Dear Community
The year 2020 is drawing to a close. It's been an incredible tough year for everyone, myself included but I am not here today to talk about that. We've all had enough and it's almost Christmas. I want to give something back to this community, so here goes.

No, now it's time to talk about how Play With Gilbert is getting a remake. I'm fairly certain that most of you know that Play with Gilbert was originally created as a small personal project for my then four year old daughter. It quickly grew into something more and I decided to turn it into something presentable.

I believe the game, for the most part at least, accomplished what I wanted it to. Which was to Entertain children, and seemingly, adults as well! I've read pretty much all the reviews, personal anecdotes, the posts on the forums and all the chats over in the discord group. It's been a huge pleasure on my part to interact with all of you.

At the time of the game's release I was about 4 years into development of STARDROP, which was my main project after. I came back to Play With Gilbert a number of times and adding in new features, maps, coop, etc and left it for what it was after that.

After STARDROP was released I dabbled in a bunch of start-up projects. Most of them science fiction related but nothing really stuck. Then, not too long ago I decided to start a new Gilbert project. A sequel! After quite a bit of effort and receiving feedback from a few parents in a closed alpha I was feeling quite happy about where it was heading. And yet at the same time, something didn't feel right.

I remember booting up the original Play With Gilbert to revisit it for the sequel and started playing it and thinking. oh, I know what's not feeling right. This game, it doesn't feel like it deserves a sequel at all. Silly bugs, a coop mode with limited options. The 2nd player can't even be customized. The customization options aren't really that amazing, etc ,etc. The game also didn't look as nice as I remembered. And so I decided to hold off on a sequel and instead I started working on remaking the original Play With Gilbert.

It's been a while since I started now but I'm really happy I did. I've learned so much since then and especially with all that's been going on, working on this game always makes me feel a bit of joy and before this year ends I was compelled to share some of that joy with everyone here.



Play With Gilbert Remake Is Now Available
So as of today, anyone who owns the game will be able to join the public beta branch and play the new version. The game is not yet finished of course and only two maps are available (Gilbert's Neighbourhood and Timmy & Tommy's House) but most of the original gameplay features are in there, plus all the new stuff I've added. I didn't want to replace the base game yet because of obvious reasons but once the full version is finished everyone will automatically receive the remake. For free, forever!

I also expanded quite a bit regarding gameplay compared to the original Play With Gilbert. One of the things I noticed from my own daughter and listening to stories from other parents is that roleplay is a large part of what children like to do in the game. I have tried to lean into that and added more interaction with objects and will try to find other ways to encourage this. But rest assured! At its core, PWG will not deviate from what it's meant to be. A game that small children can play and I won't add in anything that deviates from that too much.

A few interesting highlights are:

• All maps will be re-created from scratch, with better quality assets.
• Much, much more color in every level to make the experience all that much more fun.
  (Seriously, color is now a focal point during development)
• Controller centric navigation menus.
• First and second player customization options.
• Profanity filter built into the name creator feature.
• New features/options for the cats (and the kids) to experience such as opening doors manually, finding food and eating it, seasonal events such as snowball fights, etc.
• Better overall performance.

What the current version lacks are proper settings and options. I will do my best to add those in as soon as possible but I have been working hard to get to this point (I've also had to work on other projects to keep the lights on) but I made it to the point where I felt the game is presentable and playable.



Celebrate Christmas In The Game, Right Now
As you probably have noticed from the screenshots, it's currently Christmas in the game world! This is a returning feature but I've done my best to expand a bit on it with more decorations, more Christmas music, etc. I hope the kids will enjoy it as it ends around the 26th. (It reads your computers date and time to accomplish this). So, have at it!

Before I go into all the new features, there's a list of Controls 
You can get the remake right here on Itch.io as well. Simply download the "Play With Gilbert Remake - Public Beta" version and you're good to go!



Play With Gilbert (New) Features
New And Improved Character Movement
The very first release of the game wasn't that well received when it came to character movement. I certainly fixed most of that but I felt I could do better. The current version of the game plays so much better (in my humble opinion that is). I feel as if I have so much more freedom in the movements I can make. Jumping feels better, walking and running too, but I will keep tweaking and working on it and do my best to improve it where I am able.

Expanded Customization Features

• Rich Color Palette Selection For All Items
• More Hats
• Independent Eye Color Customization
• Play As A Kitty Or A Kitten
• New: Moods (Visual Effect)
• Two New Frames For Glasses
• Improved Name Creator Feature (With Profanity Filter)

Two Player Customization
Both players are now able to customize their kitty or kitten independently. Players can also swap their customized characters out. If, for instance, the player who was playing as player two the last time is now playing solo and wants to play with their own customized character, or let's say the controllers are swapped for some reason.

Improved Day / Night System
The day / night system returns. You can now set the time to static or real time if preferred.
The game saves the time of day when quitting the game.



New: Four Seasons
The game now has a proper seasons system. While it's not super accurate it does its job well enough to convey which season it is. This can be turned off and overridden.

Festivities
The game now has four festivities as well. Easter, Summer Vacation, Halloween and Christmas. Each event is celebrated in-game through visual props and ornaments and some minor festive gameplay additions. Festive events can also be turned off.



Expanded Gameplay
A set of small gameplay additions have been added to the base gameplay loop. These events range from eating food found around the levels to snowball fights in the winter, or water balloon fights in the summer. Certain doors, windows, etc. can now be opened by meowing at them.



All Maps Completely Recreated From Scratch
Most maps will return in the remake and will be recreated from scratch. Some assets from the original game will be used while a lot of new higher quality assets are mixed in with the new levels. This adds to better visual consistency as well as better optimized asset usage. Almost every level is going to be slightly bigger and with more to do.

New Maps
A new map is also being worked on and a remix of two existing maps are also in the planning stages. The gym and the Fish Run levels will be mixed together to create a larger map to roam in.

More Options And Settings
The goal is to add in all the previous options and settings, along with parental control options. I will expand upon a number of game options, such as being able to toggle player icons in coop, enabling or disabling player scores and more.

Currently there is no options menu, which I know, is pretty annoying. It's very high on my priority list to get it into the game asap and should be included in one of the upcoming updates.

Fish-Run Returns
Fish Run will return as well. I enjoyed the mini game a lot and I can't leave it out. The new iteration of Fish Run will be done in a way that I can add them into existing maps easily and players will be able to start a game if its in a level, seamlessly!

More content planned
I want to do more with Gilbert and I am planning m ore content once the remake is finished. These include DLC content and spin off games as well as a sequel when the time comes.



Play With Gilbert Remake Forums Is Up
If you have any questions or need help with something regarding the public beta version you are more than welcome to head over to the new remake forum. Once the full game is out, this forum will become the new default and the current general forum will be depricated and archived.
Play With Gilbert Remake Forum

What To Expect In The Near Future?
The remake is, of course, not yet finished. I still need to implement a proper settings menu as mentioned and I still have the task of remaking most of the old maps. I am however, pretty far along implementing all the gameplay mechanics but not there just yet.

The goal is to continue to update the public beta right up till full release. This release will be treated as a new release. It is in fact a completely new game. As mentioned. the beta branch shall be updated periodically with new content and levels and features, etc. I will treat the beta branch like an Early Access version. I will strife to have as little bugs in these releases as possible but they might be there. As always I will personally test the game with my own daughter first but any help would be highly appreciated.



Final Words
For now, this concludes this news update. I wanted to give a heads up first before releasing the new beta branch to the public. I will release more information once I get to that point. I want to do a lot more with this IP and this remake will serve as a jumping point for me.

As always, I'm grateful with the communities that sprung up around my games. They're genuinely awesome and I want to make sure that before I make any sort of sequel or spinoff, or what not, the original game is up to standard and deserving of any of those. As it stands right now, I don't feel that it does, so I'm hard at work making sure that it will. So let me know what you think of the public beta version, or anything in general. I'd love to hear about it!


Thank you!
Joure