Picayune Dreams will officially be releasing on December 4th, 2023!

We are following the lead of other titles in this sub-genre, charging only $4.99 USD for the game, with a special launch discount!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088840/Picayune_Dreams/

However, we are launching straight into v1.0 rather than doing Early Access. While that’s worked wonders for other Vampire Survivor-likes, our game has a distinct difference that motivated that release plan: Picayune Dreams has a proper story that will play out across your runs.

Launching at v1.0 is our way of communicating that there is a complete experience waiting to be played, We hope you’ll continue to mess around with game-breaking runs after completing the story. And we reserve the right to continue expanding the game post-release! But it didn’t feel right to call the game “Early Access” with that story in place.

This is the game’s publisher, Graeme! I wanted to speak about the inception of Picayune Dreams, as it differs from any other 2 Left Thumbs Published title! It remains the only title in that catalog that I was involved with from the ground floor, reaching out to a developer I admire, and offering up funding to start a new game from scratch.

I first spoke with Stepford back in April 2022. The conversation started out simply enough:

Vampire Survivors is really popular now.
I’d like to see what a Stepford-spin on that style of game might be.
You down?

(I’m paraphrasing. But that’s the gist of it!)

Stepford immediately suggested bringing Andyland and Milkypossum on board, who had previously worked on Olive’s Art-Venture together (and later Underlevel). Shortly after, this mockup was the first thing I was ever shown.

The elevator pitch was, “Yume Nikki Touhou Vampire Slayers (with bullet hell bosses and roguelike items)”. After laughing over Andy accidentally drawing Space-Hitler, the idea was fleshed out, and proper development kicked off in July 2022!

The game has evolved in wild and weird ways over the last 1.5 years! Frankly, none of us expected to work on this game longer than ~6 months. And there was a lot of fear that the Bullet Heaven / Horde Survival roguelike sub-genre crazy would fade out if we waited too long.

On some level, that may still be true? But time and time again, it’s been shown that there is always room for someone doing something new and different. And that gives us a lot of hope about Picayune Dreams‘ potential, because it’s combat, style, music, progression, and storytelling all feel distinctly different from what others have done!

Want to support more niche indie titles? Schism is a challenging roguelite action RPG with guns, gods, leveling, and frequency-switching action. The combination of deep leveling and stat systems, full gun customization, deity worship, intense bullet hell combat, and difficult bosses make for a unique and highly replayable experience.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2084300/Schism/

It has a VERY extensive Demo, and is coming to Early Access in December 2023!
Be sure to add it to your Wishlists. Thank you for all the support!

-Graeme (2 Left Thumbs