A look back at some of the highlights and hurdles I faced in 2023.
Sally Face / Portable Moose Retrospective
The history of Sally Face and the developing journey of Portable Moose from 2015 to 2022.
2021 Review & Updates
It’s been a year of ups and downs and almost nothing went as planned. Though, there were still plenty of bright moments.
In January, Sally Face launched on the Nintendo Switch! If you read the last blog post you know that the Switch port was originally planned for Halloween 2020 but we kept running into various issues and the pandemic slowed it down too. There’s a lot involved with a new launch. It’s a bittersweet experience because it’s exciting to be on a new platform but also a lot of work to promote, cut trailers, sending out endless emails, etc. Also the stress of bugs popping up on new platforms. Dealing with launches is one of my least favorite parts of game development because of these things and also one of my favorite parts because that’s when the game connects to new people.
TIKTOK BUMP
Around April, I started noticing a lot more activity from the fandom and a bump in sales on all platforms. After some investigating and comments from fans, I discovered that the hashtag #SallyFace had gone viral on TikTok, with over 2.2 Billion views! (now over 2.6B) That’s an absolutely insane number that I never imagined to see in relation to Sally Face. Because of this and the launch on Nintendo Switch, 2021 saw the largest increase in fan size, more than any other year. In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not on TikTok. I thought about joining but someone else is using my name and pretending to be me and TikTok refuses to remove them. So that kinda soured my desire to join. #salty
SPOTIFY
By fan request, mid-year, I added the Sally Face soundtrack to Spotify, which has over 12.3M streams so far! The soundtrack was also added to other platforms as well, like Amazon and Apple Music.
MONSTER PARTY!
My other team, Wither Studios, began the process of choosing our next game. We decided to go with one of the ideas I pitched, called Monster Party. It’s a horror party game with tactical elements and minigames. You may have seen me sharing some of the concept art I’ve done for it so far and you can follow the progress by following @WitherStudios on social media. I’m pretty excited for this one, it’s gonna be a lot of fun!
TRANSLATIONS AND PORTING
French and Spanish translations for Sally Face were completed but they took more time than planned for. So because of this, they ended up running into the porting process. Which means, those changes are now tied up in the ports. So the new translations will launch when the new platforms do.
The PlayStation and Xbox porting is also taking much longer than expected. I hired a team called Knights of Unity to handle the technical end of porting and they are doing a great job but we keep running into frustrating issue after issue with the certification process. I can’t say which platform or share many details because of NDA stuff but it’s been a nightmare to deal with. The original goal was to launch in September/October but now I’m hoping for Q1 of 2022. I don’t have any solid date yet but will hopefully have more to share within the next month or two.Â
ART BOOK UPDATE
The Sally Face Art Book was finished earlier this year and we were working with a potential publisher but unfortunately that publisher backed out. Brand Central is in the process of helping me find a new publisher now. With this setback, I’m not sure when the book will come out but I’ll share any big news as it happens. Fingers crossed for a 2022 release.
I had hoped to start production on Sally Face 2 this year, but with everything else getting delayed, I haven’t been able to start on it yet. I need to wrap up the ports for the first game before diving into production on the second one. However, I did work a lot on the script this year and have the first draft for the full game written out. I’m excited for the direction it goes in and to be able to explore more of the ideas I had for this world. My goal with this game will be to contract out some of the work so that SF2 doesn’t take me as long to develop as the first one did (5 years on my own). If you’re interested in working with me, feel free to send your portfolio to contact@portablemoose.com. It’s still a bit early, so I may not send replies yet, but I will be on the lookout, especially for artists who can match the Sally Face style.Â
OTHER FUN STUFF!
I’m also working on a new solo / Portable Moose game! This one is smaller and more horror leaning than Sally Face but that’s all I’ll say for now. I like the idea of having multiple projects going, so that I can bounce around and keep the motivation and creativity flowing. I wanna try to follow the ideas that really grab my attention and work on those projects because that’s where the best work will come from. My priority is still finishing up the stuff with Sally Face and then developing Sally Face 2. But having this small project and also working on Monster Party on the side will give me needed breaks from the larger projects.
Additionally, I have a couple other secret things I’ve been working on, related to Sally Face. Some of which will be revealed soon! So keep those eyes peeled!
NEW VIDEOS
I created a few new videos this year, as a way to have some fun with fans. Sally Face fans are the best and it’s always a pleasure to interact with this community.
Thanks for the love and support and I hope everyone has a great holiday!
đź’™ Steve
SALLY FACE ON NINTENDO SWITCH!
I’m happy to be able to announce that Sally Face is coming to Nintendo Switch on January 21st, 2021!
I’ve been working hard on this port, with the help of my good friend Mike Thomas (Wither Studios programmer). Mike helped me with the programming that was needed to get the game running on the Switch. This is actually the first time that anyone but myself has worked on Sally Face! Mike’s help was essential in this endeavor.
Since working on the console was a completely new venture for both of us, the process took quite a lot of work, research and troubleshooting. My original goal was to release on Halloween 2020 but unfortunately there were some unforeseen snags in the process that prevented me from releasing then (including some pandemic related stuff). Though, I’m thrilled to have a game coming out on console and I’ll be looking forward to more people being able to enjoy Sally Face!
2020 Update
It’s been quite a crazy year! I hope that everyone is doing okay and staying safe. Outside of the chaos, I’ve been working on a lot of various projects this year. I also moved to a new location, right as the pandemic and lockdowns were starting. So that was a little stressful but ended up going well. The projects I’ve been working on include a Sally Face console port, a short horror game, the Sally Face art book, IMMURE: Part Two and others.
A SHORT HORROR GAME
Touched By An Outer God is an action-horror FPS where you kill monsters and eat their parts to become stronger. I made this with Wither Studios as part of the Dread X Collection 2. We made this game in a few intensive weeks and also spent some time beforehand learning new tools. Then another couple weeks for playtesting and bug fixes. It was fun to design and work on this small project that we could just bust out like that. I’m very proud of the end product, I think it turned out pretty cool! Feedback from players has been very positive as well, which is always great to see. It was a pleasure working with the other devs in the collection and the folks at DreadXP. The collection as a whole is awesome and has a lot of variety in the games.
IMMURE
IMMURE is a game I’ve been working on with Wither Studios since around 2016. The team are all part time devs, we work on the game in our free time. IMMURE is a 2.5D psychological horror game about a man trapped in an interdimensional mansion filled with tormented souls. Part One came out in 2019 and Part Two is coming out on December 17th. Part One will also become free starting on the 17th!
CONSOLE PORT
I’ve been putting a lot of hours into a console port for Sally Face with help from my friend Mike Thomas (programmer at Wither Studios). I had originally planned on releasing in October this year but because of the pandemic and some other bumps in the road, that had to be pushed back. I’ll have more to share about this very soon (hopefully next month)!
ART BOOK
A lot of you have been asking for an update on the art book and I can say that it is almost done! At this point it mainly just needs some touch ups and editing. I can’t give a date yet but I am working with a potential publisher and hope to get more information to you all soon. This book is pretty extensive! It has game art, concept art, character bios, a complete timeline, game secrets, behind the scenes and more. Additionally, the book will also feature a Fan Gallery with some awesome works by fans around the world. I’m excited to share it with you all, once it’s ready!
NEW SALLY FACE MERCH
This year has also brought some great new Sally Face merch. We have the Sal Funko Pop! figure and the Official Sally Face Mask by Trick or Treat Studios. Both of those turned out amazing. There were, unfortunately, delays with the mask and it didn’t go out in time for Halloween. Though, it should be shipping out next month. It’s been that kind of year for a lot of manufacturing companies. On that same note, the company that ran the previous Sally Face shop went out of business because of the pandemic. Some of you may have noticed the store was down for a while but we’re back up and running with The Missing Piece managing the Sally Face Shop.Â
OFFICIAL DISCORD
An official Sally Face Discord was started this year too. It’s a server for SF fans to hang out and chat. I’ll also pop in once in a while to talk with everyone, which is always a lot of fun. We’ve got a great group of mods, composed of volunteer SF fans, that keep everything peaceful there.
PO BOX
If you missed it, I now have a PO BOX! So you can send me physical stuff like fan mail, fan art, your first born, stuff like that. Here’s the address:
PO BOX #14713, Pittsburgh, PA 15234, USA
MY NEXT GAME
I know everyone wants to know if I’ve started on a new game. The answer is “kind of”. With everything else going on, I’ve had my hands full, to say the least. So I haven’t started production on a new game yet. However, I do have a big outline I’ve been working on, so plans are definitely underway! I’m very enthusiastic about the way this story is coming together and I expect to start production on the game early next year.
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Thank you for the continued love and support! There are some very exciting things coming up for Sally Face that I can’t wait to share more with you. In the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday.
đź’™ Steve
Sally Face Postmortem
I’ve been working on Sally Face for the last five years of my life. In that time, within the span of 5 episodes, I’ve created over 80 characters, 54 environments, recorded 56 songs, wrote thousands of lines of dialog, designed 70 puzzles/challenges and mixed over 500 sound effects. The final project has over 4,000 art assets and over 1,000 animations.
My blood, sweet and tears went into this project. I’ve poured so much of myself into making this game, at times giving too much and then learning to find a better balance with life. For many people, it’s tough to understand how much work goes into developing a game. I hope that the above stats can shed just a little bit of light on the sheer amount of work involved. Though honestly, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Yet, to me, this work is very rewarding and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I started working on Sally Face in my free time, around 2014/2015. I went through a lot of personal struggles during development, which the game ultimately helped me through (I’ve talked about this in detail in previous posts, so I won’t get into that here). In 2016 I began working on SF full time and it has changed my life. I now develop my own games for a living; something I had been working up to for about 7 years prior.
Working on my own
This project has been a solo endeavor for me. I create everything in the game myself: art, music, writing, design, sound, animation and so on. Not only that, I also do every other aspect from marketing to PR to support. That means answering emails, fixing bugs, cutting trailers, making marketing materials, writing press releases, traveling to conventions, doing bookkeeping, managing social media sites, etc.
I began working on my own out of necessity (I didn’t have any budget) but also out of passion. It was a project I had been wanting to work on for years and I liked having something that could be my personal creative outlet. So even when the game started making some money, I still wanted to see it through on my own.
For my next game, I may contract out some artwork to help speed up the process. I’ve also recently partnered up with Brand Central, who have been handling Sally Face merchandise, which is great. One less thing off my plate and they’ve been getting some cool merch stuff going. I’ve also worked with a group of awesome volunteers for the translations, which I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own.
What I’ve learned
Keeping the project short and taking breaks in between really helps to prevent burnout. So the episodic format was great to work with in that regard. I also planned from the beginning to evolve the game as I went, so that I was always looking forward to making the next episode. That turned out to be very helpful in keeping my motivation going.
The episodic format becomes a nightmare to manage over time. Whenever I have to do an update or a patch, I now have to make 14 builds and upload them to four different sites. It’s very tedious and time consuming. Additionally, when there are big gaps in releases (with new episodes) plus software updates (Unity and plugins) it can sometimes create issues when users update their older files. In the future, I might need to rethink how I’ll be distributing a game.
Working 70+ hours a week is not sustainable. I used to work like this for long stretches of time without breaks. But it’s not healthy and I want to continue making games without burning myself out. Occasionally, I’ll still slip into that overworking mode for short spurts but I’ve learned to keep a better balance overall.
I will never do a midnight launch again. Every time I plan this, I try to get everything set up early and every time I think I’m not going to be up too late. I always end up staying up super late anyway. For Episode Five I stayed up past 4am and it was just too much. From now on, I’m going to plan on doing launches in the mornings. This will give me the full day to work with a clear head and not zombie brains.
Avoiding crunch is hard, though I’ve been getting better at it. I think the key is to get the project in a near finished state before even talking about a release date. I’ve seen a lot of people online saying things like “drop the new episode already” but I don’t think they really understand what they’re asking for. These things take a lot of time and even when they are “finished” they still require a lot of work before launch. You have to get the bugs out, do testing, work on translations, ready platform specific implementations, work on marketing materials, etc. Asking for a rushed game is like asking for a shittier version of a thing you like. No one wants that. Especially not the person working hard on the project so that players will enjoy it.
No matter how hard you work and no matter how much testing you do, there will always be bugs. Always. Once thousands of players are playing the game on all different devices and interacting in different ways, issues will pop up. It’s inevitable. It used to really stress me out. And I’d be lying if I said that stress was totally gone but I’ve come more to terms with that. Just knowing and expecting to have to fix some things after launching.
The Response to the Ending
The responses to Episode Five have been very positive overall. The majority of players really like it, which is great. Though the thing with endings in general is that they don’t always please everyone. Sally Face is not an exception, as a good amount of fans didn’t like the ending. Even though it’s the minority opinion, I still feel pretty disappointed in that. This is a project I’ve poured my heart into and a community that I love and care about very much. So I do care what they think and it does affect me.
It seems that most of those who were disappointed were so because they wanted more. And at least that’s something good. This was one of the feelings I wanted people to have at the end. I wanted them to want more, I wanted them to wonder, “what happens next?”, I wanted there to still be mystery remaining for people to talk about. Additionally, I wanted to keep it open so that I could revisit the world of Sally Face. I have too many ideas to let it die and too many things I want to explore.
What’s Next?
So will there be another Sally Face game in the future? Yes! Will I work on that next? Maybe! I have several ideas that I am excited about. However, I also have other game ideas (non SF related) that I’d like to explore too. Life is short and games take a long time to develop, so I have to choose what I do carefully. It may also be good to take a break from SF then come back to it, so that I don’t get burned out on it. But I haven’t made any decisions on that just yet.
In general, I wanna work on games that mean something to me. That’s why I’m an indie developer and not signed on with publishers (not saying publishers are bad, just that I prefer to have creative freedom). I wanna make things that I care about. And I hope that whatever my next project is that Sally Face fans will also enjoy it.
That said, in the short term here is what I’ll be doing:
- First and foremost, I’m going to take a short break for the holidays and visit my family (who I haven’t seen in a year)
- Working on some more translations for Sally Face when I get back
- Putting together a Sally Face art book! (more details to come later)
- Porting Sally Face to new platforms (more details later)
- Figuring out and designing my next gameÂ
Thank you all for your love and support. It means the world to me.
đź’™ Steve
Dealing with Popularity
In the early days of Sally Face (starting over three years ago), the game had gathered a small cult following. That following grew quite a lot over time and continues to grow. With the release of Episode Four, in November 2018, the fan base significantly expanded. As a solo developer and solo business owner, it’s been a huge change in my life. Even though this has been a dream come true, it’s also been very overwhelming and at times very stressful.
THE FANS
In the beginning, I was able to connect with every fan, answer every question and every message. And I really enjoyed that connection and seeing their excitement. Now, I get so many messages that I can’t even read them all, let alone answer them all. When more started coming in, I tried to keep up with it at first. I really wanted to continue to talk with everyone and continue to interact with their posts of fan art and cosplays. But it began eating up so much of my time (hours a day). It took me a little while to stop putting so much time into that. I felt an almost sadness at not being able to answer everyone. Especially since I often get messages saying really heartfelt things about how much Sally Face has changed their life, or saved them from depression, or saved them from suicide, or helped them in some way. My fans in general mean a great deal to me and these kinds of letters really mean a lot. I think that strength to get through tough times is already inside of us but if my game can help bring that out in any way, that’s something really amazing.
For my own sanity and for the sake of productivity, I had to learn to cut back on fan interaction. Though, I still like to engage when I can. I very much enjoy seeing the cool things Sally Face fans create and how much they get into the story and characters. I even set aside a few hours one day to answer fan questions on twitter, which was a lot of fun. And in the future, I’d like to do more conventions in order to get out there and meet more fans in person.
TROLLS
My interactions with fans have been overwhelming positive overall. Though, with more attention and bigger numbers, of course I’ve started to get some negativity and trolling. However, it’s really such a small proportion.
There was a rumor started about Episode Five releasing in the summer, even though I had been saying “end of 2019” in all official channels. And when it didn’t come out in the summer there were some people who were mad at me for “lying” or “delaying the game”, even though neither were true. I’ve also gotten some reviewers saying that by having DLC that makes me “greedy”. This really shows me that they don’t understand game development.
In fact, me charging only $15 for Sally Face is pretty cheap. That’s about 5 years of work for $15. I initially thought that the episodes would all be shorter but I wanted to make it the best I could, so more production value went into it. Despite that, I didn’t want to raise the price (even though I probably should have) because I wanted to keep it fair and accessible to players. Not to mention, I really only take home less than 50% of the game revenue (that’s a topic for another post). So when people call me “greedy” for “charging so much” it seems unbelievable to me.
I’ve found it best to not engage in with trolls and just to ignore them. Especially the ones that are just spewing meaningless anger in my direction. Which does happen sometimes but, again, it’s pretty rare. My thought is that they are most likely kids who are not happy in their lives. And I hope that they will someday find happiness.
MERCHANDISING
With the rising popularity also comes new opportunities such as merchandising and other exciting things I can’t talk about just yet. I’ve partnered up with Brand Central, who is handling Sally Face merch. Through them I’ve signed deals with Hot Topic, Funko, BandMerch and others. I’ll share more details on those things as they progress. All of these new opportunities are great, though they also take up extra time as well. Including flying out to LA for meetings. So even though it’s all exciting it also adds to the stress of managing a healthy work / life balance.
Along with the merch, also comes other companies (especially Chinese companies) selling counterfeit Sally Face merchandise and stealing my work. It’s a shame that people do this to anyone, let alone a solo artist such as myself. This has caused a lot of frustration, stress and a ton of time wasted fighting these companies. Fans purchase these counterfeit items, without knowing they are fake, and that harms the future plans I am trying to build. The money raised through merch sales goes into making the next game. When other companies steal my work, they are directly affecting my projects. To be clear, I don’t blame fans for this, the issue here is 100% on these counterfeit companies for being a bunch of shady bastards.
YOUTUBE
I’ll be honest, before releasing Sally Face, I didn’t know much about Let’s Players, Streamers, “Content Creators”, etc. I knew they existed and I knew a little about the controversies between them and game developers. They have definitely played a role in my journey with Sally Face, so I figured I’d share my thoughts on this subject.
I’ve spoken with and have met a lot of these people and it’s always been a pleasure. Everyone has been super nice and it seems like a great community. In the early days, bigger YouTubers like JackSepticEye, Gloom Games, John Wolfe and others really helped to spread awareness of the game. I even put little Easter Eggs in the game, to show my appreciation for them:
Some developers think that these Let’s Plays and Streams are a big negative force for the game industry. Basically because more and more people are watching games instead of playing them. Which is stated to be a big reason why single player games are “dying”. But I don’t think it’s that simple. I mean, this issue is undeniably a double edge sword: on one hand the exposure can do great things for small indie developers and on the other hand it could hurt more linear, story driven games. It’s very important that players, who are able to, support the games they love by buying them. Otherwise, those developers won’t be able to make more games. Of course playthroughs can be great for those who don’t have the means to play or want to see what a game is like before purchasing it.
As of right now, my view is that these gameplay videos are a net positive for small indie developers but that the process can use some improvements. YouTubers should definitely be sharing the link to any games they play. I think most of them do this already. And if they enjoy the game, they should encourage their viewers to purchase it. Not everyone does this, as they are more concerned with promoting their “like, comment, subscribe” mantra. I get it and that’s important but promoting the game is also important if you want to see more work from that developer. I don’t think that’s asking much at all and I believe most YouTubers/Streamers would understand that point. If we got some help with reminding their viewers of the importance of purchasing games they like, I think that’s a good first step (and I do recognize that some already do this, which is great).
Like talking about piracy (which is another can of worms), this is a delicate subject matter. People tend to take sides and be very passionate about that. But I think it’s important to look at both the pros and the cons of gameplay videos online and to continue to have a conversation about it. Whatever your opinion, for better or worse, this is definitely changing the game industry in big ways.
To close this out, I’d like to say: Even with the added stress, I’m excited to see Sally Face growing and I can’t wait to share Episode Five with everyone on December 13th. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, check it out:
Thank you for your continued love and support!
đź’™ Steve
Episode Four Development
While developing Sally Face, each episode has been its own journey. Episode One, I worked on mostly in my free time and towards the end struggled with a lot of personal hardships. With Episode Two, I started working on the game full time, yet more hardships came and I was dealing with severe, long-term depression. Episode Three, I was coming out of my depressive slump and leaned into development pretty hard. Maybe too hard.
While developing the ep 3, I didn’t have a good balance of living my life and working. At first, it felt good and even helped get me out of the hole I was in. However, the amount of hours I was working (10 to 12+ hour days, almost every day) wasn’t sustainable. I wasn’t taking the best care of myself. I eventually started to feel the impact of that lifestyle, both physically and mentally, as it began to wear me out towards the end of production.
Since then, I’ve been putting in more effort not to overwork myself so much. To have a better balance of actually living my life and also getting work done. Eating healthier, being more active, being more social, taking more breaks, etc. I even went on a vacation with some friends, back in March! I think the last time I had a vacation, before that, was around 2014. There’s still a part of me that feels guilty, like, “oh, it’s gonna take you longer to finish your work now!” But I know that this way is better for my health, my sanity and my work in the long-term.
So if this cycle has taken a little longer than Episode 3 did, that’s partly why. Additionally, I also did a bunch of conventions in the first half of this year. So traveling and preparing for those took up a good bit of time as well. I was promoting my other game, IMMURE, with Wither Studios, as we just launched the demo! Check it out here!
   
Another reason that Episode Four is taking longer than Three did, is because this episode is much more involved and ambitious than the other episodes. This is gonna be the biggest episode yet and I really can’t wait to share it with everyone! To give an idea of the scope of this episode, in my original outline for Sally Face, ep 4 was split into 2 parts. I revised it early on to condense it into one episode.
My goal is to have it out by the end of this year. I’ll keep everyone updated on social media, as it gets closer. While I don’t want to give too many details about this episode just yet, I would like to officially announce the title.
Episode Four is the second to last episode of Sally Face and things are going to heat up fast. You can expect some big questions to be answered in this episode, some new questions to be raised, a return of many of the characters you love and even some new faces.
Thank you all for the continued love and support!
Steve
The Complicated History of Sally Face
I get asked all the time where the idea for Sally Face came from and what inspired me to make the game. I also went through a lot of personal struggles while creating the first two episodes. So I thought that topic would make a good starting point for this blog.
Around 2006 / 2007, I sketched a creepy character (as per usual) and the name “Sally Face” just popped into my head. Over the next few weeks, I began to imagine this character and what his life would be like. A boy with a girls face sewn on. I imagined him living in an apartment building filled with odd tenants. His best friend would be a lazy stoner who wore a cape and lived in the basement. This was the genesis of Sal and Larry. Here are the original sketches from that time:
A few months after those initial ideas began to form, I had already created a backstory for Sal (that’s when I ditched the sewn on face in favor of the prosthetic mask), a world that he lives in, a cast of characters and different stories I could tell within that universe. At the heart of everything, I really wanted to create something that had the look and feel reminiscent of a 90’s Nicktoon (like Doug, Ren and Stimpy, Hey Arnold, Rock’s Modern Life) but with darker themes and more mature stories/content.
I got together with a few friends that were good artists and animators, as I attempted to assemble a team to make Sally Face into an internet cartoon series. Everyone got into the idea at first and we were all excited to start this project. However, between work and school schedules, no one could commit enough time and things quickly fell apart.
Sally Face sat in the back of my mind for seven years, as I moved on to other projects.
In 2010 I started a small indie game team, Wither Studios, with some friends. We developed a game called Crowman & Wolfboy that released in 2013 on mobile platforms. The game got great reviews from media and users and was downloaded over 600,000 times. Despite all of that, we still struggled to make money off of C&W. Because of this, the team voted to abandon development on the planned expansions to the game. This had me pretty bummed for a while because I had some awesome ideas for the direction of that game that I was really excited about at the time. A year later, our team was still struggling with what direction to take our next game. Eventually, at the end of 2014, we lost two of our team members over that conflict. It really sucked because they were not only good artists but good friends as well.
The chaos that Wither had fallen into is what ignited my desire to work on my own project. I wasn’t sure if the team would make it through that rough patch but I also needed a creative outlet. There were a few ideas I was tinkering with but Sally Face came back around into my mind. I thought it would be nice to finally do something with that idea and that it would transition pretty well into an adventure game, rather than a cartoon. So in 2015, building from the original concepts, I rewrote the story arc to fit a five episode narrative and began working on episode one in my free time. It was a slow process, as I was working a full time job and still working with Wither Studios too.
In February 2016, I was unexpectedly laid off from my job, during a company wide downsizing. Finding a new job afterwards was turning out to be difficult. That’s when I decided to focus on finishing episode one of Sally Face. I had enough money saved plus unemployment coming in, that I could be more casual about looking for other work for a while. My wife at the time fought me tooth and nail over this decision. It turned out that she didn’t support my dreams and refused to even meet me on any middle ground. This torn a giant hole in our relationship.
That summer, I moved out and stayed with my parents while we figured out what we were going to do. During that time, I was able to finish up development on Sally Face, Episode One: Strange Neighbors. I released it in August, on itch.io. Sales were dismal to say the least. I tried my best to promote it but I just couldn’t gain enough attention. My funds were also starting to run low. So I decided to run a crowdfunding campaign, hoping to kill two birds with one stone (funding and attention).
During that fall, I moved back to Pittsburgh, with my wife. We were going to attend couples therapy and try to work through things. In November, I raised over $13,000 for Sally Face via crowdfunding. Luckily the game had started catching on with YouTubers and some of the bigger channels were starting to play episode one. That was a huge help with getting more eyes on the game. In December, I had released Sally Face on Steam to great reception. I was finally able to focus my full time efforts into making a game, and not have to worry about finances.
Things were seeming to look up, when tragedy reared its ugly head again. A very close family member of mine was reported missing (I don’t want to name them out of respect for their privacy). There was a suicide note. I was 7 hours away. The next few weeks were the darkest, saddest and hardest times of my life. Thankfully, the police found the family member still alive. After days in recovery, a second attempt and then more days in recovery, they are doing much better now. Obviously, this slowed production of episode two down quite a bit. Even after I had returned home, I was still dealing with a deep sadness over what had happened.
Working on episode two actually became helpful for me, in what I was struggling with internally. As I was nearing the later half of production, in the spring of 2017, my now ex-wife had decided that our marriage wasn’t working for her. So she left for another man. We had been together for 8 years so this was a pretty huge impact on me, especially with the emotional roller coaster I had just been through. This all but halted production for a while. It was the second biggest hit for my life and for episode two.
After some time, I began getting back to development. Working on the game, again, became very helpful in getting me out of the dark hole I was isolating myself in. Seeing all of the excitement of the fans and how much the fandom was continuing to grow was also a big emotional gain when I needed it the most. I can’t say how much I still appreciate seeing that excitement from fans every day.
Sally Face, Episode Two: The Wretched was released in July 2017 and was even bigger and better than episode one.
Development of episode three has gone MUCH smoother than both episode one and two. I’m in a healthier emotional place. I don’t have negativity around me, dragging me down. I feel great about my future and the future of Sally Face. I’m crazy excited to start on episodes four and five and I can’t wait to see people’s reactions as the mystery unfolds.
My goal with this blog post wasn’t to write a sob story or gain pity points, but to tell the story of Sally Face as it intertwined with my life. I got dragged through the shit but that’s part of life. When I got knocked down, I stood right back up, held my ground and forged ahead. Life is full of ups and downs. After all, we couldn’t have joy without sorrow.
Creating interactive experiences to share with people around the world is an amazing feeling. I would never want to do anything else and will likely be making games until they bury me in the ground.
Sally Face, Episode Three: The Bologna Incident will be out on Feb 10th!
*As an additional note, Wither Studios is still kicking! I help them on the side with game design and art, among other things. We’re currently working on a demo for a new horror game, called IMMURE.
Thanks for reading my first blog post! I really appreciate the continued love and support!
– Steve
The Steve Behind The Moose 