It's hard to believe it's been so long. Back in February, I was so used to working on Temple of Snek that I couldn't really believe it was "finished". Heavy scare-quotes.

So this is a bit of a celebration. A half-anniversary. I wanted to write about some of the cool things around and since the 1.0 release, in the game, about development, and from the community. And since it's a celebration, we're doing a big 50% off sale - Snek's biggest discount yet - during the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase on 3rd-10th August. So that's an ideal time to grab it off your wishlist or recommend it to a friend!

About six years ago I typed the following into my ideas doc:

Tower of Snek. It's a Snake-like, except you're a giant snake monster defending the Tower of Snek from invading heroes who want to kill your priests and steal your loot. Small tile-based dungeon levels, could be procgen and roguish?

It didn't turn out exactly like that, huh? But the general idea was there. I was thinking of a tower of stacked levels, getting progressively harder as you climb, envisage as a 2D game with pixel-art tiles. This procgen, rougelike idea didn't stick around for long though. It was another couple of years before I decided to try making a basic Snake-like in 3D using spline meshes, purely as a learning exercise, and then I just kind of fell into making Temple of Snek. Version 0.1 was ready for early access in August 2021, and version 1.0 signified the end of early access in February 2023. Through that time the game got UGC with Workshop support, a kind-of-ridiculously-big, interconnected dungeon, and a ton of overhauls to various systems and features.

All of that was driven partly by the players and community, providing feedback and motivation. I'm very grateful to Temple of Snek players, and proud of the community we had through all of early access, and of the game it turned out to be. Cheers! 💚

Here's a list of seven things worth celebrating.

Temple of Snek is joining the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase[cerebralpuzzleshowcase.com] this week! It's a wonderful, curated collection of "thinky" games, and it's an honour to be included. If you buy one game this week, it should be a gift copy of Snek 😉… but if you buy more than one check out the showcase. There are some free demos too (including the excellent demo debut of the mysterious and puzzling CRT7 by Snek-friend Amicable Animal).
[cerebralpuzzleshowcase.com]Throughout early access, there were minor updates every couple of months, as well as milestone updates like Mek-a-Snek (the snek-skin editor), Snek Workshop (the level editor), the hint system, and the three big Story Mode chunks. You can read more about them in the roadmap or change log. Two of my favourite minor updates were the addition of the rats and quetzal birds, and the spooky-scary-skele-Snek Halloween skin.
Version 1.0 ended early access, but it definitely wasn't finished-finished. Since then, there's been a ton of tweaks and new features like:

• Pop-up length counter in the HUD.
  
• Panning and zooming the map screen.
  
• Adjusted some puzzles based on player feedback.
  
• Visibility / readability enhancements.
  
• Improvements to ultrawide support.
  
• Improvements to the save system to help you get out of a jam if you accidentally use up all your restarts on the same checkpoint.
  
• A bunch of bug fixes.

Since the Mek-a-Snek editor launched in version 0.2, players have been able to adorn their snek with custom scale patterns. In version 0.4 Mek-a-Snek got Steam Workshop integration for sharing patterns. All the colour patterns people have made resembling real snake species are fantastic, but personally I especially love the more creative ones, such as Lava Snek, by FerreTrip (which works well with the Glo-Snek body), Hotdog by Bubbles, and Arcade Anaconda, by CraftyMutt, as well as CraftyMutts knit patterns, which work well with the Woolly Snek body type, and are the kind I most like to make too.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933461266
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2964386113
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006194068
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006201977
In October 2022 Temple of Snek was shortlisted for an award in the Creativity category of the inaugural Scottish Games Awards. It was a prestigious bunch of nominees. Snek was in very fine company, and I felt very proud!

The music in Temple of Snek is a huge part of the vibe and character of the game. I think Miles Tilmann did an excellent job of composing compelling, energetic, expressive bops to fit the environments and chapters of the game and assist the rhythm-based gameplay. It's all produced as individual stems, in a way that made it easy for me to script as interactive music to fit the puzzles. If you're not familiar with the game and its music, you can check it out in the demo. Some of my favourite moments are when the interactive music can anticipate that you're about to solve a puzzle and bring in a flourish not just after it's solved, but almost at the time when you realise you're about to solve it. There are a couple of those moments in the demo. Miles's arrangements and support made that possible.

Snek Workshop came out in two parts, completed in 1.0, and lets players make their own self-contained Snek puzzles using simplified tools and share them on Steam. It blows my mind whenever I play one of these creations and a player has used the game mechanics in a way I wouldn't have thought of, or poses a puzzle that challenges and intrigues me. I'd have thought I was so familiar with this game that I couldn't be surprised, but that's so not true. Some of my favourite levels on the Workshop are LEVEL 1 by SonySeva, Length Problem by Лёв, Water Room by ~HarrisoN~ and 氧化汞HgOlivere's excellent Binary System - it's very clever.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936776886
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914130805
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2912467032
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947284492
As of writing, Steam player reviews are at 93% positive, out of 78 customer reviews (and 95% of 143 overall) which is amazing as far as I'm concerned. Sure, this bizarre mix of rhythm/metroidvania/realtime-puzzle game isn't going to be to everyone's taste, but I'm really grateful for all the positive reviews and kind words players have given. If you enjoy Temple of Snek and haven't left a review yet, please do! Don't feel that you have to write a lot of words, but it really helps in a big way to get Steam to show the game to more new players. It's still a long way to the 95% of 500 reviews you need for "Overwhelmingly Positive" ... but you never know! Every 👍 helps!