Welcome to the other side of launch! What a whirlwind of a time it's been, we're over 1000 concurrent players, almost at 100 reviews and overall feedback has been so incredible!
We're all genuinely so grateful to everyone who has picked up a copy of Dupery and left us reviews. The indie world is amazing but difficult and we wouldn't be here without you. We just need 2 more reviews to get to 100 👀 
Totally not using Hope to guilt trip for reviews. Nope, just a cute picture of Hope to light up everyone's Fridays:)Anyway, on to the dev spotlight! For those of you new here, every week we meet up here in The Speakeasy, where we ask the devs some questions and get some insights on the game. We've had an ARG spotlight for a long time too while it was running and this will be the first week without one! And then we do a little community art spotlight too:)
This time we have TWO questions for you guys!
Do you have any game before and afters to share?
Luke: Before making the game virtually, Lydia and I decided to make a physical version to see if it was fun and consider if it was worth making!
The other really useful thing about making physical prototypes is it really helps cement the concept of the game and helps you find flaws, and iterate ideas.
You can see some classic roles, all of which made it into the final game, as well as the reputation bar which also translated pretty well! You can also pretty easily spot the difference between Lydia and my handwriting haha hers is so much neater!
Here's a bunch more of the roles. I wrote them out first on a notepad and then Lydia kindly wrote them out several times on cards so we could simulate a variety of cases. (We needed multiple so roles could pretend!) All of this was set up on one Saturday, and it proved itself well when Matt visited to try it out!
Lydia: I think the final decision to really pivot to this idea from our previous one happened in our friend's car when we were pottering down the motorway, on our way home. Obviously, we only have such critical meetings in the most professional of settings.
Luke: We made a demo within a month which looked like this:
This was very WIP but was pretty functional if I remember correctly.Then we focused on polishing and testing it until we released it in its demo form, which eventually ended up looking like it does today: (29/05/26)
Much nicer! We used to also have noise on top of this but it personally messed with my eyes and made recordings compress strangely so we turned it off by default, you can try it out in the settings!And our other question, this one comes live from the devs at launch yesterday! How are you feeling now that the game is out??
Lydia: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaa......
Luke: I feel excited! But also very weird, it's out now and I really hope people like it (and I also apologize to all the Mac users!) Big thank you to everyone who has picked it up.
Matt: Stressed! But good. I think it's one of our most successful launches in terms of things not breaking as much. I hope people enjoy!
Peep our little video of pressing the Release button! https://www.instagram.com/p/DehUwFLOztE/
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As promised. Community Art Spotlight!
This one's by Discord community member, Wind, so sick!!
Psst, The Yogscast are live right now with LOADS of Dupery so be sure to pop in and have a little nosy at what they're up to!
https://www.twitch.tv/yogscast
