Remember waaaaaaaay back in 2017 when we promised a slew of updates and improvements in our next All the Delicate Duplicates patch? Well, we didn’t forget. Life just kept on jumping up and biting us on our respective posteriors every time we got close to implementing them [seriously, it’s been a hellova amazing year on so many fronts, but with that has come a heap of unavoidable time-sinkages too]….but NO MORE DELAYS! With a brand spanking new year comes a new and improved All the Delicate Duplicates, with our PC version now including all of these freshly-minted updates, and [be prepared to *gasp*] a brand new Mac version.

For all our lovely fans who have been waiting patently for our Mac Version to hit the Steam store, and for those PC peeps who have been sweating on the promised PC updates, here’s your chance to get in early and playtest our updated PC and new Mac Beta versions: to register for either Beta, start by signing up here. Once you’ve signed up, we’ll contact you with all the necessary instructions on how to take part. Also, feel free to stream your experience or post screenshots [as long as you state you’re playing a Beta 2.0 version of the game on your posts]. You can also share your impressions with us on twitter using the hashtag #DelicateDuplicates. Enjoy!

First up we have a gem from SolaarNoble on Twitch, who, during the course of his playthrough, becomes fascinated with Charlotte’s dog making a “Where’s Wally”-esque appearance through her art journal. Thanks, SolaarNoble!

So just what are these impending shinier-than-shiny improvements [we hear you shouting incessantly over the background noise of us bleeding voraciously from the eyes + fingertips due to all the manic work taken to complete these updates]? [ And yup, such updates do take their toll, seriously (aka we’re not actually *that* serious, though don’t tell our respective Optometrists and Finger-Doctors (is there such a thing?) that)].

Well, first up we’ve been listening to all the forum feedback [yes, we do actually read the forums while unsuccessfully navigating our Quasimodo-like posture probs + annoying squint-related issues + other embarrassing health conditions associated with rampant gamedev overwork] and have been crafting down in the AtDD forge an in-game Preferences screen with resolution and mouse sensitivity options. We’ve also included [ie wait, there’s MORE!] the option to toggle between ‘windowed mode’ and full screen, and even the ability to inverse your mouse as well [we’re thorough!].

We’re also working manically [which is interesting when working with our constantly-needing-correcting-posture-altering-corsets + weeping eyestrained orbs] on implementing an in-game volume control option [yep, Streamers, we did take note that you needed it – how *good* are we?].

Additionally [and yes, the use of that word is just as wanky as you think it is, but we figure we have the cred to use it after having to look up all the medical terminology in order to deal with our blood-seeping fingertips], we’ve also added in some swelteringly-fabbo interactive goodies + assorted easter-egging [right after Easter – how timely is *that*?].

So look out for all these fantoobulous AtDD updates here very very soon. And while you wait, please send help [or any posture-fixing Experts, random Optometrists and/or spare Finger-Doctors you may have dotted about your basement].

This fab trailer [if we do blurb so ourselves] was made with the help of The TrailerFarm, who were awesome, speedy, had great ideas and were fun to work with. Also, a big ruddy thanks goes to Guy Harris for the spot-on voice rendition of John, one of AtDD‘s main protagonists.

[Fun fact: during production, Tony Porter, The TrailerFarm’s Cofounder + Creative Director,  told us during the voice-over narration recording that his other half asked him why their little 4 yr old boy had been walking around saying ”We were going to The Actory”… aaaaaand now they know!]

In short: WOOT!

Tam, our lovely Producer, accepting the Award on behalf of myself and Andy [she’s dead center in the Winner line-up].

From our rampantly-overexcited-news-department, we’re chuffed to report that All the Delicate Duplicates is now on show at EGX in Birmingham!  Our frenetic producer, Tam, is deftly handling demoing our latest build, and this particular demo is now playable for the first time ever as a worldwide exclusive at EGX, hosted by the Leftfield Collection.

Sponsored by SEGA, the Leftfield Collection celebrates the diverse, innovative nature of the indie development scene, giving EGX attendees experiences that are often profoundly different to those available elsewhere on the show floor. Based on reactions so far, there’s been lots of positive chatter about All the Delicate Duplicates, with the word edgy being tossed about by Leftfield attendees exploring it [whoo!]. There’a also free postcards showcasing some of the artwork from the game, such as:

So if you’re in the general Birmingham area and keen to have a crack at this exclusive All the Delicate Duplicates demo [and/or can watch our livestream our #DelicateDuplicates demo LIVE from the EGX Twitch stage at 3:00pm BST today], pop into EGX and have a play through not just our game, but the other lovely games on offer as part of the Leftfield Collection.

And please tweet us if you are at the show by using #DelicateDuplicates. Not at the show? You can sign up for the BETA here.

Back in the late 1990s, for my sins, I spent a short stint at art college. My tutor there didn’t believe that accidents could even happen digitally; that such things were only possible through the loose, splattery form of natural media. How could you possibly make anything go wrong on a computer? That was surely the opposite of what computers were about: accuracy, calculations, pre-empting stuff.

Many of All The Delicate Duplicates‘ visual effects have been the result of extreme experimentation or the accidental cranking of script component parameters to ridiculous proportions.

For example, Mo’s Universe – the bizarre wilderness seen in many #DelicateDuplicates screenshots – uses a staggeringly powerful terrain tool called RTP3 to overlay a range of different materials over the same enormous surface with the addition of powerful extras such as perlin noise and vertical texturing. RTP3’s parallax effect (probably generally intended to be used fairly subtly) is pushed to extremes to make the surface across which the player/reader walks appear to be made of a dream-like liquid.

For #Delicate Duplicates, perfectly fitting. Intentional? Not really – the effect was discovered entirely by accident; a slip of the mouse whilst setting other values. Here’s what it looks like up close in an early environment demo:

Similarly, “the Queen” – a huge chess piece that makes an eerie appearance in the later parts of the work – gained a bizarre and unintentional life of her own through the use of various mashed-up scripts. She hones in on you during gameplay like some kind of hideous Dalek – even though the script, logically, says she shouldn’t. It wasn’t planned, and we’re not 100% sure why it happens, but it certainly works narratively and artistically (or, we think so!), so we’ve ringfenced the code and left it “as is” for the moment.

Welcome to Mo’s Universe: an open-ended landscape that manifests as one of the character’s fully-rendered psychological states. This state mirrors Mo’s obsession with the transient nature of reality: a state that will go out of its way to remove you as quickly as possible – back to the familiar safe-state you believe to be the truth.

Text has always formed a visceral part of our collaborative work. The Dead Tower (2012) sees the bright white hope of poetic 3D text – often in motion – bringing much-needed life to a dark virtual landscape riddled with discarded household junk beneath the shadow of a mysterious structure; #CARNIVAST (2013) weaves intricate webs of encoded language into a matrix of touch-responsive code-poetry experiences delivered as an Android app; and #PRISOM throws out text-based moral dilemmas within a bleak futuristic glass city/gameworld endlessly patrolled by all-seeing drones, not dissimilar to the ‘Context Scrubbers’ that roam Mo’s Universe, keen to erase you out of it.

Everywhere you look, click, touch, there is the brightness of text – of language – often mangled and encrypted, as if it were the X-ray bones beneath the illusion of the physical.

Text within All The Delicate Duplicates exists as a form of fabric. Fabrications. Strings, ribbons, loops and splines. Glimpsing, knotted, complex and part-encoded; continuously subject to transformation, mutation. Sponges or pockets of trapped, short-lived, incubated, forgotten/unperceived messages.

While we’ve been working through the various states and phases of All The Delicate Duplicates’ internal room building, we’ve put together a short video of how we’re actually doing it. Press play above to view the video [which includes a superfab soundtrack by our audio artist, Chris Joseph]. Rest assured this video has been speeded up about 10 times – we don’t actually work that fast in real life [if only!!].

Feel free to also check out these gameworld screenshots of the same room at different times [tap to enlarge]: