What Has Breadbros Games Been Up To Exactly?
What Has Breadbros Games Been Up To Exactly?
Look! Our first mailing list update in — checks watch — ever!
(Skip to the end for the TL;DR)
Sully, A Very Serious RPG - A History
Long Time No Hear; What Happened?
We'll post a more detailed history in a later newsletter update. But the short of it is that when we got funding from PlayStation Mobile, it wasn't enough by half (in fairness, we did ask for the full sum).
So, we paid the artists and musicians, but the core team was working pro bono. Right about when PSM died, the core team was destitute and had to get full-time jobs again.
We haven't ever stopped working on the game, but instead of pumping out a completed zone every 4-6 weeks, it became more like a zone every 1-1.5 years.
(The Project Managers out there either just gasped, are shaking their heads, or both.)
During the pandemic, we realized that our pace was just not going to cut it for shipping any game — and that finishing games was more important than having stressful jobs!
Why Haven't We (the Audience) Heard About This?
Honestly, we've always struggled with self-promotion and communication. Nobody on the team has public relations it in their genes, no matter how social we may or may not be in person.
I mean: this is the first mailing list / newsletter post. Ever.
With how slow development was during those middle years, it felt like a waste of energy to try and promote instead of doing dev. (Although, there was an effort to post the same thing to Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/Imgur/etc for a few weeks in 2017, and another failed attempt to hire a social media contractor in 2020.)
Some jokes haven't changed in 25 years!
So What's Changed?
Well, we're working on Breadbros Games full time now! And it's become clear that to succeed we have to tell people about it.
Seems obvious, right?
Unfortunately for us, the internet has never been more saturated with games, nor more... fractured?
Honestly, getting attention in 1997, even by accident, was a lot easier than trying to intentionally get it now.
Coupled with the rapid... deterioration... of Twitter, marketing as a small indie firm is harder than ever.
The other creators we've talked to have all agreed: nobody really knows how to market their games at the moment — and haven't for over a year.
So yeah, we're gonna do this the hard way: by trying, and trying, and trying.
And we could use YOUR help, just by sharing and posting.
But first, we'd like to inundate you with pictures and videos, so you have some faith in us. See what we've put here... and the social media accounts will shortly awaken.
And then give you public demos so you can actually play and talk about! To others!
Videos are TALL these days (our Attract Mode formatted for TikTok)
Okay, What's the Current State of the Game?
The mainline game is ~80% complete.
There are 4 dungeons, one town, and 3 "setpiece long cutscenes" left to complete. The optional/side quests are sitting around 30% complete (but the fishing subsystem is nearly complete!)
Right now our current efforts on Sully are focused on completing a solid public demo to release on Steam and Itch.io for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
We've been through a round of alpha testing and we're really pleased with how the demo is being received!
We've also discovered that some testers machines have Very Strange Obstruction Errors™, so we're working to fix that before we do a second round of testing for the demo.
Pretty art is pretty
Hey, I Pre-Ordered This Like a Decade Ago!
Fair point! As a show of good faith to our earliest supporters, we're offering a full refund if you'd like it!
If you want a refund, contact us at contact@breadbros.com.
If you're contacting us from an email that's different from the one you pre-ordered with, just mention the old email so we can check it off.
If you opt for a refund: you'll still get a copy of the game on the platform of your choice! (Or, for the two of you that pre-ordered two copies: you'll still get those two copies on any combination of platforms of your choice — including two on the same platform, if you want to gift one.)
If you don't want a refund: you'll get two codes on any combination of platforms you'd like! (If you pre-ordered twice: that'll be four codes, just to be clear.)
But wait, there's more!
Regardless of that choice: everyone who has previously pre-ordered is allowed access to the non-public Windows demo right now, and is eligible to opt-in for both the Beta program for the demo (soon), and/or the Beta program for the full game (less soon). You opt-in by: emailing us as such!
So yeah, we have the list of y'all. Email us at contact@breadbros.com if you want a refund and/or a download link and/or want to be active in our beta programs!
Solid advice, really...
So, When's the Release Date?
Release Date: Unannounced
Yeah, yeah. I know.
The thing is: there's still a bit of work left.
And we have other unannounced things in the works splitting our attention.
We'll talk about that later, but it's something that makes a LOT of sense for us to do.
That said, there is a full time team member working on Sully itself, so it is moving forward!
This game has been (and continues to be) a labor of love.
It's not only aiming at being everything we loved about SNES/Genesis-era jRPGs, but also something we want to see as a critical success. We've already cut a lot of things for scope, but we are trying to hit the high notes of what we consider the three big cornerstones of a good jRPG: Story, Exploration, and Battles.
(A future newsletter will go into that philosophy.)
As we spin up this marketing apparatus, we'll be sharing progress more openly, talking about the game, our development methodologies, and our tech.
Because, hey, if you're still here and you're interested, we should make some noise. Together.
Okay, I think... I think I hit all the notes for a first newspost / high-level explanation.
TL;DR
- Sully, A Very Serious RPG is still in active development!
- A public demo is on the way
- Very hard to do dev while having a day job — so we quit day jobs
- We're historically very bad about marketing and public engagement; we're turning that around, starting with this newsletter post!
- If it wasn't obvious: the PlayStation Mobile version will NOT be shipping
- Everyone who pre-ordered Sully, A Very Serious RPG :
- Can contact us via email and receive a refund (because it's been so long), and will still receive a redeemable code on the platform of your choice!
- If you don't, you'll receive two codes; can be same platform (share with your friends) or different (forget friends, get it on Steam and a console!)
- Is entitled to be a beta tester!
- Contact us via email if you want into that mailing group
- We're not actively testing ATM. The first group of tests will be on finalizing the public demo, but we are getting our ducks in a row there
- Can contact us via email and receive a refund (because it's been so long), and will still receive a redeemable code on the platform of your choice!
We love you and thank you for your continued support!
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