our animator, has been hard at work rigging Jasper and Cornelius for animation. He’s made some lovely turnarounds for each character to show them off.

Jasper’s lookin’ good in that blue vest of his.

And Cornelius is as handsome as ever.

With all of this stuff coming together, we’re getting close to full-on production for the episodes! As we keep making cool stuff, we’ll be posting it to the blog (and our social sites), so keep an eye out!

Forsooth!

PS: If you haven’t done so already, be sure to do the survey.

Hi there!

Fairly short update this week! We held our first call with the Kickstarter Designers yesterday, and we were able to figure out what parts of Puzzle Clubhouse interest them the most.

Speaking of interests, we’ve made a little survey to find out  what sorts of content YOU GUYS want to submit to an episode of PCH. So, if you think you’re a bad enough dude to fill out your responses, it’s right here waiting for you.

It’s really important for us to know what you guys actually care about, so we can plan our upcoming episodes to have community sockets that match your interests.

That’s all!

PS: Do the survey.

Happy Pthird of July Everyone!

Exciting news! As of this week, we have a flash animator! Mike Sanchez has joined the team and will be making all those pretty pictures move on screen.

The PCH team is hard at work in the underground Puzzle Clubhouse lair. We’re currently doing a lot of the planning and pre-production that’s needed to find out if we can release the episodes on a three week schedule. Specifically, we’re figuring out when each piece of an episode needs to be made, what it will take to make said pieces, and when the PCH community should vote on them.

We’ve also been writing some of the early episode scripts, prototyping the video player, and doing animation tests. This is all super important to do as early as possible because we want to figure out what bumps we’ll be hitting along the way before launching the site.

Despite all this pre-production, Puzzle Clubhouse is especially difficult to plan for because we have to figure out when we can open up Sockets to be voted on. Some sockets, like art assets, can go in later in the pipeline, while sockets like story decisions, or game/art concepts have to be voted on before we can even start putting a script together. So,  this means we need to find out the absolute latest we can ask for community content, while still leaving us enough time to make it.

But, we really won’t know if our estimations are accurate until we actually MAKE an episode. So, we’re going to be making a prototype episode fairly soon (especially now that we have an animator) to test the framework we’ve set up and make sure that episodes can be made on this crazy-short timeline.

That way, if there’s an explosion during the launch of Puzzle Clubouse, it will be a CONTROLLED explosion - a beautiful, sky-filling explosion that is nice to look at for everyone not in the blast radius. Yeah, that’s it.

Anyway, that’s enough for this week. Next week we’ll let you guys know how this is all going.

Toodles!

Oh hi! I didn’t see you there. Please, come in.

We’ve been getting a few questions about what kind of games we’re planning to make for Puzzle Clubhouse. If you saw our last post, we answered exactly one of those questions!

We want to make games that are built around a simple, fun, and replayable mechanic. Sites like Bored.com and Orisinal have some good examples of this, so definitely check that site out for guidance.

This week, though, I’d like to talk a little more about how you guys will be helping us make the games, as well as the rest of Puzzle Clubhouse.

As we plan out each episode, we include a series of “sockets” for community participation. There are five main kinds of sockets. These are…

• Ideas for Visual Designs - You tell us what it should look like, and we make it
• Art Assets - You make the art, and it goes right into the episode
• Sound Assets - Sound effects, and even music to put right into the Episodes
• Story Decisions - Anything from What happens next, to a brand new character
• Game Designs - Prototypes or design documents

An episode can contain any number of sockets of each type. We’ll try to plan it out so that different types of sockets are broken up into each episode so everyone has something to be excited about. We also want to make sure the sockets we include are what the community at large want to be participating in, so we’ll be watching closely to see what you guys are interested in.

Our first few episodes will have smaller sockets to test the waters. However, we’ll be opening them up as we continue to get into the swing of things.

As an example, if we were to re-release Fishy Business, we could ask you to give us a bunch of different hats to put on the fish. Believe it or not, putting hats on DIGITAL fish is actually pretty easy. They hold still, unlike the… real… kind. Anyway, you’d give us pictures of hats, and after the voting process, we’d put them in the game. Viola! Fish hats!

Stuff like ready-made assets (sound, art) are fairly easy to implement, but major story decisions require more planning and time to incorporate. As we get better at making the episodes, we’ll open up more ways for you guys to participate. Our goal is to eventually have you guys making decisions that drive the story of Jasper and Cornelius, as well as submitting entire game prototypes into the episodes.

On the PCH Forums, we’ll have a “Game Design Garden” where you guys can collaborate to prototype awesome games with each other and get feedback on your ideas from the community (and us, the PCH dev team). Once we have a good handle on making the episodes, we’ll be opening up calls for content for prototypes from the Game Garden, and the stuff that you guys make there could find its way into episodes of PCH.

I think that does it for this week. As always, we’re also going to adjust how you guys participate based on what you guys are interested in, so let us know what kind of sockets you guys are most excited about, and we’ll MAKE YOUR WISHES COME TRUE.

See you next time!

Hello, Puzzle fans. I hope you’re all having a lovely Ptuesday.

This week, I wanted to get everyone familiarized with Puzzle Clubhouse. Some of the topics discussed in this article will be ones we get into greater detail in the coming weeks, so think of this week’s post as more of a “Puzzle Clubhouse 101.”

This tumblr blog will serve as our way of posting major Puzzle Clubhouse news, as well as a way for the whole team to post irregular updates about what they’re working on.

But first, let me introduce myself. I’m Dave, the community manager, and I’ll be acting as the point of contact for you guys to get in touch with the rest of the team.

We also have…

Jesse, the man with the plan and creator of Puzzle Clubhouse.
Laura, our lead designer and project director.
Patrick, designer.
Matt, programmer.
Mike, programmer.
Brittany, artist.
Dani, producer.
And Chuck, our executive producer.

Now that we’re finished with the formalities, I wanted to show you something that Patrick threw together to get new people on the project caught up to speed. This one-sheet was made to answer a lot of the questions that we had when we first joined the project, and we think that it does that pretty well!

It’s important to note that this sheet doesn’t answer everything, and nothing is set in stone – it serves as an initial framework for Puzzle Clubhouse. As we continue to get feedback from you guys, as well as find out what does and doesn’t work, it will change and grow.

(Click on the image for the big version - we also have it in PDF flavor, too).

In addition to the content on the one-sheet, we’ve been busy planning out how both the PCH production cycles and community input will actually work. We’re also continuing development on the website – we’re excited to say that, starting today, we are running our first internal playtest of the voting systems!

Also, please let us know what you guys are interested in hearing about! Everyone here on the team is super excited to start working with you, and it’s clear you guys are excited because you gave us money to make it. So, please, let us know!

Finally, as a reminder, we still have our Facebook Page and Twitter Page, so be sure to follow those. Oh! And don’t forget to check out Jasper and Cornelius’ twitter accounts!

See you next week!

Hello, Puzzle Aficionados! Welcome to the Puzzle Clubhouse Blog!

We’ll be using this as our main way of sharing PCH news with you (we’re finally going to stop using the PCH Kickstarter blog). Additionally, each of the developers of Puzzle Clubhouse will be posting (irregularly) about what they’re working on or whatever random thoughts they may be having at the time, so keep an eye out for that!