Hey guys,
Bit of a quiet week this time but you'll see that I have something planned for you anyway. Firstly fanart!
Fanart Showcase:
by StarNamedSun - (Source)
by BAD_WOLFY - (Source)
by NoodleBot - (Source)
by PeanutMacabre - (Source)
Top Supporters (last 30 days):
- 44 charged stickers
- 43 charged stickers
- 42 charged stickers
Thank you to everyone for placing charged stickers on my posts!
POPGOES Evergreen:
Okay so it's actually been a while since I've had to say this, but this week there's not much new stuff to talk about unfortunately! Stuff has been happening behind the scenes but almost all of it is a secret. But I won't leave you with nothing. Instead, I'd like to give you a bit of an updated FAQ featuring questions that I've heard most during 2023.
A lot of you guys support POPGOES, but struggle to keep up with all of the news and updates that I give out. Fair enough! So I hope this selection of questions helps get some information across and clears up some confusion.
When will POPGOES Evergreen release?
I have no idea and I've never had any idea. It's no secret that this game is taking a long time to develop, but that is an element shared by many of the Fanverse games. These are big projects, and in the case of Evergreen it's an ambitious game handled by many people around the world with a very low budget. I can't give a prediction for when Evergreen may release, but I will continue to commit to sharing updates every week so you have the best idea possible. And hopefully the content we release in the meantime (videos, teasers, merchandise, events) can tide you all over.
How much of the game is finished?
The Game Jolt page for Evergreen says that the game is "early in development" and this is accurate. The entire game is planned out (nothing is being added or removed), a ton of visuals are finished (including many character models, collectibles, environments), but there are large chunks of the game that we aren't close to completing. Since you all love percentages, I would say Evergreen is about 25% finished. But the speed of completion is not consistent. The post-night sections of this game have been the biggest trouble. Once those are completed, the percentage may jump up to 50%. And then completing things may increase even faster. But for now, about a quarter of the game is done.
How many characters are in Evergreen, and are they finished?
Evergreen has quite a huge selection of characters. I would compare it to FNAF2. There are of course the Popgoes animatronics, the Toy and False animatronics, and lore-centric characters who you don't actively "survive" against, like Simon and quite a few others. We have finished creating all of the characters I just listed, and Alexis is currently working on the "few others". I'm extremely happy with all of them.
Are you working on the gameplay?
If we need to workshop a particular concept that we're not sure works in Clickteam or not, Emil will attempt to program it so we can know for sure. This has happened a few times. But ultimately we are not programming the game at the moment. This is for a few reasons, but it's mostly because Emil has other things to work on and he prefers to work on games when finalised visuals are ready. This is pretty much how all of Emil's games are created, including ones I've contributed to like CHASE Animatronics and Chef Wanted. It's a unique process but it does work. It's not something you need to worry about, even if it sounds counterintuitive.
What other games do I need to play before Evergreen? And what games does Evergreen take into account?
Before playing Evergreen, you should probably play through POPGOES Arcade on Steam. It is a direct "prequel" to Evergreen and gives some important information about the rebooted POPGOES story. The new POPGOES series takes place in something called the CPU, which stands for Candy + Popgoes Universe. Indeed that means these games take place in the same universe as Five Nights at Candy's, though we don't take advantage of this very much (yet). It's also worth mentioning that only Five Nights at Freddy's 1, 2, and 3 are taken into account for this universe. Meaning FNAF4, Sister Location, and future FNAF entries do not exist in our lore. But to fully enjoy POPGOES Evergreen when it releases, all you need to play or watch is FNAF1, 2, 3, and POPGOES Arcade!
What platforms will Evergreen and Arcade be available on?
POPGOES Evergreen will be a paid-for title by default. It will be purchasable on Steam, but we will likely release a free demo for it on Game Jolt (if we're able to remove all of the "paid" content from the build). I have no idea how much the game will cost on Steam but I imagine it'll be somewhere between 5 and 15 dollars. As for ported platforms, the plan for both of these games was always to have them release on mobile and major consoles (PS4, Xbox One X/S, and Switch). Right now we are working on mobile ports for POPGOES Arcade. Once those are finished, we will move onto console releases. Evergreen is a much more complicated game and I'm honestly not sure how the ports will go for that. Best case scenario is that it will also be released for those platforms but I will keep you all updated. To be clear, these ports will release as soon as they are finished. We don't plan on waiting for a simultaneous platform release (releasing the game on all ported platforms at once).
Will Evergreen and Arcade be translated to other languages?
Unfortunately it's basically impossible for Arcade to be translated to other languages due to how it's programmed and how the sprites work in-game. I have personally tried mocking up some alternate language screenshots of Arcade and it ends up looking ridiculous. Thankfully, you always have an indefinite amount of time to read the text in Arcade. So if you don't speak English, you could theoretically use an image-to-translation program to understand the game. Evergreen is different as most of the translatable text would be through dialogue or large text objects in Clickteam. It's more likely that translations, mostly through a modifiable subtitle system, will work in Evergreen. But it's not something we're able to commit to at the moment.
What kind of post-game content exists in Evergreen? How do I get phones or trading cards?
There is an in-game currency in Evergreen that I currently call "coins" or "Popcoins". It is basically a universal point system which increases when you do a good job in the game. If you complete a night, you'll get some coins, but you'll get even more if Popgoes didn't print any parts, or if Sara hardly moved in the vents, things like that. These coins can be used to purchase phones directly (though some of them will be locked behind progress or achievements), or you can purchase trading card packs which involves some randomness. When you beat Evergreen you'll be able to access some challenges like Endless Night which will give you plenty of coins based on how long you survive. There will be some other goodies too, but that's the gist of it. The end goal, I suppose, is collecting all phones and cards.
Will we see Gem Stone, Grave Stone, the Luxes...? What about Manora and Holly?
The characters in the original POPGOES which basically only served a purpose in the Extras screen are NOT returning. Gem Stone, Grave Stone and the Lux Animatronics are not in Evergreen. Simon is back, but he is completely redesigned. Manora and Holly appear in Evergreen in the form of posters, stickers, in-game merchandise, and other decorations. They don't have animatronic models and they are not enemies.
What merchandise is coming in the future?
So far, POPGOES has been graced with some pretty awesome merch. The first product was a pair of Funko plushies, for Popgoes the Weasel and Blake the Badger (the 2016 design...). Then we had a Popgoes Youtooz figure, followed most recently by a Hex plushie of Popgoes as well. In the future you will see a Youtooz pin set of Popgoes, Blake, Sara, Saffron, Stone, and Manora, as well as a Youtooz plushie of a cute sitting Popgoes the Weasel. I've also spoken to Youtooz about future vinyl figures, and one of Blake popping up in 2023 or 2024 seems likely. Additional pin sets may also happen, and I'm in the middle of designing one for Halloween (no idea if it'll happen though). I think if the Hex plushie for Popgoes does well, additional plushies from Hex also may happen, and if they do I imagine Blake will be the next one. Unfortunately I've not heard ANY updates from Funko so I'm assuming they are not working on any more Fanverse stuff.
Will there be a demo/trailer/beta?
A free demo on Game Jolt is likely, since the game is planned to be paid-only. A trailer will of course happen but we are a ways off. A public beta will not happen, not even for influencers. We will test in private and release when it is stable, like POPGOES Arcade.
Well, I hope this was useful! If I see a question that keeps popping up in the comments, then I may add it to this FAQ. I will leave you all with this to discuss:
POPGOES Arcade:
Unfortunately I have no news to share regarding the ports for Arcade, but I wanted to share that during the Steam Spring Sale, sales of Arcade increased by over 5x for a few days!
A huge thank you to everyone buying, playing, gifting, completing POPGOES Arcade. We're very proud of the finished product.
Merch:
To increase the chance of future POPGOES Hex plushies, I feel compelled to remind you that the Popgoes the Weasel Hex plushie is available to order right now!
Popgoes the Weasel Hex Plushie
As always, if you have any questions about the Hex plushies, please let me know and I'll be happy to help. We need these plushies to sell well to prove to companies like this that the Fanverse is high-quality, popular, and profitable! Thank you to everyone who has ordered so far - I can't wait to see photos of these guys when they are released.
That's it for today. Admittedly quite an uneventful devlog, but next week may be more interesting. We're getting closer to finishing the secret side-project thing that I talked about in previous devlogs...
- Kane
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