Taival Development Update - Lots going on!
Hey all, we're back!
It's been a super busy year. As you might imagine, making a game this big with just four people means we have to work is if we were a team of ten people when it comes to working hours. We've been doing our best at it, and a ton of amazing things have happened this year.
Truth is when we started this project back in 2022, we had absolutely zero intentions of this ever becoming this big, let alone having a publisher or actually ever having people play the game. It was just something we worked on during our freetime between university lessons, but it turns out we're not the only ones into the idea of the game haha! To be here today with the support from the community we have, and approaching 13 000 wishlists is just unbelievable. Thank you so much for being here, you don't know how much it means to us!
Playtesting
A big exciting thing we had this year was two playtests. One for the Discord OGs (those who had joined before a certain date in 2025), and another open one via Steam. We learned a lot. This was our first time ever having a game we've made being playtested, and at the same time it was exhilarating and incredibly stressful. The biggest takeaways had to be that
1. People are incredible at finding bugs and breaking the game. This is a great thing, we've had so many reports from the playtesters, allowing us to make the game (I was about to type bug free but that will NEVER happen. Let's say just say) notably less buggy. Our favourite has to be the below video (excuse the framerate, the game is not made to handle 52 of these little fellas) where a player was able to duplicate their Henki companion through a bug where they got another one every time they saved and loaded the game. At most they had 52 Henki companions. Incredible.
2. The game's intro needs a revamp. This is a funny one, since the one in the playtest was already a revamp. This is what I meant earlier with us being complete rookies when we started. The original one in which the player has to find their way out from a huge cavern we had was absolutely not engaging, and felt super empty. So we decided to go to the opposite deep end and start off with a scenario in which a town has been attacked and is completely burning. Player starts off with A LOT happening, cutscenes and all. And after playtest feedback we realized the intro was too dark and gloomy, and was missing the feeling of wonder and exploration that makes Taival what it is.
So back to the drawing board we go, through which we get to the current version! This one is extra funny since the cavern in it is actually a part of the very original intro. We just took the best parts of it since it looks great, implemented a proper introduction for the Henki baby, some new gameplay, and only after finding a way out of this cavern the player gets to the open world, AFTER which they enter the previous intro scenario which we were revamping here! So no content and work was luckily lost, we just added something new to the very beginning of the game. These "two intros" are what you're gonna experience in Taival demo on Steam (you heard nothing)...
Developing Taival has been amazing, and we're lucky to have you along the journey. Next up for us is pushing more content into the game, working on localization, polishing and making the game the best it can be before the early access release. Stay awesome!
- Henri from Bonobo Software