Squid sketch courtesy of our friend Abby, from which the commission proceeds went to Reclaim the Block

***Please note*** that this update was written before the tragic death of George Floyd, which sparked the necessary movement for change and justice regarding his and so many other black lives that have suffered from our country's culture of police brutality and institutional racism. We postponed this update out of respect for the conversations happening and instead took that week to educate ourselves on how our small team of two could help amplify black voices in the game industry and support the cause for racial justice and equality.

Two things that we think could make a real impact are linked here:

• A comprehensive list of black game developers. What they're up to, how you can find them, and how you can support their games
• A bundle of over 700 indie games in which the proceeds go directly to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Community Bail Fund

For additional resources and ways to help, visit https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/

Welcome back to the Little Squid Dev Blog!

Man, what a month May was. Exhausting emotionally and physically (understatement of the year, we know). Through it all though, we still made a ton of progress this month and are THAT much closer to a fully fledged game!

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MAY BUSINESS! This past month we've:

• Drafted more levels, character intros, and mechanics like this one here:

• Discord - we made one and you’ll be able to join soon with a lot of fun extras hopefully!
• Marketing assets & visuals - we know everything is grey right now, we're trying to change that
• Website optimizations - boostin’ dat SEO as the cool kids say
• Applied to Indie World Order Con - awesome that more organizations are doing virtual festivals like this now
• Joined fellow dev groups & scoured resources for research - we’re learning A TON
• Drafted future pitch decks - just in case, cuz who knows when/if we'll need to pitch the game
• Updated our "hook" & A/B tested it with our trailer - spoiler alert: 2-D puzzle game can describe a million games (Brittney’s drafting a future blog post on this subject in general)
• Got a shoutout from IndieCade on their Twitter page - this resulted in over 10,000 impressions and over 1300 trailer views, wee! :)
• Got out the poster board to draft up narrative, character, and boss encounters
• Solidified our world rules for design & created a new puzzle element - like the one we talked about in this update
• Started setting up our future steam page
• Drafted environmental art

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MAY GAMES! We were a little more work than play this month:

• Animal Crossing - we reached 5-star island status and finished our fossil collection, so we think we beat it even though there’s not really an end
• Super Mario Party - finally tried out the co-op “Partner Party” mode, it's aight
• Slay the Spire - hadn't tried the Watcher before but made it all the way to floor 50 first try, nbd
• Rocket League - newly Diamond ranked player, who dis
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps - finished and just...dude.
• Valorant beta - got a couple kills at least and didn't come in last, it's hard okay?
• Gloomhaven digital - just not the same as the table top version when you can't hold and feel the cards

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Unfortunately we don't have that many previews to share but there's still plenty to come. Thanks again for following along with us as we navigate this whole making a game with 2 people during a pandemic thing!

- 🦑