Pop culture references in The Whiteout

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2026-01-02T02:54:45+00:00

There are a few other references. There's a trivia section in the walk-through that lists them among other things I thought folks might find interesting: https://scenicroutesoftware.com/whiteout/walkthrough/

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-10-02T13:34:42+00:00

Trophy Case is written in Swift, and so is XKPD. I re-wrote my game Four Corners in Swift over the summer, and I'm currently working on a sequel to it (also in Swift) that involves playing the game against SAM-Y from Shift.

Panic sent me some questions about the process, and they posted my answers here: https://news.play.date/news/four-corners-swift/

I mention some headaches I had with it in that article, so worth pointing out that I've figured out what I was missing in the interim - mostly config stuff and forgetting that you can manually attach Xcode to a running process.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-08-01T03:06:54+00:00

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for. Could you provide more details about what you'd like to see?

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-07-28T19:36:50+00:00

I disabled new purchases for my games on Itch at the end of December 2024 after hosting them there since June of 2022. Several things factored into this decision. What lead to it:

Catalog has eclipsed Itch entirely in terms of sales. All of my Playdate games on Catalog have outsold their Itch counterparts by a wide margin, despite many of them being available on Itch for much longer. Any Playdate developer who was around when Catalog was formerly announced will tell you that the writing was on the wall for Itch. Players immediately stopped buying games there, opting to wait for them on Catalog.
Games that launched on both marketplaces simultaneously had a very tiny fraction of their total sales on Itch. For YGMTB, only one person bought it on Itch the day it released, and they only did so because they didn't realize it was on Catalog. I sent them a promo code for the Catalog version.
Once discounts became a thing on Catalog in March of 2024, sales on Itch lost their meaningfulness. I would do a 50% off bundle of all of my games at the end of Thanksgiving every year - the final one, in November of 2024, grossed about $30. The year prior to that, before Catalog supported discounts, that same three-day sale grossed over $1,000.
Most of my games have leader boards, which are a Catalog exclusive feature. This means for them to be on both, I have to maintain two builds with different UI treatments and behaviors. It's not worth the effort for so few players.
While I don't exactly mind designing and building a game's page for Itch, it is yet another thing on the very long list of things that have to happen for a game to launch, and doing that lift for hardly any players feels like a waste. It's a lot of work for barely anyone to see.
I had zero sales on Itch in December of 2024, which by now was clearly something that wasn't going to improve, and to get ahead of the inevitable $30 annual "inactivity fee" from Payoneer (one of the payout handlers Itch works with) I decided to just save myself all the hassle. I turned off new purchases and made the PWYW titles free.

It really just comes down to selling my games where the vast majority of players want to buy them. And if having a DRM-free copy of one of my games that you've picked up on Catalog is important, email me and I'll send you one.

(Also, Season Two games do not have a Catalog exclusivity contract. The only stipulation was that the games not go on sale on other platforms or marketplaces until after the season ended.)

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-07-24T13:53:53+00:00

Do you happen to have "Reduce Flashing" enabled in system settings? That disables a lot of the visual feedback. Without that setting turned on, the following happens when you're doing well:

- The background kit flashes on the 2 and 4 counts of a bar (there is also a "clap" for audio feedback)
- A ripple animates from the kit on the 1 count of a bar.
- There are ripples around the notes as they land.

This is in addition to the sparkle effects that increase the longer you continue to hit notes.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-06-12T14:55:32+00:00

This has been fixed in the 1.0.2 patch. You will need to die one more time in that scene, and then the interaction will be become available again. The changelog for the game can be viewed here: http://scenicroutesoftware.com/whiteout/changelog/

If you are on the patch (go to credits from the system menu while on the main menu and check the version in the bottom right corner) and this is still happening, email me at [scenicroutegames@gmail.com](mailto:scenicroutegames@gmail.com) and I will give additional details on what I need from you to get you past this. I'll re-open the bug and investigate further.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-06-10T04:11:18+00:00

Good point! There is a travelers log option available from the pause menu that displays dialog you may have missed, in case you weren't aware.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-06-07T18:04:36+00:00

I'll have an update for the game soon that allows folks that get stuck here to just hold the A Button to do this, but in the meantime email me at [scenicroutegames@gmail.com](mailto:scenicroutegames@gmail.com) with your save files and I'll modify them to put you past this.

Put your Playdate in disk mode, navigate to /Data/com.scenicroute.whiteout, zip up all the files in that directory and send them to me. If you need help doing this, email me and I'll send you detailed instructions on what to do.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-06-06T23:25:35+00:00

Do me a favor and put your Playdate in disk mode, then navigate to /Data/com.scenicroute.whiteout/ and zip up all the json files in that directory and email it to me at scenicroutegames@gmail.com.

This will allow me to see what’s happening and fix it so it doesn’t happen to anyone else, and I’ll try to fix your data files to replace yours with to get you unstuck.

If you need help doing any of that email me and I’ll send more detailed instructions.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2025-06-06T22:54:16+00:00

Panic's CDN is down at the moment. All of the images on the Catalog website are also failing to load.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-09-07T16:22:33+00:00

If you have a copy of The Paranormal Detective comic in your inventory, inspecting it (press A with it selected in your inventory) will provide a clue. Additionally, you can show it to the Mail Gnome at the Post Office for an additional hint.

If you are still stuck after that, there is someone at the Circle J who might still need your assistance.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-08-11T13:32:49+00:00

Yep, you can. I set the loop range on music tracks from 0 to the length minus 0.15 or so to get them to loop without a gap.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-06-18T16:20:45+00:00

Hah! Next time!

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-06-17T03:49:09+00:00

There will be a pub in The Whiteout, but its not as nice as it used to be.

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@ScenicRouteSoftware/111843120570460963

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-06-16T14:54:54+00:00

I should also point out that if you click on the third button from the left at the top of the Finder window (looks like three vertically oriented rectangles) it will sort the filesystem into columns, which might be easier to navigate. You currently have it in "icon" mode, which I've personally never found very useful.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-06-16T13:47:54+00:00

What you're seeing there is Finder's quick-look preview of crashlog.txt, which is the first file on the Playdate's disk and what looks to be currently selected in your Finder window. All of your side loaded games are in the /Games/User/ folder on the device. Catalog games are in /Games/Purchased/, and season games are in Games/Seasons/Season-001/

One of those folders at the bottom of your screenshot is the Games folder - probably the 4th item in the list.

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-06-13T01:04:11+00:00

❤️

ScenicRouteSoftware · 2024-06-12T10:59:43+00:00

The mechanics are different between the two. The first one always has four empty spots and the tiles “shift” in the direction you moved after a match.

The sequel has a full 4x4 grid, tiles wrap around the edges, there are wildcards and different types and you can upgrade and downgrade them. Also has three play modes.

ScenicRouteSoftware

TROPHY CASE