- Lab 77 | Steam Awards - 28 November 2025
Enjoyed playing Lab 77 this year? Please vote for us in the 2025 Steam Awards!
- Unity Security Patch - 3 October 2025
At 10:37 today Unity published a notification that they had identified a security vulnerability for the version of Unity used for Lab 77 and more versions. They also mention that they were not aware of any evidence showing any exploitation of this vulnerability. Lab 77 has now been patched using their patching tool, so there should be no issues now.
- Dev Diary 40: The End, For Now - 30 May 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: Lab 77 is released. 1014 days. When I started this project I was at a loss. I was uncertain, after three years of university, whether any of my efforts there had been worth it or were able to use what I had been taught to actually make games. I needed to test myself. To determine if I should just give up and flee the sinking ship of games development, which was also not helped by my university effectively axing the line I was on while I was finishing my degree. But I had an idea. While participating in a game jam in January of 2022 I had an idea for a game. A simple platformer, where you had to bridge the gap between platforms to complete levels. This idea had been gnawing at the back of my mind for months and by the 20th of August in 2022 I decided to sit down and try. So I did. And seven hours later I had, to my utter astonishment, been ab…
- Dev Diary 39: Release Date & More - 12 May 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 203 of 208 bugs have been squashed. All five remaining bugs require more testing. Biggest news first: Lab 77 now has a release date, the 30th of May 2025! Having this set in stone now is rather daunting, but for now all I can do is proceed and make the final small adjustments and improvements. Now for actual work; starting off from the last Dev Diary I continued working with QA and playtesting. During this I managed to find yet another level that had a hidden zero placement path, but I was able to resolve this with a change that I had intended to make before. I just hadn't dedicated the time (admittedly only 2 minutes) to make the change. I also found more death block collider issues again, but they too were quickly resolved. In doing this playtesting I also gathered the remaining data I needed to finish the placement data set. This task is…
- Dev Diary 38: Subtitles, Frustrations & Playtesting - 28 April 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 200 of 205 bugs have been squashed. All five remaining bugs require more testing. Music and sound design implementations are being worked on. Starting off where Dev Diary 37 left off, the implementation of subtitles. This started off with some further research into Wwise and implementing that through code in Unity. Unfortunately, this proved a complex challenge as I discovered more and more how lacking the Wwise documentation is. As a developer, it is frustrating when the official documentation does not give you any information of how to use methods beyond saying something along the lines of "This is a callback function, it is used to call back an event". If anything, that line is more informative than the documentation, and the forums are not much better. Granted, there are some answers but there is rarely sufficient information to implemen…
- Dev Diary 37 - 14 April 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 197 of 200 bugs have been squashed. All three bugs require further testing. Music and sound design implementations are being worked on. Last Dev Diary I outlined the key remaining objectives for Lab 77. After a slower start to the following week, I got started on the first point, which was finishing the Wwise implementation by implementing the last set of volume controls for the voice over. Realistically, this should have been the plan from the beginning but I fear I was a little bit big headed thinking I could do it differently even though the players are used to certain set things which ought not to be changed as it would likely generate needless negative feedback. After implementing the volume controls I also implemented a button click noise for all the UI buttons. It is a small detail, but a very important one as it would only be noticed…
- Dev Diary 36: Small Tasks, Wwise & A Rabbit Hole - 31 March 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 197 of 200 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining three bugs, two require further testing and one requires more work. Music and sound design implementations are being worked on. First of all, Lab 77 has reached 200 recorded bugs. I think this is some form of milestone? Anyways... After the previous dev diary was released I decided to start off the past two weeks with some quality assurance and bug fixing. I managed to resolve some of the smaller bugs such as implementing the laser in the tutorial rather quickly, which was a nice way to start off. I also did a minor bit of code-refactoring by improving the scratch implementation I had made for Wwise the previous Friday. This refactoring will probably never be seen or noticed, but I was too ashamed of my initial implementation to let it stay the way it was. Additionally, I continued with th…
- Dev Diary 35: Music, Playtesting & Mistakes - 17 March 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 186 of 195 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining nine bugs, seven require further testing and two require more work. Music and sound design are being worked on. First and foremost, Lab 77 has reached 100 wishlists on Steam! This is a major milestone for me as an indie game dev, especially given how difficult the games industry is at the moment. A massive thank you to any and all who have whishlisted Lab 77! Secondly, music. I was sent the final master of the game music from Rossano Cariello who has done the in game music and sound design for Lab 77. Initially, I asked him to help me make 77 individual sound tracks. As in one for each level. Thankfully, I was convinced that this was a terrible idea and we have since then been working on one menu track, one tutorial track and seven variable in-game tracks that will be implemented using Wwi…
- Dev Diary 34: Death Blocks - 3 March 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 182 of 187 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining five bugs, three require further testing and two require more work. Music and sound design are being worked on. Following the debacle of wrangling Unity's UI I needed a shift of focus. Thankfully I got one as the final piece of the artwork puzzle came in, the death blocks. Since I first implemented the death blocks they have been represented as a red coloured floor tile, which works for testing but it far from good enough for the finished game. Now Lab 77 has new animated death blocks that really complete the look of the game. Adding some animation to these blocks as well as the conveyors and teleportation blocks really has given a lot of life to the game world that I had not realised would happen when I first started working on the game. As a side note, this is the rough sketch I provided…
- Dev Diary 33: Demotivation - 17 February 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 179 of 183 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining four bugs, two require further testing and two require more work. Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on. There is nothing that demotivates me more as a game dev than working with Unity. I can not believe how painfully frustrating this piece of software is. To explain further, in the last two weeks I have attempted to add a fade effect to the game when the player respawns. I decided to do this first and foremost by adding a UI panel that I'd fade from opaque to transparent. Now, I know this is not the most ideal way of doing this, but I intended this initial implementation as a test of the effect. Attempting to implement this has been one of the most frustrating experiences in my personal recent memory. I decided to implement this through using my pre-existing in game UI prefa…
- Dev Diary 32: Level Redesign, Teleportation & Unity - 3 February 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 178 of 181 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining three bugs, two require further testing and one requires more work. Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on. In the last two weeks I have finally done more proper playtesting. In doing this I did not find many new bugs, apart from one which required yet another level redesign to a level I believe I have changed six or seven times by now. I found that there was a path the player could take which would allow them to jump a further distance than I had designed for, which would allow them to reach a series of teleportation blocks that led them close enough to the end to jump the gap. To rectify this I moved some of the platforms further apart, and removed one close to the beginning of the level which has now solved the issue. In the effort to ensure all but one level need at least…
- Dev Diary 31: New Year - 20 January 2025
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 176 of 180 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining four bugs, two require further testing and two require more work. Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on. Having ended last year on a high with the revamped main menu I wanted to start this year from a similar point of view. While in Munich in the holiday period, I realised there may be a bug when attempting to load a game when no save game exists. After returning home, I tested this and found that there thankfully was no bug since the game would just effectively load a new game starting on level one. However, I realised that this may cause confusion for the player. Therefore, I decided to implement a small improvement wherein the game would simply notify the player that no save game exists to be loaded. I did consider removing the button if no save game existed, however remem…
- Dev Diary 30: End of Year - 23 December 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows: 175 of 180 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining two bugs, one requires further testing and four require more work. Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on. In the last two weeks I have again been busy with a lot of admin. Some of this admin has resulted in Lab 77 having a proper press kit, which took me a while to do as I had no idea of how to make a press kit. I did finally take some time to do a bit of research on other games as well as press kit templates and I took the time to set up a specific page for a proper press kit. So if you are working in games press and you are reading this, why not check it out? Furthermore, I finally took some time to implement an improvement to the background of the main menu. Having spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted, and trying several options that did not work for various re…
- Dev Diary 29: Achievements & Upgrades - 9 December 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows 175 of 177 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining two bugs, one requires further testing and one requires more work. Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on. Much of my time over the last two weeks has been spent on doing admin. Luckily I have also been able to make significant progress in two areas. Firstly, I have added achievements to Lab 77. Secondly, I have upgraded all the conveyor belts with excellent new artwork. I have had the task of adding achievements on the to-do list for a while. Having finally gotten around to adding them to the game, my silly game being on Steam has suddenly gotten a lot more real. With the achievements having been added I had some fun with designing the achievement icons for Steam too, which is always a fun thing to do. So far I have added 16 achievements, some obvious ones and some more obscur…
- Dev Diary 28 - 25 November 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows 175 of 177 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining two bugs, one requires further testing and one requires more work. Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on. Unfortunately this dev diary will be shorter as I was ill for a bit over a week. As such I was not able to make much progress. I was however able to finish editing the voice over lines, and they are now ready for implementation. Editing the voice over lines meant undertaking a task I had very little familiarity with. My intention for the voice over lines was creating an effect as if the director had made these recordings in his office, and that they then were played back. To achieve this effect I tried a few things before settling on a "Corridor" reverb with the settings tuned down somewhat and a doubler to create more of an echo effect. I was very happy with the result of…
- Dev Diary 27 - 11 November 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows 175 of 176 bugs have been squashed. The remaining bug requires further testing. Artwork, music, sound design and voice overs are being worked on. Over the last two weeks my efforts have been largely focused on playtesting and QA. In this time I have found and resolved 21 bugs, almost all of which were minor improvements and alterations ensuring there were no gaps in the backgrounds and ensuring the design of each of the 77 levels need at least one placement to be completed. One bug was a bit more annoying, although I was never fully able to reproduce it. Similarly to the previous issues I had with horizontal position locking with the camera, I discovered that the same issue may have been happening with vertical locking. As I was unable to reliably reproduce it I can not say for certain that it has been fixed. However, as I implemented the sam…
- Dev Diary 26 - 28 October 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows 149 of 157 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining eight, three require further work and five require more testing or minor fixes. Artwork, music, sound design and voice overs are being worked on I have finally had a chance to do more proper playtesting. And of course this means that I have found more bugs. Ergo, my work over the last two weeks has largely centered around fixing bugs and generally making improvements to the playing experience. Quite a few of the bugs came from the implementation of the new backgrounds, with some misalignments, parallax issues and other small mistakes that were relatively easily rectified, but as there were a few of them it was rather time consuming. I also had some other feedback on some elements of the demo. Some of these changes were further UI changes which it was very useful to have feedback on. For ins…
- Dev Diary 25: Colours - 14 October 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows 140 of 144 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining four, three require further work and one requires more testing or minor fixes. Artwork, music, sound design and voice overs are being worked on Having finished the demo I had the opportunity to take a bit of a step back and do some admin. I have tried to take account of what needs to be done on order to fully complete the game, and I have started work on this list. To start with, I began implementing the updated artwork for the remaining 66 levels, as I had only done the first 11 for the demo. Now that all the levels have updated backgrounds the game looks a lot better, and feels a lot more alive as well. Each set of 11 levels is colour coded. The first eleven levels start with the purple background seen in the demo, and then the background colours go around the colour wheel until you end u…
- Dev Diary 24: Demo & More - 30 September 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows 136 of 144 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining eight , three require further work and five require more testing or minor fixes. Artwork, music, sound design and voice overs are being worked on. A demo for the Steam Next Fest is done. Over the last two weeks my focus has been on polishing and finalising the demo for the Steam Next Fest. This process has revolved around adding sound effects, lasers and a lot of minor UI improvements. There are now sound effects for the UI interactions, collecting notes, hitting the end level button and player movement. They are implemented in a bit of a oversimplified way, but this is because I plan on properly implementing them using Wwise. I also aim to implement the game music using Wwise too. Furthermore, the chambers of Lab 77 have been outfitted with cleaning lasers. Basically they are there to serv…
- Dev Diary 23 - 17 September 2024
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows - 136 of 144 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining eight , three require further work and five require more testing or minor fixes. - Artwork, music, sound design and voice overs are being worked on. - A demo for the Steam Next Fest is nearly done. For the last two weeks my focus has been on the demo of Lab 77. As I mentioned last dev diary, I found that the underlying systems I have built up over the last two years working on this game were robust enough to adapt to the demo. I was concerned that lessening the amount of levels from 77 to 11 would be a bigger task, but this was not the case. Only one issue was encountered with the end credits scene, but this was thankfully simple to fix by adapting a few scene indexes. Having ensured the underlying systems worked I went on to testing and adding polish. I added a music track, fixed up the…
