- Overlay text box for easier reading can now be scrolled with mouse wheel (full thumbstick support coming shortly).
- Fixed a recurring crash when loading games saved in certain rooms (in particular the morgue).
- Improved playback of videos on macOS, as well as no more black borders on Apple Silicon (please note: we aware of a recurring crash on macOS while opening doors, the team is actively working a fix that will be delivered soon).
- Text fixes in achievements stickers.
- Various localization fixes.
- Interviews in the Record Book are now sorted correctly and should no longer crash when certain entries are clicked.
- Fixed a door video in the third floor leading to the theater.
- Fixed missing transparency in the lecture room so you can watch the beautiful rain.
- Notepad task while exploring the third floor now persists further to avoid potential backtracking.
- Fixed typos in some patient reports.
- Fixed Bruno's missing lines.
- Windup key item consistently named across all documents now.
- Music box consistently named across all documents now.
- Fixed volume levels not setting correctly or certain sound effects not honoring audio settings.
- Music now fades correctly when exiting and reentering the asylum.
- Fixed multiple missing sound effects, or incorrect ones.
- Fixed light flicker sound effect being too loud in certain scenes.
- Removed two hotspots with no relevance that couldn't be clicked.
- Build string: version 1.1.25319 (test with CTRL + V)
Asylum
Patch 1.1.25319 codename "Angels to some, Demons to others"
Patch 1.1.25317 codename "Send more paramedics!"
- Fixed Notepad position when interacting with Dr. Miller.
- Fixed potentially losing an item at 4AM, preventing completion of the game.
- If you're blocked, please consult the forums with a cheat code that will return this item.
- Fixed musical box crashing if played for a second time.
- Added a more accessible hotspot in the Therapy Room for triggering a certain game event.
- Achievements tweaked and improved, especially a hidden one that triggered at the incorrect time.
- In particular, Scavenger achievement should now correctly match the Record Book.
- Fixed placement and strings of certain hotspots.
- Fixed the possibility of a certain item getting duplicated near the end.
- Improved localization of achievements in the Record Book.
- Reduced the intensity of the vignette.
- Fixed consistency of visual elements when opening certain doors in the basement.
- Improved animations when grabbing items.
- Build string: version 1.1.25317 (test with CTRL + V)
THE ASYLUM HAS OPENED!
Have you heard the news? It happened. It's here. ASYLUM exists.
It's quite surreal to write this update, and it's gonna be days until the moment settles in. I'd like thank everyone for being such cool and supportive people over the years. I REALLY mean that. Everyone around these parts have been ultra nice, and even now our Steam forums are active and fun. I truly hope you all enjoy the game. It's no secret that development has been a nightmare and, as I write this, I still have Slack notifications popping up all over the place since the Senscape team is doing QA for the patch that we're about to launch.
About that: admittedly, the release had more bugs than I'd have wanted to see. We got a bit optimistic. Two dangerous decisions that we made too close to launch for comfort were to rework the main character's voice and translate ASYLUM to 10 more languages. Tackling this feat with a publisher would've been a crazy, now imagine self-publishing the game...
I think these were the right decisions, though — the new VO is being praised, and more people have been able to enjoy ASYLUM at launch. Of course, we are actively working on the bug fixing, and I'm perusing the forums to hear from you. ALL your reports and feedback are very much appreciated. Please, keep them coming! We want to ensure ASYLUM stands the test of time in pristine shape.
Launch has been successful, we're seeing positive reviews dropping in, and people are really enjoying the story, characters, and atmosphere. It's what we set out to do all this time: a love letter to the adventure genre, both a nostalgic trip, but featuring modern touches across the board. We can't wait to hear your thoughts and impressions when you're done with the game. About this: Steam reviews are extremely helpful at this stage! If you've already finished the game (quite a few of you did), feel free to leave a review, positive or negative, it doesn't matter. Even early reviews help too, and you can always change your rating if you loved/hated the game when you're done. Thank you for considering this, it's just that these days we are forced to fight against obscure algorithms. The machines are winning the war 🤖
ALSO, be sure to discuss theories and thoughts about the ending in the forums 👀
What's next?
Oh, the story of ASYLUM doesn't end here. There's another story to be told, about how this crazy project came to be. Like The NeverEnding Story, everyone is part of it. YOU are part of this story too! Next steps are to release a special bundle in which you'll be able to acquire an Art Book featuring a glimpse into the early days of production, Soundtrack with variations on the music that you hear in the game, as well as the anticipated A Tour of Hanwell documentary, detailing the wild journey that was required to get to this point (all discounted for current customers, of course). And there's more too... more amazing adventures before we finally return to the ordinary world. But that's another story for another update.
Oh, and look at that. I finish writing the update and the patch is live! Check out the release notes, as surely a number of bugs that were annoying you have been fixed. Have a fun weekend playing ASYLUM, peeps!
—Agustín
Patch 1.1.25314 codename "Death to Videodrome"
- Intro now has subtitles enabled for every language
- Fixed missing subtitles in critical cutscenes
- Fixed rogue notification pop ups that were very, very annoying
- End achievements fixed
- Fixed bad hotspot in a certain secret room
- Some opening doors properly show falling rain now
- More door videos fixed
- Missing feedback lines have been corrected
- Better line breaks for localized languages
- Some bad hotspots fixed
- Better gamepad behavior in the menu
- Size of notepad corrected during certain conversations
- 3D papers folding in a weird way no longer fold in a weird way
- Revised input controllers
- Walking now honors keyring sound (whether you have it or not)
- Fixed some missing sounds
- Fixed some missing dialogue lines, especially Lenny
- Size of fonts improved for many languages
- Text is better centered in some UI elements
- Updated build string to: 1.1.25314
Important message! New launch date is March 13.
We're delaying the launch of ASYLUM by one week. New date is Thursday, March 13. Still 2025. Main reason is that we're recasting the protagonist since, following in-game clips that we shared in public, we received feedback that the character wasn't quite working out. We take such comments seriously and the Senscape team agreed, so during the weekend we made the difficult decision to make the switch.
I elaborate more on this 1-min video here:
While not a huge setback, I know it's frustrating since we had committed to a date, you were excited, and there will be complains, and memes, and that's fine. We firmly believe this is what's best for the game. It's not a decision I took lightly either — we wouldn't be doing this if we weren't convinced that the game is special and worth this extra effort. I must say that the former actor gave a memorable performance in Serena, and he's a dear friend of mine. I'm really sorry this didn't work out. It's just that this important character (you, the players!) wasn't working out as was expected.
Details about the replacement actor will be shared shortly. Since the question popped up already: is this doable? Yes, because we're only doing voice-overs for dialogues, not every single feedback line (akin to Scratches). It's roughly 2000 lines, and yes, it can be done in a week. We've managed worse. It's going to tight, but hey, it's always been like that with ASYLUM. It was always meant to be sheer madness until the last moment. But the game is worth this rollercoaster of emotions, that I can promise.
So that's pretty much the purpose of this update. As I explained in the above video, this allows us to reconfirm all 10 languages (besides English) that we were aiming for launch: French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
And that's it. If you need to ask questions or vent, go ahead!
—Agustín
You complained. We listened.
Quite a few topics to discuss, so let's get started, shall we?
Steam Next Fest
First, to confirm the following: we were planning to launch an updated demo today during Next Fest, but decided to hold on for the time being. Every day counts now, and we're applying coats of polish and fixing bugs everywhere. While the demo was quite fine overall, it still had a few kinks to work out (ie: new intro not color graded yet), so I preferred to have the team keep focusing towards launch.
Technically speaking, we already participated in a Next Fest years ago, and we might launch the demo next week in case you want to verify the game runs well on your device.
Localizations
When we removed the planned localizations from the store page as we wanted to launch ASAP, there were sad faces 😔
I don't like sad faces, so we put in motion an extremely ambitious plan with a group of translators we've been in touch with over the years. As I'm writing this, the localization strike team is sending me translated documents that we're already implementing.
How many languages, you ask? Here's the confirmed list:
- French
- German
- Greek
- Italian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
While there's always the possibility that some of these might not make it exactly by launch since it's a tight deadline, we're talking about a potential delay of mere days. See and marvel at how the language selection works:
Hopefully this news will prompt more happy faces 😄
Voice overs!
Because there's no better sign of an imminent launch than recording voice overs. We're so satisfied with how the script turned out, that we licensed a technology called Speech Graphics to improve the lip sync of our characters. You can see and hear it in action in this video:
I know it's not AAA, but it's still a far cry than anything we ever did in this area for ASYLUM. Also, we're aware that the protagonist sounds rather flat in this conversation, and we're doing retakes. There's a sweet spot that's difficult to achieve here, since you're an ex-patient after all and meant to sound like a hollow blank slate. But just so you know, it's on our radar.
One more cool moment for you to check out:
Price confirmed
After a lot of thought, I've decided the launch price will be... *drum roll*... $24.99. With a 10% discount during the first week, and regional tweaks for certain countries.
People tell me this is awfully cheap, but we're not in this for the money — just the fame and glory.
More goodies
There's been lots and LOTS of work on the sound design department. This was the #1 feedback from the earlier demo and internal testing, and we addressed it. It's a massive improvement across the board, with a fully revised soundtrack, weird ambient noises, screams, sploshes, gooey stuff... The Hanwell Mental Institute is now fully alive and breathing. Check out a short clip of your upcoming visit to the high-risk section here:
One more thing: recently followers in our social networks sent us a series of questions that I responded in a recorded video. It was very well received, more than I expected, so here goes in case you folks want to take a listen. It's 30-mins long. There's insights about the development of ASYLUM, Scratches tidbits, gamedev advices, and news about what's coming next from us:
Finally... Store page update!
And with system requirements! We confirmed these just today. The ones that were listed until now were a bit dated, but the good news is that it's not a dramatic difference. Basically, a 10-year-old PC will manage just fine.
Check them out for yourself, and also do note the amazing new GIFs 🤓
https://store.steampowered.com/app/230210/ASYLUM/
And... that's it! I'm sorry if you were expecting today's Next Fest demo, but hang on in there — just a few more days!
-Agustín
Wishing you a Creepy New Year!
I'm happy to report that the new trailer has been very well received, so much in fact that it became our most liked video ever on YouTube. But the good news don't stop there: we've surpassed 50.000 wishlists here on Steam, which puts us in great shape for launch! In fact, it's closer to 52k as of this writing. There's still time to reach 66.666, so make sure you tell your loved ones, heck, why not your hated ones too, about the game!
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[/center]There will be a few more updates here before we go live, and I'm eager to tell you about the materials we're preparing for the Steam crowd: emojis for every occasion, trading cards, cool wallpapers you'll definitely want to use... oh, and it's already running well on the Deck too! We need to adjust controls and a few other tweaks to get that Verified ✅ checkmark for launch.
We also confirm that ASYLUM will be featured on Next Fest February with a fully revised demo. There will be a bunch of fun activities and streams. And if you're looking to get one of those coveted Scratches keys: another big giveaway is coming!
The whole team is stoked with how the game looks and feels, and I trust the passion and dedication we invested into this thing will soon show. Everyone is working hard to ensure we deliver a smooth and bug-free experience. And thanks for the patience throughout all this time — the community here on Steam is just great 😊
See you soon!
ASYLUM opens its doors on March 6, 2025
So we got an announcement for you alright. An important one: fate has decided that ASYLUM will launch on March 6, 2025. Yup, mark your calendars, this is not a drill. We're finishing this game for once and for all.
And look at that, there’s even a gorgeous new trailer to celebrate the news:
Of all the promotional materials we've ever released, I feel this is the most realized one, conveying the tones of impending doom and bittersweet melancholy you’ll find in the game.
One big note, folks: we updated our store page and intentionally set the release language to English only, to avoid false expectations of available languages at launch. Of course we’re still planning to translate the game to as many languages as possible. We don’t know exactly which ones will be ready for next March, but as they get confirmed, we’ll re-add them.
And that’s it for today. Look at that, so very few words this time. I’ll let the video do the talking. Hope you enjoy it, and see you soon.
Now watch… WATCH…
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[/center] A huge, mean Friday update. With videos.
BUT! Contrary to the past few ones, this joyous new collection of words is meant to hype you. Yes, you wonderful people -- we're very appreciative of the strong reception to our previous write-up, and we're going to increase the rate of communication as the release date draws closer. So here's what you can expect in this mélange of tidbits:
- Fewer words than usual (I'll try).
- Eye candy and mood. Lots.
- Some cool technical wizardry.
- Next steps and tentative timeline of major events.
Read on for the goods!
The good things always happen with the rain
One of my favorite quotes in a movie, it's from John Frankenheimer's Seconds. A poetic line by itself, but has a special meaning in the context of the film. In our context, though, it would be more like the horrific things always happen with the rain.
Anyway, a critical goal in ASYLUM is to ensure the environments feel engrossing, you know, as in the moooood and the feels absorb you. Scratches had a good dose of ambiance, yet everything felt somewhat static and lifeless (in a way, it kinda fit with the style of the game). But, we've always aimed for a big boost with its successor -- ensuring the passage of time is well represented during the night you spend in the Hanwell institute, with as much detail and movement as we can. Different stages of weather are an excellent way to establish a notion of urgency and dread. For example, rain:
Really dense rain, gloomy clouds, distant lightning, raindrops hitting surfaces, both inside and outside, all combined with a cared-for sound design. Remember, this is pre-rendered graphics -- there's arcane knowledge applied here to put those splashes of raindrops on top of the car.
Speaking of sound, we finally have a full-time, dedicated sound designer (Nico Franza, who worked on some of the spookiest scenes from Silent Hill: Ascension) enhancing all the gloomy places you'll visit. This was a big note from beta-testers, that audio ambience overall needed an extra kick. Well, people shall be happy:
Moving on, I mentioned characters are being polished as much as we can, and testers also mentioned inconsistencies, such as Lenny missing while you open the door and move from one room to another. Again, this isn't regular 3D in which you seamlessly move between real-time geometry, you must render separate videos with and without Lenny. It's a crazy amount of work but we're doing this out of sheer love.
And before I close this section, here's some more footage with visual effects being worked on, such as flying leaves and puffs of dust as dusk falls, or heat haze near a menacing boiler. We know fans of Scratches like boilers very much, so we must get them right.
Oh, yeah... and FIREFLIES!
What kind of sorcery is this
This is my favorite recent development, because it's a feature we briefly explored but left behind. With an old-school style and pre-rendered adventure, there's so much movement and sense of depth you can have... unless you have a stellar team with great ideas and skill. The theory worked, but we never got around to establishing a pipeline that would allow us to scale this visual treatment across many environments. It's pretty wild. Let me first show you this old video how it's meant to work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF0uAUgyHNg
You see what happened there? It's four flat images projected on the sides of a cube. But then I put a light inside the cube, move it around, and the flat geo projects... shadows? How on Earth?
Well, as they used to say, learning algebra is important. And I finally found a good use for it! Look, it's like this:
That's the diffuse map (the very same texture you see in the game, as part of the cube) and a normal map. You're likely familiar with normals -- they're additional information for diffuses, so that a game engine like Unreal knows how light is meant to propagate across the texture. That's what they call Physically Based Rendering or PBR. Normals are used to bring an extra dimension to a flat texture without adding costly additional geo, such as cavities, cracks, holes in a piece of fabric, and a looong etc.
Well, in this case, we're using the normals to tell Unreal how the light should propagate across the "fake" room. There's more than just applying the normals, they have to be rotated in a certain way to avoid artifacts and some obscure magick that goes over my head. The result is that we can do stuff like this -- pay attention to how parts of the room react to blinking light, as if they were distinct surfaces:
It's a darn clever implementation, if I may say so. Credit for the original idea goes to Fran Tufro, and then Pablo Forsolloza for the 3ds Max scripts. I worked on the Unreal shader, then more recently Dani Herrera and Tomás Fernandez established the pipeline. Great job, guys 👏 We exaggerated the effect for the Infirmary, a larger area with plenty of stuff that serves as a good example of how this works. Take a look at the jars, different parts of the walls, beds... there's *depth* where there's not supposed to be:
I don't believe any game has done this kind of lighting before. As a bonus, that video features a new music track from Pablo Cordes. The soundtrack is now clocking at 50 minutes, and it's quite reminiscent of Scratches and John Carpenter. I'm deeply in love with it.
Closing words
Holy crap, I said fewer words, but I can never help it. OK, so here's the summary:
I'm thrilled with the overall status of the game, and the team feels the same. The past few months have resulted in a huge lot of progress and stuff that we consider final. Seal of approval and ready to go. But there's still work left to do. Early October we'll share another build to beta-testers with most feedback addressed. The big pending before submitting that multiplatform build (Win, Mac and Linux) is me -- I need to review the script, prioritizing dialogue lines so that actors can start recording.
We're definitely close. Mood-wise, it's pretty much there. ASYLUM is stubbornly anachronic, but plays well, like any modern game. The best way I can describe it is that lets you feel what it was like to play an Infocom text adventure, without dated design annoyances such as dead-ends or sudden deaths and in glorious (pseudo) 3D. All while harkening back to a particular era of the adventure genre in which experimentation and ingenuity were common, as 2D was transitioning to 3D. It's a heartfelt love letter to the genre.
It still needs the cherry on top, which is the well-executed story, and that's entirely on me. There's still some of that glue missing in key moments, and I can't tell right now how long that will take. But, our goal is to release a new teaser or maybe even a full-blown trailer by Halloween, also update our Steam page, and settle on a launch date by then. I have my producer Fafa Cabrera breathing down my neck to make that happen. So there, that's solid news. And no, we're not going to show up in Halloween announcing a launch date in 2274. I'm talking about a handful of months at most.
In more conclusive news, we're going to have a new game jam during October! And I think it's going to be fantastic. Previous instalments yielded excellent games, even very well-reviewed commercial ones such as Partum Artifex, so we're hyped. Keep an eye on our Discord community if you want to participate.
OK, hope you liked the update. Time to eat pizza and watch an obscure horror movie. See you soon!
—Agustín
Ah, the beta testing. The sweet, sweet beta testing.
- People are truly liking it so far! They highlighted its atmosphere, what it feels like to explore the vast and intricate design of the decaying building, and the compelling story.
- No major issues were reported, other than technical annoyances to be expected during this period. The build we distributed is more stable than anticipated, and most feedback we received pertained to quality of life improvements, which the team is tackling en masse.
- There are design quirks we still need to sort out, notably characters being underused in latter stages of the experience. As in, they have little intervention in plot points and too few dialogue lines. I agree with this balancing issue, and it's wonderful to hear folks cared enough about our asylum denizens that they wanted more from them.
- Before you ask, no, we're not ready to disclose a release date. Yet. So please don't expect one in this update. When we announce it, rest assured you'll know. All I'm going to say right now is that we're very seriously gauging a launch window.
I'll elaborate more on the tasks at hand next, but overall, things are looking fantastic!
Elaboration
So it's a pretty intense period in which decisions and approvals have that 'final, but really final' feel. The Senscape team is doing an exceptional job, and I couldn't be happier with the progress we're achieving every week. We recently onboarded new team members to apply a nice coat of polish to characters, lighting, animation and cutscenes. These are some of the same folks that worked on the hours of cinematics from Silent Hill: Ascension, and they're bringing plenty of experience in their respective areas. We even have a dedicated producer now who is flooding me with Jiras eeevery single day, but hey, I asked for it. I need to be kept on track too.
You could say we're entering in post-production mode. The gorgeous atmosphere, which testers enjoyed so much, is receiving profound attention in our QA, with scenes being color graded, brightness levels properly adjusted, ambient sounds everywhere, and lots of neat visual effects to boost the mood. Fans of Scratches will be glad to hear that we added masks to every window in the Hanwell building, so that at one point in the game we have rain and lightning outside. We almost scrapped the feature since it was a lot of work —remember, ASYLUM is stubbornly old-fashioned and all environments are pre-rendered— but it's worth it. I mean, no game can claim to be the true successor to Scratches without a gloomy, rainy night and suitably mysterious music, right?
Another area of focus has been animations, since quite a few of them were wonky and even the character rigs needed a bit of extra love (and don't get me started on the fingers). The cutscenes are more impactful now, and I'm happy to report we're nearly done with them. You might remember from earlier updates that I mentioned these were going to involve a good deal of work, and we're now close to wrapping them up. See, we ARE making progress!
Honestly, it's kind of surreal after all this time. Some of the more crucial moments in the story, the ones that were devised years ago, are reaching the place they were meant to be. I look at them with a big grin on my face and think to myself "yeah, this is good for launch".
One more note I'd like to add: testers have reported a healthy game length, averaging 10-12 hours. Some spent less, others more. That's in line with our estimations, and there's still some content missing (notably achievements and easter eggs we're keeping secret). Overall, folks reported the game length feels "just right".
It's in the details
We can't thank enough the dedication from the folks who are currently playing the game, and we did listen to their feedback, which ranged from puzzle design to interface. For instance, one area we have been improving in the beta is the diegetic game menu. We've always wanted to treat this familiar aspect in all types of games these days with our own touch of flair, but that doesn't mean it should be impractical. So we addressed save game management while keeping that sort of journal approach, and added a feature to log conversations with NPCs, among other tweaks. It does add to the overall experience since folks sometimes reported missing key information in dialogues. This is a win for customer service.
Also, I like how this addictive menu has been dubbed by one of our most dedicated fans as "flippity-flappity pages". You nailed it, yo.
Another one is a 'zoom' feature which is quite neat to use overall, but was in truth implemented with handhelds in mind. All we can confirm for now is instant Steam Deck support at launch. As a BIG fan of the device, where most of my gaming is performed these days, I'm eager to support it properly. It's currently the only way I have to gradually finish games from my Steam collection, and I'd be making tons of progress if it wasn't for Vampire Survivors. Of course, this also means that gamepad support is good to go as well!
As for me, in addition to leaving bucketloads of notes in the endless stream of Jira tickets that torment me every day, my next area of focus will be in-depth script revision. The big pending that I have left is to review every line of text in the game and further develop some documents you find scattered around, as well as key sections in the journal. Backers noted that a few moments in the game needed more nudging and feedback from the protagonist to avoid aimless wandering, which is another valuable note. This is my top priority, and as soon as it's settled we'll be ready to... drum roll... record the voices. Since this question was brought up in our Discord a while ago, adventure game fans will be delighted to hear that Josh Mandel is very much still attached to the project and ready to start working with us.
I'm sure a few of you are going to ask, but remember that we're currently testing with a subset of Kickstarter backers (about 300 people have access, but not everyone is playing), so we're pretty much covered with the QA and not accepting new testers at this stage.
We're reaching the end of this update, but I'm going to keep the line open with more frequent signs of life as things keep ramping up. A lot has been said about ASYLUM, and believe me, I understand the frustration (it's been a looong time coming). Yet everyone here is ready to wrap things up and launch a game we —along with you— will be proud to have been developing/waiting for the past few years.
Until next time.
—Agustín