“Ah ****, here we go again…”
January
That’s 2019 done for us here at MinskWorks. We had a bumpy start to the year, but we’ve found our footing and are excited by the prospect of releasing Landlord’s Super next year.
We hope 2019 lived up to all your hopes and desires, but if not well, it’s in the bin now. Either way, with the Early Access release of Landlord’s Super looming, 2020 is bound to be a better year overall.
The project is taking a little longer than we anticipated. This is mainly due to it being a much more complicated and bigger beast than Jalopy. Another factor is that we now have the luxury of being able to go over and iterate on how we’ve implemented stuff, with feedback from our community that we can trust. Jalopy was worked on outside of this advantage, and released early with a lot of compromises. Landlord’s Super will surely release with it’s own issues in Early Access, but with the support we’ve been given from both the Yogscast and our community, we’re already seeing that this game is a level above the work on Jalopy.
To you all, thank you for your support, feedback and well wishes. We wish you all a very happy new year and know that together we’ll make this the best yet.
The Quintessential Construction Simulator
The ‘Motors’ of Landlord’s Super
MinskWorks is a studio which has a strong affinity for old clunkers. So it will be no surprise to you dear reader, to find that Landlord’s Super will contain some nods to British motoring legends of old.
A big problem with Jalopy was the lifeless towns. One way we’re trying to address this in Landlord’s Super, is to have smarter AI not only inhabiting the town, but driving through it too.
So far we’ve got 7 types of vehicle in the game. Cars such as the Tamworth Snooper or Bromich 1100 will totter about through the town and countryside, honking you if you dare get in their way. There’s also a great big flat-bed Stafford truck, which can deliver you building supplies straight to your construction site. Most exciting of all though, is Jimmy’s dilapidated old Royal Runner which, if you can ever get it running again, is not only fully drivable, but can be used to transport supplies and tools with ease. The Royal is Landlord’s very own Jalopy.
While focus in Landlord’s is very much about building your property up to living standards in order to earn a passive income off, the world has become so big that we needed a way for players to transport stuff from one side of the map to the other *relatively effortlessly. Though the Royal is an excellent solution for this, it might be a while before you’re flush enough to upgrade from your trusty wheelbarrow…
*breakdowns / fuel issues may occur.
Laika User Manual PDF
To continue the motorised theme of this months newsletter, we’ve uploaded the Laika User Manual in PDF form on our website. You can download both a digital version and a printer friendly version. Thanks to both Seb and Bear-In-The-Air for their help with this, it wouldn’t be half as good without their input.
LaikaUserManual.pdf (1.34mb)
LaikaUserManual_PrinterFriendly (8.57mb)
LaikaUserManual_PrinterFriendly_ColourCover (8.82mb)
Jalopy & the Other Road Trip Game
Early on in 2019, Jalopy’s publisher announced a new game. While this game has similar story beats to Jalopy. And while the game’s “Uncle” character could be seen as gender-swapped to an “Aunt”. And while the colour-scheme of the car in this game uses the same colour scheme as the Laika in Jalopy (Red replacement door included). And while the game announced itself as “From the Publishers of Jalopy”.
We have had no involvement in this game. Nor have we ever been asked to.
We’d like to detail exactly how we’ve been treated throughout this, but we’re still committed to fighting for control of Jalopy, and we don’t want to harm any potential legal route.
For now, we continue to clarify that there is no sequel to Jalopy, spiritual or otherwise, produced, developed, or endorsed by MinskWorks.
We’d also like to apologise for the lack of support and updates for Jalopy. But we hope you can appreciate not wanting to risk time and money on a project in competition with it’s own publisher.
Thanks again for your continued support. If you haven’t already, be sure to follow Ruta & Greg on twitter, and to join the discord!
Next month should see much more focus on Landlord’s Super content, as we’ve both been doing a lot of work on the environments.
Ruta & Greg
