- Slow Progress is Still Progress - 17 September 2026
With the Party-Based RPG Fest going on, I felt like it was a good time to make a post about some of the new content we've been working on with Trope Tales.To start: as I mentioned in our last post, game development has been very slow. Most days recently I can't boot RPG Maker MZ, and when I can it's for an hour at most.I say "we" and "our" a lot, so I'd like to be a bit transparent about who I'm letting down with my constant inability to finish this game. As I've been talking about Trope Tales with my friends and family for the last 7 years, a number of friends have had creative input ("you should add this!" or "I tried your demo and didn't like that"). I've also put my wife in charge of nearly all marketing (she runs our Facebook ads and monitors the feedback form to tell me when we get a new entry). I also have several friends who have asked for voice acting positions in the game. You…
- Delayed Again (Sorry) - 31 May 2026
Around February of this year I changed positions at my job, and the new position has been very taxing on my time. On top of this, my son has started potty training. On top of this, I've had several personal issues arise that have drained my time.To top it all off: whenever I did sit down to work on Trope Tales, I found myself fiddling with the first 9 chapters (balancing bosses, fixing bugs, adding new items, adding new interactable objects, etc) instead of pushing the story forward.I'll be real: chapter 10 is about 35% done (half the maps are in place, the story is planned, and the first area is mostly complete) but there's still a full chapter 11, chapter 12, chapter 13, and chapter 14 I need to finish after that.For chapter 11 I only have two out of seven maps done, and none of the quests/events/interactions.For chapter 12 I have a rough draft of the story, but nothing built. The sam…
- Demo Feedback Update! - 27 April 2026
Demo Feedback UpdateThank you to everyone who has enjoyed our demo and submitted feedback! We really appreciate hearing what is troubling our players so we can try to help them find the fun.We recently reviewed all submitted feedback. Feedback is 100% anonymous, so unfortunately we can't provide any special thanks or CD keys to people who helped us out - but we can leverage what we learned to help make the game better for you!In general we saw 3 broad classes of feedback:People got softlocked in Kidnapper's TowerThe bosses were too challengingThe mechanics were non-obviousOther than the easily fixed Kidnapper's Tower issue, we've spent hours pouring over the other two in order to try and find the "right" solution.Kidnapper's TowerFor anyone who likes jumping into holes, this was a huge headache.Before the NextFest release, we paid an artist to clean up some of our maps and add some extr…
- NextFest Demo Update - 25 February 2026
In preparation for NextFest we spent a few weeks combing through our game end to end and looking for opportunities to improve things. There's been a few major changes, a few minor changes, some bug fixes, and some balance adjustments.Major ChangesHarps aren't useless!Hero's swords give him ATK, and ATK directly influences how much damage he does.Einstein's books give him M.ATK, and M.ATK directly influences how hard his spells hit.OCG's claws give them ATK, and ATK directly influences how much damage they do.But Princess's harps didn't really do much... If we gave ATK, this didn't help because Princess spent her rounds casting buffs and debuffs, not attacking. Her attack was (rather intentionally) underwhelming.But if we gave her M.ATK, this has no impact on the effectiveness of her buffs and debuffs! "ATK UP" triples your ATK, regardless of how strong Princess is when she casts it.So w…
- Trope Tales | Next Fest Livestream! - 25 February 2026
Live dev stream of Trope Tales! Let's enjoy this nostalgic throwback together. This is a labor of love between family and friends to deliver on comedy and tropes. Each step of any journey feels big before it happens and small once it is gone. That is what every piece delivered has felt. Never enough, but always happy to have made it. Unbroken Fun will always strive to deliver the most fun and creativity we can. Trope Tales hopes to let people giggle through the hero's journey as you uncover more about the land and the world you're exploring. Each of the characters has a little bit of the person they're inspired by or made to laugh about. https://steamcommunity.com/broadcast/watch/76561199270467092
- New Demo Release - 6 January 2026
To celebrate the new year and prepare for Steam NextFest, we're rolling out a new release of the Trope Tales demo! There's a lot of changes in this update, but I'll try to cover most of it and break this into sections for easy consumption:More BatsStoryline ChangesFeature Changes"Other" ChangesMore BatsThis deserved its own top-level heading.By popular demand we've increased the number of bats in the game by 200%! Every region now has its own variant of bat with different bats employing different bat-related tactics.We've also introduced a bat-only optional dungeon for players to conquer! Think you're ready to take on the Bat Boss?Storyline ChangesThere's a few big things to touch on here:Reduced ScopeNew Chapters (8 and 9)Chapter 6 reworkSide quests!More railroadingSo let's focus on them one at a time.Reduced ScopeOur original demo post mentions that as new content was ready the demo w…
- Trope Tales Cinematic Trailer - 17 September 2025
We didn't want to spoil it before it happened, but we finally finished our cinematic trailer! You can check it out in the trailers available at the top of the Trope Tales page! Appreciate the voice acting contributions of our amazing friend: https://www.instagram.com/mmoysee/(Let us know if anyone needs voice acting - he's awesome)Now that we've finished the cinematic trailer it is back to the grindstone. We're reimagining the introduction to Einstein and reviewing everything to make sure the base is solid as we work out the next chapters. For anyone that has tried the demo we're open to feedback so feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you enjoyed (or what you hated if something didn't work for you!). Hopefully the cinematic trailer expresses the fun, silly, and funny game we're trying to make and hope to deliver to you guys. Until next time!
- Level up: We're in the clouds, nyaa~! - 9 August 2025
We're super excited to announce we now support steam cloud cross platform saves! Now you can start playing on one device and swap to another without losing your save!Steam has a neat feature where you can setup cloud saves automatically by describing the file path and file extensions you want saved to the cloud. Once configured we were able to setup the path rules for Mac too meaning your cloud saves are cross platform!We frequently play on Steam Deck for testing along with Mac and Windows so this felt magical to see the same save float seamlessly between platforms.Our hope is to support key major platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Steam Deck) on launch and we hope this update will help if people are playing across multiple devices!Now live in the demo!!
- Demo Feedback Updates - 6 August 2025
Based on preliminary feedback from the demo, a few changes have been made to the game:Fixed BugsThe "Shell" status effect (imparted by Shell, AoE Shell, Good Touch, and Good Breath) crashed the game due to a missing effect fileThe party and First Villain were not removed from the top of Einstein's Tower after the First Villain was defeated, meaning you could walk to the roof and battle him a second timePrincess would appear in Dawnstar Palace in the throne room after you finished speaking to her father and left the castleHats and Robes incorrectly claimed that they raised M.ATK, when in fact they only raised M.DEFThe "AoE" variants of debuff spells (AoE Blind, AoE Silence, etc) were not properly applying any debuff. These skills now workThe "Slow" debuff was not triggering the proper message when an enemy lost a turnNew InteractionsEvery well in the game can now be enteredNew dialogue w…
- Demo Patch: Crash on First Villain - 17 July 2025
What Changed?When fighting the First Villain at the end of Chapter 6, the game would crash with an error:Failed to load: "img/enemies/Actor3_3.png"This file did not exist in the demo build of the game, despite existing in playtest and development builds. I've uploaded a new copy of the game with this file replaced.At the same time, some less game-breaking bugs were resolved:The Item Shop in Dawnstar Palace no longer sells a 0-gold no-name item which does nothingThe Church in Fairy Falls now only opens after Einstein is defeated, rather than if you just keep knocking on the door enoughThe Goddess in the Fairy Grotto will only appear after you have been defeated by the First Villain (Unbeatable version), rather than after you defeat EinsteinA 21 megabyte WAV file that accidentally slipped into the prior demo build was removed, reducing the game's size on disk accordinglyRoot CauseRPG Make…
- Demo Patch: Weapons Now For Sale! - 15 July 2025
What Changed?Upon entering the Weapon Shop in Good Kingdom (the first city after you leave Arcadia) the game would enter a buggy state where it did not respond to any keyboard or mouse inputs and you could not exit the shop or interact in any way. This required crashing the game to escape.This bug has been patched. Now entering the Weapon Shop will not break and you can successfully purchase your first sword in Good Kingdom!Root CauseSeveral events were added to various maps to create the gameplay and cinematic trailers for the game. These events would auto-move the player or various NPCs around the map to create motion and intrigue, and do so in a consistent and predictable way so we didn't risk an NPC walking off-screen during the trailer.One such event was added to the weapon shop to demonstrate the player walking in, walking up to the counter, and making a purchase.Since this was ju…
- Slight Demo Delay (Sorry) - 29 June 2025
Posting a quick update about the demo release (it IS coming soon, I swear!)As a new Steam developer, the thousands of options and buttons and features and actions in the Steamworks backend can be very overwhelming, and it's easy to think you've done everything right only to realize you're missing something at the last moment. This whole experience has given me an appreciation for the people who post 5-minute trash games with no content, because at least they managed to create a header capsule in the exact right pixel dimensions to be accepted by the Steam store... It's serious work to get a game visible in the store!I had an app for Trope Tales. This app's Steam store was approved, I had created both Windows and Mac depots, I had created test and default builds, I had configured installation info, I had set up all of the required info (system requirements, genres, tags, OS support, cont…
- Demo Coming June 2025 - 25 March 2025
Tropes Tales Demo coming June 2025! After much thought and consideration, and a lot of poopy diapers, I have realized that it would be ambitious to release my full vision for Trope Tales in the next three months. While my vision is not grand, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Not wanting to release nothing and get into an endless cycle of pushing deadlines and leaving people waiting, I've decided to release what I have, as I have it, with more to come later. The current plan is to release chapter 1 through 6 in June 2025 as a free demo. Then, as chapters are complete, I will update the demo with additional content. Depending on my ability to find time to work, this may mean additional chapters will already be available on the initial release date. So far the story is complete through chapter 9, but there is a lot of missing polish and other elements. Once the last chapt…
