Hello everyone and welcome to the first devlog of 2026!
The team has been hard at work on the demo of the game. We are very excited to get out an early version and get your thoughts. But it will still take a couple months until we get to that point. So we thought we would share our plan for the playtest.
The first beta will not be publicly available so make sure to read the rest of this post to learn how you can participate when it arrives!
What Will be in the Demo?
Story
The demo will skip the opening scene and pick up from the moment gameplay starts when you land on the island. You will be introduced to some of the island’s inhabitants and be familiarised with the part of the island available in the demo.
As you head out into the wild you will meet a special NPC that will show you the basic gameplay loop of catching and matching the island’s tiny inhabitants.
You will then go on a couple of quests and start befriending the villagers as you get to know them before earning your place among them.
Gameplay
The focus of the beta will be on the basic gameplay loop of catching and matchmaking critters. You will have to find out more about them and discover what their preferences are to find the right partner for them. There will be 108 visually distinct bugs across 7 species in the beta, not counting their individual traits leading to each being unique.
How to Play the Beta?
We are expecting to do a closed beta in April after we have done some internal testing.
To join the playtest make sure to be part of our mailing list as this will be the only way to join it. Once it is ready we will send out an invite and let you know the specifics on how to get your copy.
That’s it for this devlog. Is there something you would like to hear about? Let us know! You can always reach us via our socials.
For more news, updates, and pics follow us on social media and join our mailing list.
Hello everyone, thank you for reading this month’s dev diary. I’m really excited to get the ball rolling because today we’re talking about:
Our Steam page going live next week!
Progress on bug traits
Dev diary going forward
Steam Page Going Live December 9th
As some of you may already know, we’ll be unveiling our game next week during the Wholesome Snack live show! You’ll get to see the trailer during its world-premiere debut.
When
December 9th 21:00 Central European Time, 3pm ET (12pm PT)
We will be watching the show live and would love to hear from you, so feel free to chat with us on social media.
After the trailer premieres, you can head over to our Steam page to wishlist the game. We will send you the link by email the following morning, and you will also be able to find it on all of our social media pages.
Bug Trait Discovery Progress
So, we know that bugs have traits but how do we use these to our advantage? Well when sending out bugs on a date, you will learn how they feel about their date’s traits. They can either be indifferent to a category of traits. For example a critter doesn’t care whether their date has wings or not. Otherwise they will Hate (red), Like (blue), or Love(green)certain traits. In the image above for example Ardene the yellerbee love’s Maggi’s Oozy attitude.
By the reaction a bug has to their date you can find out what their ideal partner looks like by deducing which traits they are looking for.
If you click the image below you can see a quick look what the end of a date could look like. Although as with anything this early in development, everything is still subject to change.
Changes to the Dev Diary
We are changing things up a bit! From now on, we will release developer diaries every three months so there is more exciting progress to share each time and we can do some deeper dives into the art, systems and design of the game. And don’t worry, our devs are still working just as hard behind the scenes.
So the next dev diary will be towards the end of February. Until then you can always catch regular updates on the development on our social media accounts.
We all at Grand Duck Games are really excited for the announcement and we hope everyone enjoys the trailer.
Hello hello hello and welcome to this month’s dev diary. We have some very exciting news to share with you this month so make sure to read until the end.
On today’s menu we have:
Visually representing bug traits
Building the village
BIG game announcement news
Bug Traits and How to Identify Them
As previously discussed in our August dev diary all bugs will have random traits that will determine whether they have a chance with their date.
There are multiple trait options for each trait and some bugs have traits that others don’t. For example we have the wings trait. A bug can either:
have no wings
have one pair of wings
have two pairs of wings
Other traits include color, shell type, antenna, attitude, and eyes for example.
All these traits are randomized to generate the look for the critters in the game. Here are some examples.
Building the Village
The village and its surroundings are starting to take shape. Take a look…
Game Announcement
I know I have been tip-toeing around the subject of the official announcement for a while now. This is because we have been trying to reach as big of an audience as possible for our release.
This is why I am SUPER EXCITED to finally be able to share the news with you guys that we will be participating in the Wholesome Snack this December 9th at 9 PM CET.
So tune in to the Wholesome Snack on Twitch.tv to see our game announcement live. We are incredibly excited to be part of such a big event.
What’s Next?
As before, the devs are hard at work, making assets, designing the world and coding stuff that needs coding.
Our priorities are making sure everything goes of smoothly for the game announcement and making a playable demo so that you can hopefully try the game next year (*knocking on wood*). I will give you guys an estimated time window as to when we will release a demo as soon as I can. In the meantime you have the Wholesome Snack to look forward to.
As always, thank you for taking some time to read this newsletter. I’d love to hear from you so feel free to reach out to us via social media or email.
In this entry, I will be focusing on the following things:
Some of our new environments
Creature concepts
“Juicing” the game
Decorating the Island
Our artists have started designing and making more assets for the island. These are things like houses, flora, and decorations.
In this example, we start with an early rough 3D model of a house, then add some greenery in 2D to brainstorm what the finished version could look like, and finally create another 3D model that incorporates some of those changes.
The process itself can vary slightly and often artists start with a 2D sketch.
Sketching out concepts in 2D is much faster than sculpting it in 3D, so artists will generally start with sketches including variations of the subject before creating it in 3D.
More Cute Critters
Like I mentioned in the last dev diary, bugs will have different attributes which means they will look different up close.
Here is a bug in 3D and what its 2D variations can look like. (I’m not sure we have landed on a name, but my favourite is Tricerahops.)
Of course we are still coming up with a bunch more critters for the game. I’m not gonna bore you with the details, but if you have questions, I would love to hear from you. You can always reply to this email or hit us up on one of our social media pages.
Cotton Spider
Yeller Bee
Snug
Getting JUICED
What is “juice” in video games?
To add juice to a game simply means to add animations or effects with the purpose of making it feel better. There are lots and lots of small ways to add juice to a game, most people won’t even consciously pick them up but they are very important to elevate a experience.
When slamming your net down near pinwheels, they start turning.
The grass sways gently in the wind 🍃
There are a couple things here: the bugs move around both when they talk and as an idle animation. And you can only see it vaguely in this gif, but letters pop up and big and get a bit smaller to give the dialogue more action.
What’s Next?
I know I have been saying this for a while, now but the announcement trailer is pretty much done. We are adding music and sound effects. Right now we are figuring out when we will release the Steam page. We will make a big announcement and finally be able to reveal the name of the game when we do.
Until then, follow us on our socials if you’d like to support us. 🙂
Thanks for reading this far, I truly appreciate it.
Hey guys and welcome to our second dev diary. I’m super excited to share the core concept of our game. But before we get into that here is what we will be talking about today:
Matchmaking game concept
Introducing the island inhabitants
What’s next?
Catching bugs and feelings!
The core concept of the game is catching bugs to help them find love ❤️ I will tell you a bit more about the story reasons at a later point but I can assure you the bugs are willing participants.
The gameplay loop will consist of catching bugs then helping them find a compatible bug-partner.
Just like with humans, finding the better half of your many legged friends is not an easy task. There are a couple steps necessary to set up a successful date.
Traits & Preferences
Critters will have dating traits & preferences.
The different traits a bug has make up their “dating profile”. Some bugs will be very picky while others are more open to any trait.
Traits are things like:
Number of legs/wings
Shell type
Color/style
Personality
Eyes/antennae
Compatibility
You can learn what a bugs preferences are by:
Sending them on dates
Finding notes in the wild
Observing bugs in their natural habitat
Tracking bugs in the wild
Postcards obtained through perfect matches
Events (when running around with a bug it might let you know that it likes this place a lot)
Preparing a Date
There are two environmental factors that determine a date’s success, decoration and location.
Setting the Mood (decorating)
You will be able to add objects to increase the odds of the date succeeding such as branches, rocks, moss or flowers. Each bug will have different preferences that you will need to adapt to.
Finding the perfect spot (location)
The date spot can be a certain biome or landmark like a waterfall or lake, or it can be specific cardboard backgrounds that can be found/unlocked around the island. Here again certain bugs will prefer different environments.
Meet the Islanders
Of course you will get to know the island locals during your stay on the island. Here is some concept art for some of the islanders you will meet.
Leah
Loves landscapes and pictures of landscapes. Tells the player about chill-spots and doesn’t stop talking about how beautiful the mountain is. Doesn’t really care for bugs but is supportive anyway.
Wears polaroids as earrings. “What if one breaks? Don’t care, i take new pictures all the time!”
John
Tries really hard to be different from everyone else but is still going through his journey of self-discovery.
Lindsey
Lumberjillwith history in the mountain, doesn’t trust it.
She acts outwardly cold but is really kind once you get to know her. Names all her axes in her collection.
Winston
Operates a fishing hut near the beach but is a surfer boy at heart.
Has build the hut by himself to be always close to the ocean and marine life despite not having much fishing experience.
Matt
A Mayor that doesn’t know how to be a mayor. Rarely gets the opportunity to exercise his authority, but when he does, he loves reveling in that feeling.
Nick
Friendly weirdo next door. Used to work as a sign-flipper for a fast food chain and kept the costume and sign.
What’s Next?
We decided to make some changes to the trailer to better highlight the dating aspect so the trailer will take a while longer until it is done.
The plan stays the same. Once we have a trailer we can officially release on steam. After that the team will focus on getting a playable demo up for the beginning of next year.
That’s it for this dev diary. Let me know what you would like to hear more about and follow us on our socials for more regular updates.
Please feel free to respond to this email or contact us directly on our socials. We would love to chat with you directly and answer any questions you may have.
Hey there 👋 and welcome to our very first monthly dev diary. In this issue I will answer some of the questions you may have, tell you who makes up Grand Duck Games (GDG) and do a deep dive into the development process for those that are curious.
About the game
So you might be wondering what exactly will the game be about. Well, it is a cozy exploration game where you:
Explore an island full of bugs & treasures
Observe & Catch different critters to complete your encyclopedia
Discover different plants and grow them to lure new bugs
The game offers pressure free exploration on a summer island, allowing the player to relax and de-stress. It is still early in the development process so we can’t go too much into detail about the systems in the game just yet as a lot of it is bound to change.
Yes! The team is currently working on a demo to be released Q1 next year. (I hope this doesn’t age poorly)
Can I wishlist the game on Steam?
Not yet, but we are hard at work to get everything ready for our announcement. This is a very important step for any game and needs to be done right to gain some crucial momentum. We will let you know when the Steam page is going live.
Will the game be released on other platforms?
We would love to release the game on Switch eventually but that will be something to work on after the Steam release.
Presenting the Crew
name
what they do
about them
Alex
how is this guy our boss?, code monkey
scared of bugs (the software kind)
Florent
annoy people about our game, constructive doom scrolling
big D&D nerd (forever DM)
Franky
orthopedic necromancer, landscape architect
has a rabbit shrine
Lionel
wannabe Spielberg, does terraforming sometimes
can make a perfect right angle with his index finger
Nora
ambitious pixel sniffer on the hunt for the perfect colour
likes to communicate with ducks (quack quack)
Rua
meddles with stuff, shouts at people
“something with expired yoghurt and smoke detectors”
Development Deep Dive
Meet Yourself
Or well… the character you will be playing.
In this section our artists, Franky and Nora, will show you the development process for the main character up to her current iteration, their thought process and the challenges they faced.
The early Design(s):
Franky: We weren’t sure if we wanted to go for more Animal Crossing and/or Cozy Caravan kind of style (mostly anthropomorphic characters with only a single human as the player to make them stick out)
Fun fact:The early designs have no colours as I still had to figure out how to apply shaders/colours to objects in blender
Second design (in colour):
I tried colouring with a method called “gradient texturing” though at this point I did not know much about it so tutorials were very helpful with learning how to do this properly.
Originally the main character was meant to be an androgynous. Then I switched to tend more towards a boy main character, I think it was due to the haircut, which is something I struggle with to this day. Stylised hair, especially in low poly is quite the challenge. In the end we chose to make the main character to be female.
Hairstyles and details: The thing with 3D is that it can look great from one angle, but terrible from another, which the example here shows. It’s too symmetrical as well, as I tried using symmetry to get a base and move on from there.
The symmetrical haircut served as base. To break the symmetry I simply turned off the symmetry tool and sculpted the haircut by hand.
Asymmetry gives the whole shape a better silhouette and more personality.
Around this time of the process our second artist Nora joined the team. She helped Franky by giving input on the character design with a fresh view.
Nora: I wanted to experiment with the scarf being over-dimensionally big and explore a cute but kind of confident looking design that still holds a lot of casual essence in it, focusing on the explorer side.
Environmental Art
Beach
Nora also worked on environment concept art. I will let her tell you more about it.
Before I was officially part of the team, I developed concept art for a designated area in the game: the beach. For this task, I did a small, demo-like artwork to get into the mood of the game, followed by a bigger conceptual work for one whole area, thinking of fun spots and possible interactions.
I not only wanted to make a nice beach area but also wanted to implement explorable hidden gems, Easter-eggs or little “secrets” that the player can potentially discover. The beach is a nice vacation paradise but also keeps a touch of mystery due to its placement. Being framed by the cliffs with a lighthouse planned on, meant for me that I could incorporate some atypical beach assets like the rundown row-boat. This also avoids a potentially boring and standard looking beach.
I also quickly thought of a list of animals that you could face there. This also brought me to the Deckelsmouk, which literally translates to “Lid Toad” in Luxembourgish.
What’s Next?
We are currently finishing up the release trailer. We are in the last parts of recording and cutting and will need to finish up with sounds and music from an external sound designer.
After that the team will continue focusing on the demo so you guys can play the game ASAP. But this will take some time.
In the meantime we are working on launching the Steam page.
Thanks for reading! We are truly thankful that people are already curious about our game and we can’t wait to share more details with you guys. Follow us on our socials to stay up to date and witness my attempts at marketing.
Please feel free to contact us directly on our socials. We would love to chat with you directly and answer any questions you may have. I had to cut this post short but we have a lot more to share so let us know which part of the development you want to hear more about.
Grand Duck Games 