Hello everyone, it’s time for the weekly development update. Our featured image this week is from the collection of Steam Trading Cards for On Rusty Trails. After our first testing phase, we are working hard on squashing all the bugs and finishing a new beta version for a bigger test, with more people, in a few weeks. Meanwhile things have to move along outside the game, so we have started a “Coming Soon Taskforce”, consisting of Jones, Stamm and myself, to prepare our coming soon page on Steam.

As we always try to streamline processes and burden everyone as little as possible with these side tasks, I went and looked at the requirements to bring the page online and am now managing the progress by only relaying the tasks to Jones (for technical stuff) and Stamm (for art stuff) that I can not handle myself. Efficiency Pants. And that is where the Trading Cards are coming in. They are not actually a must-have to start a coming soon page but recommended anyway. Stamm has been preparing these and different other assets for the store page over the last week, while Jones had to enter the hardware requirements and I am writing a short and a long description of the game.

Steam Page 1

Since I am quite certain, Steam is not cool with developers publicly showing things from the admin/beta page, I took screenshots from the Tiny & Big Steam page, which everyone can access freely, so this is a safe way to show stuff. Note: It’s always advisable to stay on Steam’s good side as a developer 🙂 (that goes for your other business partners as well!)

This is pretty much how the On Rusty Trails beta site looks as well. Stamm added a trailer (big picture space) and screenshots (below the big picture, you know how Steam works), plus a background and the title image (on the right). I will add basic information (below the title image) and a release date has to be set – at least vaguely – before the site can go online. Tags are not required, as far as I know, but we will add some anyway, sooner or later.

Steam Page 2

This part is pretty much empty for On Rust Trails, only the info about the technical features (on the right) has been added. We are not 100% on the price yet, this is a topic for next week’s team meeting. Reviews will be added, as soon as they come in, which will be closer to the release date in summer.

Steam Page 3

And the rest of the page, which is really mostly blank for On Rusty Trails, at this point. Only the system requirements are up. The “About This Game” section is what I was referring to as long description earlier. I will use our On Rusty Trails flyers – for trade fairs etc. – as a basis and give the text a little overhaul, since the cards a from a while back and there is always room for improvement.

Bonus material

Here is bonus material, not only for the blog, but on Steam. Through the whole Trading Cards shenanigans on Steam comes with a few perks for all the treasure hunters. Collecting the sets will earn you cool badges for your Steam profile and even cooler emoticons for the Steam chat.  And here is a selection of both.

That’s it for this week. Make sure to check back on the blog next Sunday.