Trivia Murder Party 3 - Dev Diary #3
Murder. Trivia. Parties. These are just a few words that can describe Trivia Murder Party 3, an upcoming, stand-alone Jackbox title that is planned to feature our first foray into online-play. In order to achieve that goal, we need to test the game first!
Our Trivia Murder Party 3 dev team is hard at work prepping the game for our upcoming Alpha Playtest (sign up for an opportunity to be a playtester here or for the Beta on Steam) while also spending 50% of their time massaging [REDACTED]’s feet. It’s not an easy job, but someone has to do it!
Wishlist Trivia Murder Party 3 now on Steam and sign up for an opportunity to join the Alpha playtest when it opens around May here!
What have you been working on? Where is the game at in production?
The Art team has been exploring how to connect the spirit of the Trivia Murder Party franchise to the themes of 1980’s campground horror. - Matthew Bell, Art Director
With all of the game features locked in, things have ramped up for QA! Our internal team is working hard on hunting down and squashing the most severe bugs to make the playtesting experience as smooth as possible. - Jayden Zvonar, QA Lead
I’ve been helping to navigate the team towards standing up an Alpha version of the game that we can start to playtest! Working to help all the above super talented team members prioritize and task out work so we can continue to test and build out what we want TMP3 to become. - Caylin Kaunas, Senior Producer
I’ve been writing music and concentrating on pulling musical themes from previous TMP games. The little chromatic melody at the start of List of the Dead is finding its way into all sorts of moments in the game. I’m also adding a lot of orchestral layers, inspired by Bernard Herrmann and Harry Manfredini. - Nate Sandberg, Audio Lead
Wow! Fancy new logo! What inspired this change?
We wanted to capture that feeling you’d get choosing a horror movie to watch at the video store and what those covers looked and felt like. - Matthew Bell, Art Director
Bringing in a bunch of new team members (particularly art) meant a new approach to the visuals we have in Trivia Murder Party 3. If we’re going through a refresh of what the game looks like while playing, we wanted to ensure that the logo started to express that too! - Caylin Kaunas, Senior Producer
How are you getting ready for the upcoming Alpha Playtest?
Deep breathing exercises and a lot of iced coffee - Jayden Zvonar, QA Lead
Lots of internal testing and eyes on game bugs, but also preparing ourselves to take in all the great feedback to come! I was a long time fan of Trivia Murder Party before joining Jackbox, so I think it’s great that we can start to get other player insights on what we’re making well before a formal launch of the game. - Caylin Kaunas, Senior Producer
I’ve been listening carefully during [internal] playtests, making little audio mix changes and trying to get things sounding great! - Nate Sandberg, Audio Lead
A big part of our preparation has been pressure testing our online play systems! We want to make sure things like joining games, connecting with other players, and overall stability feel smooth before we get more people into the experience. - Sydney Hunt, Product Manager
Knowing that this is just one step of many, I’ve been focusing a lot on prioritization of tasks. Because we can’t get to everything we’d want in a finished product, we really have to focus our attention on the most impactful changes before Alpha 1 goes out to external playtesters. - Spencer Ham, Creative Director
What are you most excited to test with real players in the Alpha Playtest?
Sending the game out to a wider audience inevitably means we’ll get amusing and terrifying bug reports never seen before. I’m so excited to see what all of you find! - Jayden Zvonar, QA Lead
Online play! No longer are you constrained to only being able to play Trivia Murder Party in a room together or in a shared stream. I’m excited to see if this begins to open up more opportunities for fans to play that were not available before! - Caylin Kaunas, Senior Producer
I’m most excited to see how online play feels with real players. It’s one thing to test internally, but it’s another to see how people actually interact in that environment. I’m also really curious to see how players use the emotes and how they become part of the social experience! - Sydney Hunt, Product Manager
Do you have any advice for playtesters?
Don’t get carried away playing with the emotes and forget to answer your questions! This comes from a position of learned experience. - Matthew Bell, Art Director
Give us all your thoughts! We want to know what you loved and what could be better. While things like visuals and polish come with time, our main goal is to continue to ensure that it’s fun to play Trivia Murder Party 3. - Caylin Kaunas, Senior Producer
Don’t be afraid to share how you felt while playing. Of course we want things to be fun… but hearing moments like “this felt confusing,” “I wasn’t sure what was happening here,” or “this part made me excited” is incredibly helpful for us, even if it’s just a small moment! - Sydney Hunt, Product Manager
Any funny anecdotes/glitches/silly moments that happened during production lately?
Not so much a glitch as a feature once we realized we could use the fart emote inside the Tombstones. - Matthew Bell, Art Director
When we were first designing the trivia UI, we would use “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” as a placeholder for the answer options. There was a bug where sometimes this placeholder would find its way into actual trivia! I’d like to think we stopped old Wolfgang from showing up where he’s not supposed to, but some say his spirit still haunts the game to this day… - Jayden Zvonar, QA Lead
We discovered a bug recently where players can produce fart clouds in front of themselves, which made it seem more like a case of halitosis. - Spencer Ham, Creative Director
I haven’t told anyone on the team this yet (in fear that they’ll look at me differently), but I personally “performed” all the fart sounds in the game. - Nate Sandberg, Audio Lead
How does [REDACTED] get ready for another exciting debut?
It’s not easy converting an abandoned murder camp into a full featured survival gameshow. As the days get closer to opening the doors, He’s been hand crafting everything from killing devices to tutorials with nothing more than a box of 80’s electronics, craft supplies and murderous intent. - Matthew Bell, Art Director
I’ve heard he’s got a thing for fedoras this time around… - Caylin Kaunas, Senior Producer
From what I can tell, he’s been binge watching Selling Sunset and expensing a lot of takeout. - Spencer Ham, Creative Director
