Steven the Sperm HD

Steven the Sperm HD is the third and latest release of STS after STS Remastered. Utilizing the Unity engine, this version improved the game's basic mechanics, added new major content, and was released onto Steam for Windows and macOS as the first game to be published under Perfect Acorn (P.A.).

## History

### Pre-Release

After the release of STS Remastered and its minor advertising campaign, Simmons began development on a different project. Despite the ongoing development of that project, Simmons decided it would be more worthwhile to recreate STS from scratch, as he would be able to complete it much faster and use it as a learning experience before trying to complete a larger game. Development on this STS remake was announced to the rest of P.A. on February 21st, 2018.

A post announcing the new version of STS - coined "STS HD" - was published to The Stem, Perfect Acorn's newsletter. The post outlines plans to complete the game by summer 2018, implement a new control scheme, drop Clickteam Fusion 2.5 in favor of Unity, release the game to Windows, Mac, and Android, and to use 3D graphics for spermicide and upscaled sprites for everything else.

The updated graphical style was negatively received within Perfect Acorn with the 3D in particular being criticized as "looking like Kid Pix", so Simmons decided to revert the sprites back to the original style, with the exception of the score and boost meter. The new control scheme was dropped mid-development since Simmons felt it ruined the challenge of the game, and the Android/mobile port was cancelled due to programming difficulties.

After discussing STS to people at an art class, a private P.A. server was created on March 30th and managed to attract many new friends. The server jokingly coined "HD" to stand for "Hard Dick", although this is not officially what HD stands for. Development of HD continued with this group throughout 2018, with an extensive beta testing program and a few, mostly graphical contributions.

An idea for an animated short based on the game was discussed, but never began development.

Preparations began to publish the game on Steam. A trailer was created and uploaded to the Perfect Acorn YouTube channel, along with achievement sprites and promotional material. The game's store page was opened early, leading to a few incredulous reactions to the trailer. Although the game was eligible for release on September 11th, Simmons determined that releasing the game on that date would be insensitive, so release was pushed until September 12th, which - unknown to Simmons at the time - was (and still is) National Video Games Day.

### Post-Release

A major advertising campaign was pushed by P.A. at two high schools. The campaign entailed handing out small paper flyers containing information about the game to various friends of P.A. members. On the back, the date was written along with "Peter Simmons + Perfect Acorn". However, the backside of each flyer actually differs depending on which day the game was advertised - the text was written in black pen on the 12th, nothing was written on the back on the 13th, and blue pen was used for the 14th. This was intentionally done to give each card antique value. The blue pen version was only given out to one person who Simmons no longer has contact with.

The campaign was mostly unsuccessful, but a friend of Simmons's purchased multiple copies and gave them out for free. The game was also unsuccessfully advertised on Twitter, Instagram, and IndieDB.

Controller support was eventually added, along with a new stage called "5 Challenges", which came with new cosmetics. Other updates included bug fixes, a more precise timer, optional assistance with the final boss fight, a timed score board, and the ability to change the spermicide's color. Two branches of the game were also created but now depreciated.

A multiplayer edition of the game called "Steven, Sasha, Sam, Sean, & Shin" (shortened to "SSSS&S") was planned, but cancelled as it was deemed too time consuming to program with little payoff.

An awkward but notable moment occurred between Simmons and a high school college counselor regarding STS. Simmons had mentioned P.A. in a college application without explicitly giving the title of the game (calling it "a product on Steam, a major video game retailer"), and the counselor decided to look into it, apparently finding STS. She made a comment to Simmons about finding the game, and understanding why he "didn't specifically mention what game" he created.

A public P.A. Discord server was created and linked within STS and its announcements, but it saw little activity besides a few visitors, and was shut down on March 12th, 2020. Later as a spiritual successor, a forum was created to talk about Steven the Sperm as well as other P.A. products at pestle.boards.net.

As of May 2020, no future updates for STS are planned as Simmons has focused development on other projects.

## Gameplay

HD was built as a port of Remastered that would take advantage of the benefits of developing the game with Unity rather than Clickteam Fusion 2.5. So in terms of gameplay, HD is exactly the same as Remastered, but with various refinements.

### Changed

* **The game natively runs at 1280x720, and can also be resized to 1920x1080 and 640x360.** Remastered and the original version of Classic ran at 640x480.
* **Steven now uses 360 degree rotation.** Clickteam Fusion 2.5 versions only allowed for a "32 direction" movement.
* **The score counter and dash meter use different graphics.**
* **The arrow key and WASD control styles are now used at the same time.**
* **The Perfect Acorn logo animation is a fixed version of the one from Classic.** With the shutdown of Perfect Acorn, this logo was changed to the new TiPrSt one in The Color Update.

### Added

* **Stage 4 & The 5 Challenges.**
* **Unlockable title screens, cosmetics (which are tied to Steam achievements), and an extra mode.**
* **Optional assistance during the final boss.** Unlocked if the player dies five times.
* **An onscreen timer, as well as a different score board to keep track of times.**
* **Xbox controller support.** Non-Xbox controllers can also be used, but may not have intuitive mapping.
* **Dedicated Credits screen.**
* **Customization for the color of the Background Spermicide and other spermicide objects.**

### Removed

* **MIDI soundtrack**, since Unity doesn't support MIDI files.
* **Behind the Scenes video**, since it was outdated and can be found on YouTube.
* **Thank You screen**. The art from the screen is reused in the final unlockable wallpaper, and a different screen with a similar tone is seen after collecting every cell and Steven medal in the extra mode.
* **Desktop wallpaper unlockable**, since Simmons did not know how to program Unity to give it to the player.
* **Using ESC to toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode.** The window mode is instead toggled in the options menu, and ESC is used to quit stages and the game.
* **In-client update checks**, as Steam makes this feature unnecessary.
* **Menu bar.** The title screen can be accessed by pressing ESC (or "Back" on Xbox controller), the Erase Save Data screen can be found in the options menu, and the about box is unnecessary due to the Credits screen.