A lot of exciting Squirmish news in this newsletter! Our first DLC pack has been added to the videogame… and it’s free! The 3.0 Squirmish tabletop game has arrived! Read about that and learn how to get a free giveaway card for it! More fun and announcements as well… click here to see the full email blast.
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BEYOND HYPERSPAZ…EVEN MORE UPDATES!
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| Some notes from the Version Update: 0.3.18 (Early Access) Rogues’ Gallery Win Streaks and Prize Cards |
| Rogues’ Gallery In the spirit of Early Access, we continue to improve and evolve the Rogue’s Gallery content into a more complete experience. Previously, it was not obvious in the game that defeating each rogue opponent not only unlocked the next opponent but also unlocked use of that rogue’s character as your in-game avatar. When used as an avatar, that character’s animations appear in the left hand portrait during matches and you can express yourself using that character’s collection of Smacktalk emotes. |
| With this update, we’ve made it a little more challenging to unlock each rogue’s avatar. Moving forward, a simple defeat of a Rogues’ Gallery opponent will unlock the next opponent and earn you a Steam Achievement, but to unlock a rogue’s avatar for your own use, you must defeat the rogue 3 times in a row in the Rogues’ Gallery. (Sparring matches don’t count). |
| To track your win streaks, each rogue portrait in the Rogues’ Gallery lobby is now decorated with 3 stars. With a win streak of one, one of these stars will be lit yellow, and the others gray. When all three are yellow, the rogue’s avatar becomes permanently unlocked and you also get a Prize Card (see below). Note that this requires a 3-game win streak, not merely 3 wins. If you lose or concede a game against a rogue, your win streak against that rogue will reset to zero, and all that rogue’s stars will become gray again. Once you’ve unlocked some rogue avatars, you can switch to a new avatar using the User Settings popup that can be opened on the home screen. |
| Prize Cards Prize Cards are a new addition this release. A Prize Card is very similar to a Steam Achievement, except they are unique to Squirmish and signify accomplishments that also unlock important items or features. Plus, although they have no in-game effect, they look just like other Squirmish cards. |
| A PRIZES section has been added in the CARDS area of the game, next to COLLECTION, DECKS, and MINI-DECKS. All awarded prize cards can be browsed in this section, and you can examine each of them they same way you examine any other Squirmish card. Each will explain what you accomplished to earn the card, and what prize was unlocked by it. Each prize card even even has its own “battle cry”. The first block of Prize Cards are awarded for accomplishing a challenging win streak against a rogue, and each one unlocks the rogue avatar pictured on the card. |
NEW SQUIRMISH RULEBOOKS!
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| New rulebooks for Squirmish (both the videogame and the tabletop game) have recently been completed. You can check them out at the links below. The updated version of the tabletop game will be coming very soon (along with some new expansions). |
| SQUIRMISH: The Videogame of Brawling Beasties rules 1.0 |
| SQUIRMISH: The Card Game of Brawling Beasties rules 3.0 |
SOWING DISCORD!
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THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SQUIRMISH EMAIL CLUB | VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2
The lilacs are blooming! The birds are chirping! What a glorious Spring! A great time to get outside… and an even better time to hole up in your basement with a brand new videogame!
Squirmish: The Videogame of Brawling Beasties (early release) is NOW AVAILABLE on Steam as of TODAY! Yes, just in time for DANCE LIKE A CHICKEN DAY!
From today until May 28th, you can get Squirmish on Steam for 30% off… a mere $4.89 (regularly $6.99). If you don’t like saving money, though, you may want to wait. Check it out here!
“In the fifth month, the sun rising, on the magic sparkle boxes there shall come a ridiculous amusement. It shall contain cards of varied creatures; some reptilian, some mammalian, some vaudevillian. And many cats. And, lo, there shall be a tiny pink conqueror. Great battles shall ensue. Guts shall be busted, and teeth shall gnash in chattering guffaws. It shall be known as Squirmick: The Vibbeogrome of Squalling Quamblits.” -Nostradamus
16th-century oracle Nostradamus, who successfully predicted Theodore Roosevelt’s mustache, the Hippy Hippy Shake, The Dewey Decimal System, FAX machines, and the use of mayonnaise as a condiment has hit another one out of the park!
Or at least he was close! Yes, the game is actually called Squirmish, not Squirmick… but he pretty much got it right otherwise.
Ok, he kind of blew it. Seriously, Nostradamus, what is a Squirmick? Squirm-ISH. And what the heck is a squalling quamblit? I think you had your hat on too tight. Some oracle.
Squirmish: The Videogame of Brawling Beasties is a hilarious turn-based card-battling game for online PVP or solo play. Find your favorite creature cards and battle them against your opponent’s beastie brigade. Strange strategies and interactions of the wildly-varying cards create a unique, unpredictable and infinitely-playable game! On Steam now!
You can check out some gameplay videos on the Squirmish Steam Page or our YouTube page.
Here is some recent online coverage of Squirmish…
Along with getting ready for the videogame launch, I have been working on a lot of new Squirmish cards for future release. Here is a new brawler I drew the other day and posted to our Discord server… CHOMPSTER…
Chompster’s current battle cry is “I have a killer smile!” When I
finish coloring him, I’ll post the art to the Discord. I plan to post some other previews of upcoming art and fun stuff there as well.
Anyhow, thanks again for playing Squirmish and for subscribing! I’ll talk to you again soon.
Actually, I’ll type to you again soon, I suppose.
Or maybe it should be “type at you?” That sounds rude.
We could totally break this comfortable illusion of chumminess that you and I have been developing here, and go with “typed on my computer, alone save for my cat, to you and an array of randos and probable bots who have somehow subscribed to this list.”
Let’s just stick with with the pleasant lie of “talk to you soon,” shall we?
Yer pal,
Steve
Hiya, Pal!
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| Thanks for joining the Squirmish Email Club! I’m Steven Stwalley, the game designer and cartoonist behind Squirmish, The Card Game of Brawling Beasties. It has been a while since I have sent anything out to this list. How have you been? Still hanging out at the same bus stop? Did you ever finish that enormous pile of mashed potatoes you were working on? Is that rash doing any better? Well, I hope all is well with you. |
| I’m going to start sending news out this way on a more regular basis, so tell your pals! Or, if this sounds awful, unsubscribe! I do hope you’ll stay with me, though, as I enjoy your refined digital company, your wit, and the many impressive ways in which you can imitate the sounds of flatulence. |
| I have a lot of wondrous Squirmish updates to share with you. Like this: |
| The first and most exciting update is that the Squirmish Videogame is almost ready to be released! It will be out this May on Steam. It is designed for single player or two-player PVP play. There are a bunch of new characters of varying degrees of brain-smartses for you to do battle against. |
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Squirmish Discord Server
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| Squirmish now has a Discord Server! Come and talk with your fellow card-brawlers about the ins, outs and intricacies of the game of Squirmish. Debate the merits of The Wee Admiral of the Sea! Discuss advanced strategies! Post fan art! Share your Killgor the Conqueror fan fic! Report game bugs! I hope to hang out with you there! |
| I thought some of you may enjoy seeing some production art in these emails. I still do most of my initial work on paper like some weird Victorian, if you can believe that. I have a pretty esoteric and probably overly-complicated process for creating most of my Squirmish art. It usually goes like this: |
| 1: I scribble on paper. Then I let the scribbles inform some rough pencils that I draw. Then I tighten the pencils just enough to feel comfortable for the inking. |
| 2. I ink on paper, usually using a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, the single greatest drawing tool ever invented. |
| 3. I do a 600 DPI greyscale scan the black and white art. |
| 4. I convert the scan to vector art in Adobe Illustrator, |
| 5. I paste that vector art into Adobe Animate and clean it up. Then I create three layers. The top layer I leave as black and white line art. The middle layer I color with flat color. The bottom layer I take the shape of all the lines and filled color and make all black to block any potential gaps in the artwork. On the color layer, I generally expand the shape of the color fills by 2 pixels to nest the edges of the color under the lines on the top layer. |
| 6. Once I’m happy with the flat coloring in Adobe Animate, I export the three layers as three separate .svg files. |
| 7. I import my .svg files into three layers in an Adobe Photoshop document. The nice thing about this is that it leaves all my color and line art as vector art, which is infinitely scalable if I ever want to change the size for different purposes. |
| 8. Then I start toning in Photoshop using a stylus on a Huion Kamvas Drawing Tablet. I usually start with the darks. I create a layer between the color and line art and work with black, usually at around 25% opacity. Once I’m happy with the toning, I usually convert the layer to a multiply layer. |
| 9. Then I start with the lights, adding another layer on top of the darks layer. I usually draw with white at around 25% opacity, and then usually apply a blending mode (often overlay at the end. |
| 10. Next, I usually another layer on top of that for highlights. For that I use white at 100% opacity. |
| 11. I sometimes add other layers of other colors, lights and tones to get it looking snappy. |
| 12. After that, I generally add a simple background behind everything with shadows and light of its own. |
| Here is some rough art on paper I used in creating the Squirmish Email Club header at the top of this email. |
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