A Story of Distress cover
A Story of Distress screenshot
Genre: Strategy, Adventure, Indie

A Story of Distress

Update 2.0.5 | Oficial Rift Support!

A Story of Distress is finally available for the Oculus Rift on all major platforms! This introduces update 2.0.5 which guarantees that it will work on your rift right out of the box. Also on that, we fixed a ton of bugs and optimized a lot more. Further on, we have been receiving some complaints that the game was too expensive, we have readjusted the pricing to 9.99 USD. Hopefully this will balance the value of the game more correctly! Thank you for your input!

Unfortunately, we also have bad news. Last time we announced the Challenge mode which was going to be adding more game-play value to it, we decided to scratch that and instead, focus on polishing what we already have. We understand that the experience overall was buggy and didn't work at it's best. We would like to make it up to you and instead, work on something that is small, but turns out to be a great and immersive experience, instead of something full of features that doesn't work correctly.

Cheers!

New:


  • Ported the game over to rift, which essentially means, fix and polish a lot of bugs that were happening on it.
  • Added Snap Turn
  • Throwing knives are now able to kill enemies, although, it will still take you 4 hits to score a kill.
  • Re balanced the game by giving the player a health system (you can be hit up to 4 times before dying) and by also making the soldiers more clever. This means that it will be easier to spot you, but, you will also have more survive ability. You get a second chance at winning at close quarters combat. This will also enhance the immersion and make you feel more vulnerable while also making the experience itself less frustrating.
  • To enhance this new second chance system, we added a small 4 second long slow motion when at 1 health. This gives you a small window that will enable you to survive.



Bug Fixes:


  • Thanks to Jay Peet for helping us with some optimization tips! He helped us reduce some bottlenecks when killing guards and helped us reduce overall delay on the CPU side.
  • Some arrows on the Training Camp were to far away from the player into the table, they are now easier to get.
  • On the last update we mistakenly made the Soldiers make a death sound when they detected something, although funny, this is now fixed :P
  • Soldiers were returning to where they first started after seeing the player and then loosing focus, they now continue their way towards the next way-point.
  • Soldiers no longer moonwalk
  • Soldiers have a smaller chance of saying something when detecting the player
  • Animals now scream when they die
  • Further added more LODs in order to improve performance
  • Fixed a bug that enables us to use Single Pass Rendering, this should increase overall CPU and GPU performance!
  • Finally fixed a bug that makes the dagger become invisible sometimes.
  • Optimized Bloom post processing effect.
  • Optimized CPU load on sound import settings
  • Optimized shaders in order to gain performance, doing this resulted in small visual changes.
  • Everyone who didn't have the folder "SavedGames" on their Documents folder had to launch the game twice in order to be able to play, this is now fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience!
  • After countless hours of debugging, we finally fixed the issue that made you sometimes not grab objects correctly! Weehaa!
  • Fixed an issue that was making the game render twice, thus destroying performance.
  • Optimized camera view distance and added a fog to correctly mask it. The game is now much more optimized in general as there are a lot of unseen details that aren't being rendered anymore.
  • Improved the way ragdolls behave.
  • Ragdolls are now easier to release from the dagger.
  • Ragdolls no longer shoot out into the air with stretched limbs.
  • Fixed a bug that was making the player able to hide behind his weapons, it also made him invincible.
  • Fixed a bug that made the player able to walk during cutscenes.
  • Reduced volume of animals scream when they are scared.
  • Fixed an issue that was preventing the running tutorial's thumbnail to be drawn.
  • Fixed a bug that made the player fall a bit once spawned at the first checkpoint on the Training Camp.
  • Fixed an issue that made the Notebook invisible while when trying to access it while having a bow equipped.
  • When absorbing the throwing knife, it no longer auto-equips as this was constantly breaking and the knife just fell down to the floor.
  • Fixed some colliders on the night city level.
  • Fixed an issue that was making all of the Torches' fires to disappear after 5 seconds.
  • Since the first guard that was sitting down was creating so much trouble, we made him stand up.
  • Fixed an issue that would make soldiers unable to hurt the player if he was standing too close to him.
  • Fixed a bug that was making it impossible to actually choose Ultra settings and when you chose Low settings, it upgraded to Medium settings.
  • Fixed Fade-In not working correctly, you would be able to see the scene for about 1 second and then it all went black right before a fade in. This is now fixed and camera fades now work correctly.
  • Fixed an issue that made it possible to gain the achievement where you had to finish a level without being detected, while being detected. This was due to how we saved the game, and we now perform a save right after being detected for the first time on a level.





Patch 1.3



Hello everyone!

This update focuses on adding a bit more overall polish to the game. We loved making the chicken, hopefully you guys like them too :).

As for the next update, if everything goes right, it will feature the first few challenges of the new Challenge mode that's coming up! If you are curious, the challenge mode will be an arcade-friendly mode of the game, it will feature a lot more replay ability and will give a lot more value to the game.

Regarding the Rift port, we have already bought our rift and have officially been partnered with the Oculus Starter Program. Which means, the oculus port is moving along, we just need a bit more time to get things done ;)

Cheers!

New:


  • While absorbing generals, your controller will now vibrate.
  • That annoying initial menu that asks you for your movement type and language will now only be shown the first time you launch the game ;)
  • We have added chickens in order to add a bit more life to the game. They will run away from anyone who get's to close, and can be killed like any other character. But... why would you kill a harmless chicken?... right?....
  • We have also added in Rats! Aston is a dirty city...
  • Started using ObserVR which will gives us more analytic data regarding the game. For instance, it automatically feeds us with your Log Files, so we can directly see what has gone wrong, and if something has gone wrong!



Bug Fixes:


  • The last general was using another character's death animation instead of his own, making him fall forwards into the table. This is now fixed!
  • When killing soldiers, they sometimes went flying high into the sky, this was fixed on the last patch but hasn't been tested until now. We were unable to reproduce this bug after the last patch, if it still persists, please let us know!
  • Training Dummies were being hit multiples times per dagger attack. This is now fixed.

Patch 1.2

Hello everyone!
This new patch fixes an issue that was happening with the "Display Sun Flare" option that was breaking the game. This is now fixed and you can now play correctly once again :D We also did some work on the AI's optimization. Further on, as a little sneak peak, we started working on Chicken and Rat AI, this isn't in game yet but we want to add a bit more elements that help increase immersion and make the game feel more alive!

Cheers!

New:


  • Enemies are now turned off once far away from the player, this helps a lot at optimizing the overall game experience and was previously being done by using triggers, which sometimes meant that you could see enemies spawning/despawning.
  • We have disabled logging to file as it was way too messy and wasn't really helping us in any way, so we disabled it in order to gain a little bit more performance.



Bug Fixes:


  • Fixed a bug that was preventing the inventory to be used while "Display Sun Flare" was turned off on the Training Camp.

Patch 1.1 Released!

Hello everyone!

We have recieved a lot of feedback from you guys. So, we changed a few things here and there and fixed a few important bugs. We hope that these fixes help you guys have a better experience overall! There are more stuff coming in the future and we plan on adding more replayability to the game soon, so stay tuned :)

Have fun!


New:

  • Added checkpoints during cut scenes.
  • Added lockpads on locked doors to help indicate that you need a key in order to open them.
  • Optimized the game a bit by adding LOD(Level of Detail) to more meshes.


Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed holes between walls, ceilings and floors on the Tower Level and on the Prison Level.
  • Reduced Sun Flare size and removed it's borders.
  • Fixed the Wizard's arm breaking during a cut-scene animation.
  • Increased drawing distance for grass and plants on the Training Camp.
  • Made it more difficult to be seen when hiding behind barrels, crates and carts.
  • Soldiers no longer keep attacking forever when the player dies.
  • The bow is now grab able using both hands, this was creating confusion among players.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing the player from accessing the inventory. This didn't happen every time and the only fix was to reload the game. This is now fixed.

We have finally launched!

A Story of Distress is now available for purchase!



We are very happy to announce that after 10 months of hard work, A Story of Distress is now available for purchase! We really hope that you enjoy the game as much as we did making it.

It has been a hell of a ride, but we finally made it... yet... it isn't the end! We will now be working on porting the game over to our dear rift users and later on to the PlayStation community. Unfortunately, we don't have an Oculus Rift as of yet, which means that until it arrives, we will continue polishing and fixing up the base game for you!

If you happen to find any bugs, please refer to the Bug Reports section of our steam discussions forum. We will then analise the bug and fix it as soon as possible so that you can have the experience you deserve!

We will also be notifying you every time we post a new update/patch using steam's announcement system :)

Good luck!

"[...] good luck on your adventure, don't forget: A good stab on the back and they will fall like flies!"

Raf