Posts

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The Grindstone

Ready for this summer?
Surely someone has already left for the holidays and others will be leaving soon.
Instead for the people who will stay at home this year spending these hot days in front of the computer, here we come to help with a new construction and a sketch related to it.
The Grindstone! Chico has managed to gather enough material to build a very useful tool.
Thanks to the Grindstone, now our friend will be able to do some maintenance on the objects he uses daily to get material, making the work a bit less tiring.

Thanks from the 1Monkey2Brains team and a wish to have a great summer.

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The Hive

And here we are back with our monthly rendezvous.
In this month we worked on a new construction, the bee hive, easy to build, simple and natural… plus you will find 2 new animations about this new building during the screensaver.
Because like everyone, our Chico likes to sweeten his mouth every now and then, so he decided to build a little house for the bees so that they can create a little bit of honey that will cheer the evenings in front of the fire.

But … the bees are not always willing to donate their product obtained by flying from flower to flower, and they will give some trouble to our Chico who will try to steal the fruit of so much effort.
We hope that you like these new sketches and that they can give you a moment of joy during the hours spent in front of your faithful computer; and for us the appointment is at the next update.

1M2B

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The Dart Board

Greetings, everyone,
we’re back with a new update.
As already mentioned we will release a new monthly update, so that during the moments of inactivity of our PC, the screensaver that will start is always richer and more varied skits.
This month we are to propose the Dart Board, a construction that will give a moment of leisure to our hero who spends his days cutting trees, breaking rocks, facing stinging cactus and all the dangers that lurk on a peak in the middle of nowhere…
Let us know what you think, and if you have any special requests, we’re available.
That’s all for now, a greeting from the team and we’ll be back at the next update.
1M2B

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Chico day one!

Hi,

we want to share with all of you how proud we are for having Chico released on Steam: it’s been a long and exciting ride and we’ve finally reached the end of the road.
But we also wanto this journey to go on because Chico needs more and it would be a pleasure for us to release ever new content… we say, on a monthly basis… after a little break, indeed 🙂

Thank you all for giving us suggestions, criticisms… really, thank you all for supporting us.

1M2B.

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Are you ready for the release?

Hi, here I am with a little update; first of all I want to say that we have not disappeared, simply in this period we are preparing for release 1.0 which will have a major bug fix, and the addition of new structures and new animations.
Then with this scary virus, here in Italy we are quite worried, and with all the restrictions that the government imposes on us, we still do not see positive results, and this makes us fear even more.
We’re trying, and we thought we’d get out of Early Access and make the big jump for the beginning of April.
A hug to everyone and to hear back soon.

1Monkey2Brains team

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AI And More

Hello,

we have a great news for you today.

Recently we was thinking about the opportunity to let Chico customize the peak he’s living on by himself, that is without any help from you; in this way you could for example start the screensaver before taking your coffee break ( remember, you can also let Windows launch the screensaver by clicking somewhere in the option menu )… anyway, as I said, you can take your coffee break and once you come back to your PC you might say: “Wait, I never built that hut… and what?! Cooking stuff next to the toilette?! What’s happening here!!!”… or something like that.

In this fresh update you can click to a button in the main menu which is intended for enable/disable the Chico’s AI; this means that you can still customize the screensaver if you want, but you don’t have to… just let Chico do some hard work for you.

That’s not all yet, we have another little update; we are not bad guys, so we don’t want Chico to leave all alone on a peak in the middle of nowhere; he needs a friend, someone to talk with… so now he has a new friend: a cow.

Thanks for supporting Chico: we are really taking into account your reviews and suggestions, without which we would not be able to make Chico even better.

That’s all folks.

1M2B.

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Painter’s Easel

Hi everyone,

this is a very small update we want to show you today: the painter’s easel together with its animation.

Just like all the other assets you can craft it both customize and sandbox mode and then look at what Chico is doing during the screensaver and if you are lucky you might see our hero acting like Monet while painting a beautiful landscape… or our logo :).

We are also working to implement a new feature that will provide Chico with free will which will give him the ability to choose by himself what to build and where: we have developed a basic AI algorithm in order to lead Chico in such a difficult choice. Of course you will be given the opportunity to disable this option somewhere in the menu if you think you can do better. This feature is under test at this moment and will probably be released in the next update.

That’s all for today, see you soon.

1M2B.

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In Screensaver Loot And More

Hello,

in this new update we are going to show you some new animations we added to the screensaver mode; actually these are not so new since we are talking about all the animations you already see when you loot resources in customizer mode ( but maybe you get used in sandbox mode and thus you don’t know what I’m talking about ). Anyway, those animations are also available while the screensaver is running, so you might now see Chico kicking rocks or digging by his bare hand and so on; none of this means that your storage will be filled with wood or any other kind of resource, of course; as ever, our purpose remains the same, that is to enrich your screensaver with ever new animations ( you must play in customizer mode if you want to really loot resources ).

Now it’s time for the second news: the vegetable garden. The garden is a new content for the screensaver but it works a little different from the others. We could call it something like a multiple step content; we mean that during the screensaver the garden will loop between two different states ( growing and harvesting ) which are controlled by the specific action performed by Chico… which depends on the state ?!?!!?… it’s easier to show it than to explain it.

That’s all for today folks.

See you at the next update,

1Monkey2Brains.

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Ghost, Cauldron And More

Hello,

here we are again with a new update that mainly concerns new content.

We have got you used to enrich your screensaver by crafting stuff, but we want some events to be not only random but also completely independent of the player’s choices, like for example the ghost, which might appear at some point while Chico is hanging around. When this happens ( only in screensaver mode of course ) you will see our hero start trembling in fear while the ghost is coming ( if you are lucky, otherwise you will just hear the classical and overused howling of ghosts ). We have found that random events are a very powerful means in order to make the screensaver more various and interesting and that’s the reason why we have planned to add more of them over time.

The following video, with the pixel art camera filter applied, has been captured directly from the screensaver 

Living on a peak with nothing to do is probably not the most tiring thing, but still, Chico can’t go without eating, so what’s better than hot soup? A lot of things, I know… but at least now he’s doing something useful: he’s cooking. Chico is given the opportunity to become a great chef by crafting the cauldron ( available in sandbox mode too ), which is the other content we want to introduce here. As usual, once the cauldron has been placed, just launch the screensaver and see what happens ( or exit the game and wait for Windows to launch the screensaver by itself ).

Ok, but… what do we do after lunch? Easy, work out: we added another idle animation in the hope Chico can drop a few pounds.

We have also made some bug fixing:

  • fixed a bug that made trees, rocks and the other resources disappear by entering the sandbox mode soon after a game reset

  • fixed a bug in sandbox mode about buildings description

  • improved lights flickering for the campfire

  • minor bug fixing

That’s all folks, see you at the next update.

1M2B.

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Sandbox And More

Hi everyone,

Chico has been in early access for a while now and we have already got some valuable feedback helping us find out where our next step should lead on.

We have introduced a new feature that fits the original concept Chico is based on; since we are not trying to give you another survival game, but rather a way to customize your Windows screensaver, at some point during the development we thought: “Hey, what about an editor to give players the ability to put their stuffs in game from scratch? Wait!!! Are you talking about the sandbox mode???”.  

The sandbox mode comes alongside the survival mode ( called “Customizer” in Chico ) and you will be able to switch between them anytime: for example you can build the hut and other stuffs in survival mode and then switch in sandbox mode, destroy and recreate everything from scratch.

Here is how sandbox mode works:

Please try it and give us your impressions to help us improve Chico over time.

That’s all about the sandbox mode, so let’s move on and talk about graphic improvements and new contents.

First of all we added the lens flare that gives the sun a more interesting appearance, but because of the camera view you really need to be lucky in order to get a clear shot of it while playing; things change if you run the screensaver, maybe trying different camera settings from the screensaver option menu.

Last but not least we have also added some new contents:

  • three new idle animations

  • the hammock along with its animation

I am not talking about these assets; just run the game and create the hammock ( maybe you can  try out the new sandbox mode 🙂 and then launch the screensaver ( or wait for Windows to do it for you ).

That’s all folks… we hope you enjoy Chico.

1M2B.