The day has finally come, and we’re excited to be able to share Puzzle Spy International with the world!
When I look back, we’ve actually been working on this for 7 years or so: The initial idea came back around 2019 or so when we decided that we wanted to make a game that combined Puzzled Pint-style puzzles with a more coherent adventure story and a lot more art! The spy theme and the idea of Agent Epsilon was born back then (and we’ve actually been using “Agent Epsilon” as our team name at Puzzled Pints since that time!) We wrote a VERY involved story spanning most of the continents and including many interesting elements that we ultimately recognized were too much for a small two-person development team to implement. We put the entire game concept on the back burner for several years before returning to it during a period when I (Mike) was in-between full-time game development jobs. A while after that last layoff, I needed to be working on a game again and so we dusted off PSI, edited it down to a much more manageable length, and got to work.
I think I’ve mentioned it in this space before but we eventually realized that we’d edited it down TOO much and went back to thoroughly rewrite the entire ending. That of course meant designing more puzzles as well, but we really think the story is much more satisfying with the longer ending and we really like the new puzzles we’ve added. We hope you will as well!

Game development doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it’s too dark and dusty in there – and I’m especially glad to have had the support of several online communities of fellow game developers as we’ve worked on this game. Most of all, the group of (mostly) local San Francisco Bay Area indie devs The BAD (Bay Area Developers) Collective has been so supportive in this project, from standing co-working sessions, playtesting, and just generally talking through the process of small-team game development. But I’ve also been supported greatly on the coding and implementation side by the DevTalk and Ren’Py Discord servers, enjoyed the discussions and found testers on the https://ThinkyGames.com Discord, made lots of friends on the Wholesome Games Discord, and various other local game-development-centric servers. And we’ve greatly enjoyed the support of our local video game museum The MADE for regularly hosting fun events and indie play-testing nights which have been instrumental in honing this game’s puzzles. The important thing to remember is that, no matter what kind of thing you’re making or into, you never have to go it alone. There’s always a lot of support for whatever ideas you have brewing! Lastly, we want to give a huge shout-out to two contributors who have helped make Puzzle Spy international what it is, our puzzle coder SypherZent and our composer Alex Doty. It wouldn’t be this game without them and they’ve put in a ton of amazing effort and we wanted to publicly appreciate all of the work they’ve contributed. Thanks, guys!

Anyhow, on those notes, we’ll leave you to (hopefully) purchase and play Puzzle Spy International… And we hope that, whatever level of puzzling you have coming into the experience, we hope you find it challenging and fun!

Be seeing you,

Mike and Talia
Travel-Friendly Cake

Hi folks, especially those recently joining us for the Steam Next Fest! Hope everyone is finding new titles and fun demos to try out!

I haven’t had time for game demos this week because we’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on Puzzle Spy International. A lot of work last week went into a bug that was preventing Mac users only from saving a game in mid-puzzle. That seems to be fixed but of course broke a handful of other things in the build. I think we’ve got everything under control now. I also recently got a lot of feedback on “Museo Photographs,” the first puzzle in the game (not a spoiler!) from both remote and in-person testers. We’ve been gently tweaking that one to make it a bit easier, as it’s the first puzzle that players will encounter. We also added some more detail to the hints for that puzzle to help out any players who are stuck. This puzzle involves identifying and labeling picture cards, and now there are some additional text clues per card available for whomever needs them.

The other big thing this past month has been finishing both the new Date Announcement Trailer and the as-yet-to-be-revealed Launch Trailer. I had never worked on any video editing before (aside from the PSI Gameplay Trailer) and while I’m reasonably happy with how that first trailer came out, it’s admittedly pretty slow. I wanted the new non-gameplay trailers to be more punchy and exciting, so I chose some faster-paced music that Alex Doty wrote for the game. The Date Announce trailer highlights Alex’s theme for the enemy base, and it’s got a real groove to it. It was so much fun synching up in-game animations to its driving guitar! And while I don’t have editing chops, I’ve been a game animator for years and a lot of those same skills and instincts came into play assembling this. I shared an earlier version with a friend who is a professional gameplay trailer editor and expected a ton of crits, but in the end he only pointed out a small handful of areas for improvement. I will confess to being unreasonably pleased with that result, so I hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t already.

Lastly, Puzzle Spy International (specifically, me, Mike) will be at the Game Developer Conference this year. So on the off chance that you’re there, please come find me! I’ll be giving out PSI postcards and stickers while I hang out in Yerba Buena Gardens for the week. The best place to reliably find me will be at the Thinky Game Devs Meet-Up in the park on Wednesday from 1-3. This is my second year co-organizing it, and as this year it’s officially co-sponsored by https://thinkygames.com/ and http://playmath.org, there should be snacks and maybe even signage! The last few years’ events have attracted developers behind some of your favorite thinky games (YMMV) so it’s always a blast to hang out, talk shop, and gush over some awesome puzzle games. Hope to see you there… Cheers!