Hi there!

So, it’s Summer of 2024… and Gas Station Story still isn’t out. Why is that?
A lot of new features have been making their way into the game: another POS overhaul, more portraits, a new demo, secrets galore, and so on. I really want this game to come out in its best possible state, and so I’ve pushed release back a bit (again). I don’t have an official release date or window yet, but I’ll talk about that more down below.

Let’s start with the good news:


The Good:

- Beta Build -
Gas Station Story is officially in the Beta phase of development! I’m still not up to Beta 1.0 as of yet, but we’re getting close. All the major systems have been implemented and the game is almost playable from start to finish. I’m only a few boss encounters and cutscenes away from a full 1.0 build, and then it’s on to the ending cutscenes and final polishes. The first four levels have been polished to hell and back, so once these fights and cutscenes are finished all that’s really left is polishing the final level, balancing out the variables that influence the ending, and finishing up all the music and sound effects commissions.

Alongside this beta version of the game, we have some small improvements to the visuals and gameplay:

Text boxes now have a simple little border around them so they can pop out more, as well as arrows to show that dialogue is continuing. This is a small change, but has required a lot of going back and editing dialogue placement so as not to clip the border (and adding every individual arrow to every text box 0.o).

The advanced functions on your Q Boy now live all together under one menu activated by the Select Button - including an option to re-run the tutorial in case you’ve forgotten how it works!

You can now ask your customers how much gas they were wanting to purchase, as well as what pump they’re parked at. This function lives on the B Button! This little pop-up is the main reason text-boxes have a border now - they draw from the same UI file and I needed to make sure this was distinguishable from the rest of the Q Boy’s dialogue boxes.

Both the Clerk’s internal thoughts and conversations with customers during checkout scenes now print from the top of the screen. This is to help differentiate the overworld dialogue from the Q Boy dialogue prompts.



- Demo V5 -
I've updated the demo to reflect the new features added, and shuffled some scenes around.
The demo runs a little shorter now due to this. I’ve also made the decision to officially cut DMG support. There are certain segments in the late game where performance on the DMG is severely impacted, and I’ve been able to add in more Game Boy Camera photos due to the increased tile limits of the Game Boy Color. I’d like to possibly go back and fix these performance issues before release so Gas Station Story can run on all Game Boy hardware, but my primary targets are Game Boy Color and Steam so that’s low on my priority list.

The full changelog is down at the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoy the new demo!


- Seattle Indies Expo -
Gas Station Story recently made an appearance at Seattle Indies Expo, with a public test for the v5 Demo and new POS features. Huge thanks to Seattle Indies for the opportunity and support, and to everybody that played and watched others play! :) The turnout this year was bonkers! It honestly felt like there was always somebody at the booth, I don't think the chair was empty for more than 5 minutes at any point.

- The “Spiritual Prequel” Official Release -
In case you missed it, Gas Station Story’s weird(er) little brother, Pierrot à la Mode, is now on Steam! This updated version has a lot of bugfixes, a new secret ending, and increased difficulty >:) I’ve also slowed the flashing colors down, just to be safe. You can snag that on Steam  for MacOS and Windows — or on itch.io for Game Boy Color — for just $1.99. I’m planning on launching a Steam bundle with both PàlM and GSS when the latter is finished, so if you buy PàlM now you’ll be able to snag a discount on GSS when it’s released!
I originally made this as a fun 2-week project for the Big Mode Game Jam last year, as a quick and dirty little project using the style I’ve developed for Gas Station Story, but cleaned up the code to pop on Steam a few months ago so I could learn how SteamPipe works and prototype a wrapper for the MacOS and Windows release of GSS. I still need to figure out why saves aren’t loading before GSS releases on Steam, but I’m going to actually finish the game first lol— thankfully PàlM has a runtime of 30 minutes and is designed to play in one sitting.
(btw: this “spiritual prequel” is not at all important to the narrative of Gas Station Story, but it is cute and shows a very small glimpse of what’s going on in Divinity City before the events of the Upgrade Virus. Winona, the model for the main character of GSS, appears in PàlM, and a character from PàlM may appear in a secret scene in GSS if you make the right decisions *wink wink nudge nudge*)


- Crowd Funding -
I’m going to be running a modest Kickstarter for the project here pretty soon, just to raise enough money to finish out the commissions for music and pay for some other expensive development costs. If there’s sufficient interest, though, I have some stretch goals in mind as well that will enhance the project without pushing release out any further. You can pre-save the kickstarter here, but I’ll make sure to post another update on all channels when it goes live. Backers can get their name in the credits, snag a copy of the game at a discount, and even possibly get their hands on my testing cartridge!


The Bad:

So. I’ve run my mouth a bit about release dates. “Summer 2024”, “Q4 2024”… But I’m not sure when this game is going to come out, to be completely honest. At the earliest, it’s done by the end of the year. At the latest, I’m thinking it could be midway through next year. I want to do this story justice, and can’t justify releasing the project before any and all kinks are ironed out. I want to make sure the project is free of major issues, as the Game Boy architecture will make updating the project and keeping older saves compatible very difficult.
(maybe once this is released I won’t have to work so many hours at the job and I can focus on storytelling and gamedev — I have a looot of plans for and notes about my next project)

So, for now, there’s no official release date or window. I’m going to wait until the project is just about ready to push out the door before I announce when it’s coming. I gotta get this one right, y’know? I don’t want to make another promise I can’t keep by setting a date I know I’ll likely kick down the road anyways. Until then… “Coming Soon”.



Thanks as always for reading this far! I definitely see a light at the end of this tunnel, even if there’s still a good bit left to do. We’re getting close!

- enzi



- Changelog (Demo V5) -

General:
- Some scenes removed for a quicker demo experience
- Additional free-roam segment added
- SFX updated
- Music placement tweaked
- DMG support removed
- text box borders added
- text box arrows added

POS:
- Q Boy Advanced Functions reworked to a drop-down menu
- cleartotal.exe moved to advanced functions
- tutorial.exe added to advanced functions
- B Button now lets you ask customer how much gas they wanted / on what pump
- Clerk Monologue / Dialogue now prints from the top of the screen


post-script:


this is Oliver: Winona’s cat and my close friend.
He doesn’t have a portrait in the game, cause the mf won’t sit still long enough for me to photograph, but if you get the right endings you might see a sprite of he in a certain someone’s apartment ;3