Chinook

About this game

Latest news

• Announcements·3 Mar 2026Official

  Chinook Release Date Announcement

  Hey All,I'm happy to announce that the game is finally releasing, without delaying getting to the point, the release date is 3/4/2026 @4:00pm MST. For those of you who haven't been paying attention to your calendars, that is tomorrow! Anyways, I'm sorry this took so long, but I'm super happy with what my very small team and I have been able to accomplish. Since my last announcement, we've done a couple things, this includes:More unlockable fish, bringing the total up to 31 fish for you guys to discover!More intuitive difficulty selectionOne more hidden "level"2 more NPCsSome quality of life menu editsAnyways, I am super excited to see if you all will find all the things I hid in the game, there is a lot! Now for what's to come. If this game does well, I am planning on adding some content, I have a few levels in mind that would be fun to work on, and hopefully, play. I also have quite a few more ideas for more secrets, unlockable fish, and other goodies. So play the game, let me know what you think, and I'll be happy to keep working on it. Now, to hold you guys off until tomorrow, here is the The Shadow over Innsmouth inspired NPC Get hyped for tomorrow, I'm happy to finally be at a point where I feel like I am ready to release this game! Cheers, Andrew Tate of Blood Sweat and Beer
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• Announcements·15 Feb 2026Official

  Back in the Swing of Things/Progress is Being Made

  Hey all!As promised, I am back working on the game. Over the weekend I was able to get steam achievements working, 4 new unlockable fish, 2 new NPCs, and 2 new endings. I am hesitant to put a release date yet, as I am not sure how much content I want to add. I am debating between releasing it sooner, then see how it does and add some other content I have in the back of my head, or adding a few more things and letting this project be. I'm hoping to submit a build in the next couple of weeks, then get it released within the span of the next two months. Thank you for your patience, and here is a new NPC to tide you guys over!Best, Andrew Wilson Tate
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• Announcements·5 Feb 2026Official

  Still Working On The Game

  Hi All,Sorry for the silence as of late! Progress on my projects has slowed to a crawl. This past year, I started a graduate program for Graphical Programming, and my free time to work on Chinook and other projects has slowed down. However, I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and foresee being able to power through the last few features of Chinook and finally get that product out. Moreover, I have recently become the vice-chair of a student SIGGRAPH chapter at the University of Utah. For those of you who don't know what SIGGRAPH is, it's a subset of a subset. There is ACM, which is the Association for Computing Machinery. SIGs are Special Interest Groups for this society. In this case, this is the Special Interest Group for graphics. Right now, we are organizing a year-long project of either a game or a film. I would be super stoked to work on either with a large group and come out with something really special, but I have my fingers crossed for the game. In other words, hopefully, I have another project that I can give information on soon.  Finally, so I don't look like I wasn't doing anything the last year, I have a couple of renders from my advanced ray tracing class, where I learned how to do offline path tracing using next event estimation and multiple importance sampling. We built the renderer from scratch in C++. One of my images even won a Juror's Choice Award. Here are some more images from that renderer: Anyways, I'm hoping to get back on the Chinook Dev grind within the next couple of weeks, and at the very least, get all the work done so far out there to you guys. Thanks for your patience, and I can't wait to see what the rest of this year holds! Best, Andrew Wilson Tate
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• Announcements·24 Apr 2025Official

  UV Lanterns and Matchmaking using Firebase

  Echoes of Fellow Swimmers {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45584862/9274b34df3e890f8a2e0713009ff0f9ee04bf6f7.gif For this week's devlog, we want to talk about some new mechanics we have added. Essentially, we had this idea of having really subtle community-based puzzles that maintain the single-player aspects, while also feeling like some players are in the game somewhere. In the past week, we have achieved this! The Lantern We created a shader that can swap between textures based on a positional coordinate to determine what part of an object's UV map should be "revealed". This means that we can essentially create a black-light effect that allows the player to reveal secret writing. This lantern is in a very dark, and very hard-to-reach level and will be used for a few puzzles, that I won't spoil. But one of these puzzles is our first community-type puzzle! This leads us to our other big topic: Database Integration We have also implemented a fairly robust database system to do a ton of fun things. First, it will record player stats such as deaths per level, time spent in shade, time spent swimming upstream vs downstream, etc. Right now, we don't know if this specific information will be available for the player, as it is mainly intended for research outcomes and determining if players are learning the more educational goals we have as pertains to Salmon conservation. However, we are also using the database as a "server" for community puzzles. Right now we upload the player's location, what puzzle they are "participating in" and a string that we can use to determine progress in the puzzle. This means we can do a lot of things, such as detecting how many players are in a specified area and using that to give players hidden collectibles. Another thing we did which we are super proud of, is we used the string to perform a "network handshake" over the database to pair players up. So if a puzzle requires 2 people exactly, and 10 people in the area could potentially participate, the puz...
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• Announcements·17 Apr 2025Official

  Introducing: Gandoof the Wand Stroker

  I am Gandoof... and Gandoof means... ME! Starting today, our team is going to attempt to do weekly devlogs to keep people updated on ongoing features and general progress on the game. Today I'd like to introduce our new quest giver, Gandoof. He is a totally orignal wizard originating from Leftish Earth. We decided that some of the secrets in the game are so far hidden, that Gandoof was needed to give hints and point swimmers in the right direction. In addition, he also will have a quest that involves delivering a questionable tape back to a blockbuster! More Updates: We are attempting to add a total of 100 unlockable fish for our initial release, all with unique unlock conditions Major progress has been done on a level that takes place after the underworld Major progress has been done on a level that takes place after the underworld Initial work on a database that will allow for community based puzzles, that are networked based (more on this later) Cheers, Blood Sweat and Beer
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