Happy New Year! š As the holiday season comes to a close, itās fair to say that the last year wasnāt easy. Even then we all withstood its misfortunes, pulling our best, the world kept spinning, and so did our lilāstudio at Whales And Games!
First off, we wanted to thank everyone for the support that youāve given us through the past year! Thank you for your comments, reviews, art gifts, trades, commissions, and your participation with our community! Itās these interactions that our studio is built-upon, and we treasure each and everyone one of them. š
As we start this new year, thereās a lot of stuff we want to announce and tell you what weāve been up too! If we were to make a quick bullet list, itād be something like this:
Weāve rebooted Bunny Splash Casinoās development, our adults-only management-simulation and visual novel game, back in November! Weāve also ditched the Bunny Copulation brand and want, even with the gameās themes, to be proud that it is a Whales And Games project!
We want to give a fresh coat-of-paint to the Whales And Games branding over the year! Weāve refreshed our characters and some of our presentation last year, and now, we want to bring it to our core brand as well, especially as we start hosting commercial projects.
We want to address our previous projects like Roboto Repairaton and Colossorama! If possible and without conflicting with Bunny Splash Casinoās development, weād like to finally release them.
Global Game Jamis coming up and being online for the first time! We definitely want to get in on that game jam!
And much more…!
These are very exciting times for our team! However, if thereās something weāve learned with Whales And Games is that we frequently get ahead of ourselves. As much as weād like to get into the details of each point, we want to get what weāre working on is bright and shiny before we show it off to you! āØ
Our 4th anniversary will be happening in just a couple of months in March! When we get there and over the course of the next few months, weāll tell you about what weāve got on the blender! š
Hold on a bit longer to your sails, alright? If not, come down to the deck at our Whales And Games Discordor follow us on Twitter! Weāve been sharing development details more casually over on those places, so if you want a few sneak peeks, feel free to join in!
If youāre looking for Bunny Splash Casinonews thereās also its own Discordand Twitter! Since it’s an adult-only game, we thought it’d be better to keep them in separate, age-gated channels.
Hereās to a happy new year, and a whale of 2021! š³
Well, it seems that the dogs have come back to roost. (We know itās a chicken thing, but accept the analogy, itāll make sense)! And now, we can finally rest knowing weāve got the Ludum Dare results for Woofice Chair! (told you itād work). š¶
Itās always good to look back at and compare these, since theyāre easy-to-understand metrics.They can practically show if weāve improved or changed in certain aspects of development.
So letās see how we performed withWoofice Chair!shall we? āØ
Ranking-wise, this is the highest weāve got at Humour, which is fantastic! But hereās some fun statistical data, complete with our over-analysis of the situation.
At some point during a previous Ludum Dare, we made a Google Sheet to write down the results weāve got in the past entries. It even got conditional formatting to give us better visual clues of important numbers! Gold cells represent our best at a jam yet, while red represents our worst:
Rating-wise, this is our bestOverallgame with 4.15 (up from Wizsnooksā 4.071). Itās also our game with the best results inGraphics, Humour and Mood. Yet, ranking wise, weāve got past games that did far better in rankings.
Our ābest gameā in ratings is scoring lower in rankings likely for things mentioned before. The quality of good, fun games seem to be on the rise, likely as a result of people participating constantly. And thatās great! That only means that jams are getting better and better! There were also way more participants this time around that there were in any of our previous participants. Such increase is most likely the result of a certain ongoing worldwide unavoidable phenomenon. š
Finally, regarding the given ratings, we wanted to be more calm on this jam for a while.That’s why we didnāt rate as much as when we made Jazzy Beats. Because of the good words we received, we felt we needed to give back the good vibes and played a lot more games! A bit too late to catch up, but we still had a blast with your submissions!
For the time being, weāre rearranging some stuff as we get back on the commercial game development track. If youād like to stay in contact with us, consider following us on Twitter! Youāre invited to join us for a chat at our Discord Server as well! Weāre preparing some Halloween goodies, so you should really stop by!
Thanks again for all the good will this time around! Wish you all the best of luck on the next Ludum Dare! š³
All proceeds go towards NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Community Bail Fund, helping support #BlackLivesMatter. Our society has to continue denouncing racial violence, harassment and toxicity. We all deserve to live with dignity in a better world, and we too, will continue seeking for ways to make the world a better place.
If youāre looking for more ways that you can help, support the movement or educate yourself and others about current events, you can find more information here.
Happy 3rd Anniversary, Whales And Games! It’s been three years since we founded our studio and have developed over ten games since! We can’t thank every enough for being part of it!
Going into our 4th year, we want to focus again on games. Primarily, Bunny Splash Casino but we’ll also be developing other one-off projects for Whales And Games such as Roboto Repairaton! We’re also celebratingwith a dedicated server eventand participating in theGDC Relief Bundle helping developers in need!
Happy 3rd Anniversary, Whales And Games! Just a few weeks ago we were celebrating the first anniversary of Whipped And Steamy. Now, mere weeks later, weāre commemorating the three-year milestone of our studioās founding! š„
It’s been one huge adventure ever since weāve gotten started with Whales And Games, from the time we got started with game jams and academic projects, to kicking off this new year full-time with the studio. Weāve had a lot of highlights over these past years releasing ten different games, supporting our ever-growing community and expanding our cast of characters!
While this year we donāt have any surprise announcements like sudden game releases, we still wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate this milestone! And it wouldn’t be a celebration of ours if we didnāt have some stylized artwork to share! Hereās Whalechan with a bunch of wrapped gifts picked just for you for our 3rd Anniversary! š
Credits from left to right and top to bottom: āBuns Bunsā by yolk-sac, āJazzy and Bluessomā by MDLune, āCheqmateā by CKoenig88, āJazzy and Bluessomā by Dxmyxix, āWhalechanā by SweetKooky, āCaffieā by tofumeat, āWhalechanā by nyancatimusprime and āMonetizationmanā by mot-bot
However, we feel the actual āGamesā part of Whales And Gamescould have gone been better during the past few months, and we feel we could definitely be pushing for more game-related content! This year, we want to make a complete 180-degree turn, and put (almost) all of focus on the games again.
Welcome to the #BunnySplashCasino, a full-blown, adults-only erotic management simulation novel game where becoming rich is secondary to pleasure in this paradise of splashy lust!
Weāve only now begun work on it and weāll showcase more of the game as it starts taking shape! ā¤ļøš pic.twitter.com/kfTOOL80w9
ā Bunny Copulation šš (@BunnyCopulation) March 18, 2020
Weāre currently getting started with the proper development of the game, and over the next few weeks we will be closing in concept art, key art, finishing off design decisions and getting started with prototypes!
If you havenāt done it yet, follow our new Twitterand Discordfor Bunny Copulation as well be sharing progress on it as they start happening!
While we will be relaying most of our attention on Bunny Splash Casino, we will still continue supporting Whales And Games and making new character-focused art! āØ
Like weāve mentioned in the Bunny Splash Casino announcement post, weāre also currently getting some final changes done to the post-jam version of our Global Game Jam game, Roboto Repairaton before we get it released. These changes are practically done and once the game gets out there, it will mark our 11th Game!
In case you havenāt seen some footage of Roboto Repairaton from our social media yet, Roboto Repairaton is both a single-player and couch co-op robot assembly game! Thereās a barely functional factory that can mend and fix all kinds of robots, but putting them all into repair assembly is easier said than done! Grab robot pieces across conveyor belts and assemble robots together, but watch out for factory malfunctions! š¤
Roboto Repairaton will be the first of the game jam games weād like to get underway this year, and we hope to get even more done as the year progresses! However, if thereās anything that experience has told us from this past year, is to stop promising bogus-dates until weāre absolutely sure. Youāll have to keep an eye out for those!
Like all of our major celebrations, we are also running a small Discordserver event alongside all of this! Participating on it will grant you the Anniversary Guest š role!
Head over to the #commands channel in the server and leave a nice celebratory message using the !celebrate command to claim it! We have all the instructions over at the server!
We also have some of our games as part of Game Dev Worldās GDC Relief Bundle over on itch! Like many other developers, our opportunity to attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was postponed because of COVID-19 pandemic concerns. While it didnāt affect us as much, a lot of disempowered developers were financially hit hard with travel and visa cancellations. Thus, we wanted to help contribute to ease their woes.
If you have some extra pocket money around that youāve saved for having stayed at home, weād be thankful in the name of all of thegame developer community if you could dedicate some of it to the cause! š
We have a great year on the horizon, and we want to make sure we start the year on the right note and aim to continue helping the world! Over the next few weeks we will be getting development in Bunny Splash Casino and sealing-off Roboto Repairaton for shipping, and weāre looking forward to a year full of pleasant surprises!
Thank you once again for a happy 3rd anniversary and year year, and we hope that you stick along for another one discovering a sea of fun! As always, you can keep up with our Discordcommunity, Twitter or Facebookpage for more!
Finally, remember to wash your hands and stay safe! Cheers! š³
Weāre soft-announcing āBunny Splash Casinoā and theāBunny Copulationā, our new adults-only game and brand. You can start following its channels on TwitterandDiscord as we get started on the project!
During that frozen-development period, we started considering the future of the game and what we could do with its themes. Whipped And Steamy left us with a taste to explore the adult game genre even further, and we felt the management side of the game could see a complete remake from the ground up to feature even better gameplay.
If you havenāt caught on yet based on the screenshots above and from all the build-up, weād like to make the āsoft-announcementā that weāve begun working on Bunny Splash Casino!
Soft-Announcing āBunny Splash Casinoā and the āBunny Copulationā!
Bunny Splash Casino is our spiritual-successor to Whipped And Steamy, a full-blown, adults-only, erotic management simulation novel!Bunny Splash Casino was designed from the ground-up with a new emphasis on management and simulation gameplay and featuring an even stronger adults-only label on top. It takes all of the ideas we’ve had for Whipped And Steamy and turns them into an even stronger game.
As teased in our Lunar New Year celebrations, this is the game we have planned to be our first commercial game, and weād like to release it on storefronts (Steam, Itch, ā¦) later down the road. When time is right, weāll be talking about how we plan to manage demos, roadmap and more. Yet, at this moment, it’s still too early to make any formal announcements.
Given how Bunny Splash Casino is going full hands-on with adult content, we thought itād be best to subsidize it to itās own sub-brand. This way, you know exactly what to expect when you look up either.
For that matter, we created Bunny Copulation, our (appropriately named) new brand that will focus exclusively on adult-only media like Bunny Splash Casino. It’s still the same crew you know from Whales And Games but with new channels specifically marked for when nobody’s around!
Despite this announcement, Bunny Splash Casino and the Bunny Copulation are still in their early days. This announcement is more of a āYes, weāre working on something!ā than a full reveal, and weāll showcase more of the game as it starts taking shape as weāre only now preparing to begin hands-on development.
In case youād still like very-very-early-access look into what weāre doing, you can follow us on our new dedicated Bunny Copulation Twitterand Discord! Be wary of the āAdults Only!ā label on them though! These channels will also be the new place for Whipped And Steamy discussion and art going forward!
What happens to āWhales And Gamesā?
Even with our newfound plans with Bunny Copulation and us beginning development on Bunny Splash Casino, we still want to carry forward with the main Whales And Games branding that weāve built across the last years.
While our efforts will be focused primarily on developing Bunny Splash Casino, weāre still eager to continue developing other safe-for-work projects! We want to continue participating in game jams, making Whales And Games art, and to continue developing other one-off projects as time moves forward (we do want to make that Trivia game).
In fact, we’re already currently working on improving our Global Game Jam game, Roboto Repairaton, with some few quality-of-life additions, and that one will be coming out soon as well!
As impressive as it seems, our Whales And Gamesāthird anniversary is coming up on March 30th and there is a lot changing going forward. Earlier this year, we finally had the opportunity to start investing into Whales And Games full-time, and we will be going hands-deep (no pun intended) into Bunny Splash Casino development and beyond!
We hope that you look forward to what we have in store! As always, you can join our usual Whales And Games discussion channels over on Twitter and Discord, or if you want to keep up with brand new Bunny Copulation news, you can also join its new respective Twitterand Discord!
Q&A, because you likely have a ton of questions again?
