Hi!

I’m back with an update on the Kickstarter Campaign for Gas Station Story, an overview of planned enhancements that will be coming soon, as well as a peek at the next few months leading up to release. I've got a lot to cover this time so I'm just gonna get into it!

Kickstarter Campaign:
Gas Station Story's Kickstarter Campaign was successful! 140 backers came together to raise $4,284 to help me finish development, and I am just so so so grateful for the support. With this, I'll be able to commission more music to extend the soundtrack, create an "Art of Gas Station Story" art book (in PDF form, I'll look at possibly creating physical copies of this book at a later date), compensate a couple of models for the Game Boy Camera portraits, extend the supported platforms to Linux / Steam Deck (more on that down below), as well as pay for some other miscellaneous development fees that will help me get this game across the finish line! I didn't quite meet the stretch goal for a Gas Station Story DX DLC, but I'm still planning on enhancing this title even more in the next year or so after release with a free update. I'll announce more about that when it's ready, but we're already looking at a much better finished game with what was raised! Thank you all so much, endlessly :)

Steam Edition:
I've been messing around with Godot lately to create a new wrapper for PC, huge shout out to GreenFox and his GodotBoy Template, he's been helping me get this working on MacOS. With this new wrapper comes a TON of improvements and quality-of-life updates!

- Display Options -
To start with, check out this snazzy new Overworld!

This is the primary way to experience Gas Station Story in the new PC wrapper. I felt like the surreal/meta feeling of playing an in-game Game Boy on your Game Boy could be enhanced for the PC edition by putting in an era-appropriate in-game PC inside of your PC. There is also a fullscreen option if you prefer that, as well as a toggle for the overlaid CRT filter in both modes. 

I've also plugged in some colorblindness accessibility options! I would really like to integrate a screen-reader as I've heard that some of the text in Gas Station Story can be tough to read, but I'm not sure if there's a way to expose the dialogue from the emulator to the Godot build. I'll keep picking at this though and hopefully I can come up with something!

- Keybinding / Controller Support -
You can now choose which keys and buttons are mapped to the GB Emulator! This should allow for limitless options of play, but due to the limitations of emulation, I won't be able to switch the in-game glyphs to match players' chosen inputs. Due to this, I'll be changing the "Z Key" glyph recently added in to the PC builds back to the "A Button" glyph from the GB build, as well as reverting tutorial verbiage back to GB appropriate language.

I've also tested out controller support with a DualShock 4 and a Nintendo Switch Pro controller, and they're working great! I don't have an Xbox controller or a DualSense to test with, but I'm pretty sure it will work just fine as well.

- Compatibility -
I'm also happy to announce that Gas Station Story will be compatible with Linux / Steam Deck at launch! I'm working on a way to test this out with a buddy of mine, so stayed tuned. This game is really built for the handheld experience, so I'm excited to get this thing optimized for PC / Linux handhelds.


Roadmap to Release:

As you can see, we're on track to release in roughly 3 months! I'll be doing a lot of promo in June for NEXT Fest - possibly streaming myself playing or putting the final touches on the game if I can get off work, and then releasing shortly after. The soundtrack extension is already being worked on, and I'm really excited to show you what's cooking. But, if music commissions or achievements take too long to finish up before release, I'll patch them in later with a 1.1 update so we don't have to delay any further. I know some of you will have been waiting for 3.5 years by June, and I don't want you to have to wait any longer!

Miscellaneous: 
- Pierrot à la Mode Goes Free-to-Play! -
In case you missed it, Gas Station Story's "Spiritual Prequel" is now Free-to-Play (and I explained my reasoning behind this decision in another devlog, which you can find here)! You can download it now on Steam or itch - see if you can get a perfect score and unlock the secret ending!

- Gas Station Story in the Press -
Gas Station Story was recently featured in a couple of articles - with a Preview here and a Review here. Thanks to Seb at retrododo and Oliver at waytoomanygames for the coverage!


Okay, that's all I've got for you for now. I've got quite a bit left to do in the next few months, so you won't hear from me that much leading up to release, but I'll make sure to post another log when the official release date is set. See ya at NEXT Fest!

Love,
Enzi