Field Notes from the Lone Pine Dev Team — Devlog #3 | Bang Bang Bang Interactive

Lone Pine is a narrative indie adventure game about hiking down a mysterious mountain filled with cryptids, puzzles, and emotional storytelling. In our third monthly devlog, we do a postmortem on the Lone Pine demo, and talk about new features we’ve added.

One Month In

It’s been one month since the Lone Pine demo launched on Steam, and we’re stoked to have made it to this milestone. We’ve had players exploring the park, discovering and naming cryptids, and leaving some really kind words in the reviews. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the demo yet, here’s what’s waiting for you:

This month we’ve focused on listening to player feedback, fixing bugs, and adding a few new features to the demo. Here’s what we’ve been up to.

Screenshot from Lone Pine showing Izzie kicking the cable car in frustration.

Izzie's feelings about the cable car bug, represented visually.

Bugs and Fixes

First off, there was a rare bug in the demo build we just couldn’t seem to replicate, which was that some players would get stuck in the cable car right at the start of the game. Not ideal!

We were only able to fix it by accident, when our programmer Dan left some test code in a playtest build after doing some bug fixes. This test code ended up getting us stuck in the cable car when we weren’t expecting it, and we were able to grab the save file from the Steam Deck, hand it over to Dan, and work out that it was a problem with the game state carrying over when you quit to the main menu (but if you quit the game completely and went straight back to Steam, it was fine).

There’s a demo update which includes this and other bug fixes, so thank you to everyone who played and reported any issues.

Screenshot from Lone Pine showing the settings menu with the new auto play conversations option.

The auto play conversations option is now available in the settings menu.

New Features

Accessibility is something we’re very conscious of, and are always adding new things over time to the full game. Some players said they would like to see an option to auto-play the dialogue sections, instead of having to press or click through each line. This can now be toggled in the options menu.

WellPlayed Made in Australia feature banner for Lone Pine.

We got the chance to sit down with WellPlayed for their Made in Australia series.

In the Press

We had the chance to sit down with Zach from WellPlayed as part of their Made in Australia series, where we did a deep dive into the story behind Bang Bang Bang Interactive, the ideas that shaped Lone Pine, and what drew us to the adventure game genre.

We also got into Izzie as a character, the gameplay loop, and what we’re trying to say with the game. If you want to know the backstory of Lone Pine, check out the feature here, or if you can listen in podcast form on Spotify.

ANZ IndieFest Indie Showcase banner featuring Lone Pine.

Lone Pine will be part of the ANZ IndieFest Indie Showcase on May 8th at 7:30pm AEST. See you there!

What’s Next

As always, we’re pushing on to full release at the end of this year!

We’re also very excited to announce that Lone Pine has been selected for the ANZ Indiefest on Steam, alongside tonnes of amazing indie games from the ANZ region! We’ll be putting up some social media posts to share the news soon.

Finally, if you’ve played the demo and enjoyed it, one of the best ways you can support Lone Pine is by reviewing the game on Steam, adding it to your wishlist, or sharing it with someone you think might enjoy it. It genuinely makes a big difference for indie teams like ours.

Until next time!