A look back at some of the highlights and hurdles I faced in 2023.
Tag: indiegame
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
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 