Wishing you happy and safe holidays from the Asylum!
Greetings, everybody! I hope you’re enjoying, so to speak, the last days of this decidedly bizarre year. Here we are giving closure to one of the most turbulent periods this forsaken planet has had to endure in quite a long time. Just please stay put, don’t touch anything, steer clear of ancient artifacts, mysterious African masks, or big tomes covered in human flesh, at least until the year is over. You never know what kind of hideous curse you could unleash. Yeah, it’s been quiiite the journey.
People experienced 2020 in different ways. For many it was a year of economic woes. In our case, the whole Senscape team was very fortunate to enjoy financial stability and little change in our work. However, for some of us with small kids, the pandemic was extremely stressful, especially during the months of stricter quarantine. And I mean stressful to the point of nearly murdering each other while being locked up at home. I seriously hope all those upcoming vaccines are effective, for the sake of our well-being 🙏
When it comes to Asylum, the year fared much better than I initially expected: the time-limited demo we released back in June was a crucial milestone in the project and a resounding success! Many people played it, gave us invaluable feedback and most importantly, really enjoyed it. After so many years, it was quite a relief to learn that, yes, this is a game folks do want to play. The team kept working steadily afterwards and the overall balance is very positive: all major puzzles, except one, are now implemented. We got the most complicated and challenging things out of the way, and I mean stuff that made us ponder “how the hell are we going to do THAT?”. We’re beginning to get into the details now, ensuring there’s tons to see and do, just like in the demo, besides the main path required to complete the game. In true 2020 fashion, the balance of our latest Zoom session showed much progress in so many areas 💪
Not just that, but the team grew even bigger: Azul Mousseigne joined us recently to work on pending dialogues and backstory in the asylum. Azul participated in our Adventurous Game Jam with an entry that truly surprised us with its amount of polish and attention to detail, so we immediately thought she was right for the team. And she is! You can play the still in-progress Umbra here (developed in just 2 days) and, let me tell you, some of the ideas Azul have brought to complement the environments in the game will downright creep you out!
So that was a successful demo, two new hires, and lots of progress in one of the most adverse years in recent memory. Not bad! We’re very excited, working hard and eyeing a beta that seems around the corner. There’s much more we’ll be showing you soon, besides all this disgusting and horrifying imagery, but I wanted to keep the update short and focused today. I hope you’re all doing well and earning a much-deserved rest. I’m taking some days off to recover myself – I have the tablet loaded with 50GB+ of ScummVM adventures and I’m very much looking forward to deactivating my brain until 2021. Surely it couldn’t possibly be worse than 2020… right? 👀
In any case, you already know this: whether it’s a pandemic, a giant lizard trashing the city, or aliens invading the planet, Asylum will get released. No matter what.
See you soon, and happy holidays! 👋
—Agustín
Astronomical and adventurous update with reports, schedule, plans and more!
Salutations, inmates! It’s been a while since we exchanged words, so there’s a lot to tell you. Hard to believe it’s already October — or is that easy to believe? I honestly don’t know anymore. 2020 has been the strangest year in a long time, feeling equally eternal and ephemeral. Time has ceased to have any meaning. I think we’re all just hoping to get through to see what 2021 has in store for us. Surely it couldn’t get any worse than this, right? Right?
I do know about the question that’s looming over your heads, though: what about ASYLUM?! We’ve been quiet, yes, but working steadily since the demo. In spite of all the ongoing hurdles, the team is super motivated —especially thanks to the enthusiastic response we got from our community in the past few months— and making solid progress every day. There’s many more hours of gameplay wrapped up and we’re eyeing the next crucial milestones 👀
Let me tell you all about it!
And now… the thoroughest status report yet
First, a quick recap: the main task at hand is to finish implementing game logic, namely puzzles and many optional interactions to bring life to the environments. For instance, a room may need an additional node or two to make it easier to navigate, or perhaps the lightning needs adjustment so that we’re able to distinguish key areas with interactions. Just as well, we’re missing a few more “zooms”, that is, intriguing things you can look at closely. The paintings are a perfect example — if you recall Scratches, spooky paintings were crucial to give you the chillies. We got that covered.
And the drawers, of course. Many fans told me, “I loved opening every drawer in Scratches! Please tell me there are many, many drawers in ASYLUM!”. Yup, we got that covered too.
The amount of drawers in the game boggle the mind, and we’re making sure most of them will have something interesting to see!
This iteration we’re doing to the whole game is intense and focused. There’s no room for “what ifs”. We’re very restrained during this phase — do only the strictly necessary to complete the game as planned. We’re very anxious about hitting our next milestone (looking at you, Beta 🙏🏼) when we finish this iteration. The good news is that this is happening fast. In fact, let me show you where we’re standing.
(Black means locations that won’t be playable, blue means locations with fully implemented logic & assets, red means locations with pending work)
It's quite encouraging when you see it like this, eh? There’s one additional floor that we haven’t shown yet —the basement— which is 90% complete as we speak. Work and schedule are well organized too: Rocío is spending most of her time beefing up the drawers, paintings and exporting assets whenever needed. She’s doing some modeling to improve locations that were a bit barebones for our taste, such as the Museum. It looks incredible now, filled with macabre and nasty details.
Sofía is performing heavy maintenance across every location in the game, ensuring all required hotspots are in place, database entries for the feedback strings are correct, and tweaking lighting as required. It’s super cool that the sisters live together: whenever Sofía needs an asset (say, an item must be picked and we’re missing an image of it in one of the nodes), she asks Rocío directly to export it, and bam, a few moments later it’s implemented. They’re both on a roll!
This has alleviated Pablo, who can now focus on cutscenes, characters and some tweaks here and there. He’s just about to conclude work on the basement and will immediately head to the third floor afterwards. Meanwhile, the sisters are expecting to finalize the second floor next month, after which they’ll join Pablo on the third floor. Agustín (the other Agustín) makes minimal and rare modifications to our Unreal Engine C++ framework whenever needed and is working on the core puzzles. As for me, I can devout my time to complete writing and overseeing the project.
The best moments are when we press “Play”, everything works as expected, and ASYLUM looks more and more like a finished game. There’s lots of new content I could show you, but we want to be extra careful about spoilers from now on. One wrong screenshot could mean one less effective plot detail or twist. Just rest assured: it’s all coming beautifully together.
What next?
That is the plan and, even though this is the most adverse year we had to face during the development of ASYLUM, things are coming along pretty well. We’re hoping to reach blue in all the locations by late November, meaning that a release date this year is unfortunately out of the question. But, wrapping up 2020 of all years with a successful public demo and beta milestone achieved would be glorious, and the whole team is working non-stop to make it happen.
Speaking of the demo, we keep getting requests to bring it back. A lot. So that’s going to happen, yes, but you know we always like to do things with a bit of flair. The demo will return featuring every improvement you requested, plus voice acting so that you can see and hear final content, and a few more surprises. My goal is to re-release the demo with a launch date in sight as well. We might even do new demo + new trailer + release date announcement to make things even more exciting. Yes, we’re really getting to that point 🙏🏼
In the meantime, we’re almost ready to share an extra-large build for our VIP backers as we’re dying to hear their thoughts. The goal is to deliver a polished build to them so that they can get into the story and the atmosphere without worrying about bugs. Knock on wood, we’ve been lucky so far as very few bugs are introduced whenever we make changes. I’m planning to write an in-depth article about our approach to developing and structuring ASYLUM because it’s rather unusual: at a high level, the entire game is mostly implemented in a declarative manner. In broad terms, we describe to our framework what each hotspot does, how some of them should react with certain items, we establish relationships between different objects in the game, and then simply let the framework figure out what to do on its own. In other words: since we barely do things “by hand” when implementing our game logic, we rarely introduce bugs ourselves. Most bugs come from the framework, and that’s not changing much at this point.
Anyway: the outlook is extremely positive. I sure wished we could commit to a release date today, but we sincerely need more time. Perhaps when 2020 is finally over (if we all manage to survive the year, that is).
Video woes and state of Linux
Another positive development during these past few months was the overhaul of our video assets. Long story short, up until this point we had to export three different sets of videos, one per each platform: Windows (MP4), macOS (MOV) and Linux (sequence of JPGs). Yeah, it sucked. To make matters worse, integrating these videos in Unreal wasn’t straightforward. We needed four assets per each video: that is, 1 Platform Media Source that decides which video to play depending on the platform, 2 File Media Sources (MP4 & MOV) and then 1 Image Media Source (for the JPGs). Consider that we have hundreds of videos in ASYLUM, also that we had to package different sets of videos per platform, and you can see how this was a nightmare.
We were dealing with two problems here: first, we couldn’t produce an MP4 that looked exactly the same on Windows and macOS, which both support the format. This is why I had to rely on MOV for macOS. Problem was, colors and gamma looked very different, and this had a particularly nasty effect in ASYLUM:
Second, Unreal on Linux can’t handle videos out of the box, so resorting to MP4 or MOV was out of the question. Our best bet was an outdated VLC Player plugin for Unreal, which brought a whole new world of problems on its own.
We seriously needed to do something about this. And we did. While Agustín (the other Agustín) got into the age-old, unmaintained code of the VLC plugin, I spent two weeks studying the MP4 format, trying to understand why a video can look so different between different systems and players. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Bizarre colorspaces. Strange, undocumented ffmpeg options. A decade-old bug in the VLC player. We almost lost our minds in the process. But we did it. We really did it:
A single MP4 that looks exactly the same on Windows, macOS and Linux.
This might be an industry first, I’m not kidding. Devs usually pay $10k+ for this kind of solution, and we did it for free. Well, free besides all the neurons we lost in the process. I’m working on a more technical article with all the nitty-gritty for those of you interested, but still: this has saved us a lot of headaches. It’s a huge relief to just convert a video to one format, quickly bring it to Unreal, and be done with it. I mean, it may not the most exciting news in the planet, but I guarantee that it was a breakthrough for us. Agustín (the other Agustín) is still insulting me for having to deal with that dreaded VLC plugin, as well as a few eyebrow-raising hacks in our own code, but it works. It really, really works ☺️
And this means the Linux port is now 100% on par with Windows/Mac in terms of features and performance. I spent many days testing things myself on an actual Ubuntu machine, and yup, it all works flawlessly. Linux fans will be very pleased when they play it.
An adventurous conclusion
We wrap up this monumental update with news of our Adventurous Game Jam, which is officially sponsored by Epic Games! It’s pretty interesting how this project came to be, and our thriving Discord community was instrumental to make it happen. Many experienced and novice developers are actively participating every day, even introducing their projects for the first time in Senscape’s Discord. And since we’re using and often discussing Unreal Engine ourselves, there was a growing interest to do something with it. One thing led to another and we’re now hosting a game jam on itch.io. Yay for serendipity!
And let me show you how exciting this is. We’re already seeing a diverse selection of adventures produced with Unreal, with solid quality across the board. I think all the submitted games so far have potential to become full-fledged, commercial adventures in the future. Here’s the latest gameplay videos participants have shared:
Feel free to follow the jam to learn when you can play these exciting projects: https://itch.io/jam/senscapejam. It’s coming to an end next week and a few days later we’ll be deciding winners. I think it’s been a wonderful experience for everyone involved, so I’m sure we’ll be repeating the event next year. We may even participate with a project of our own!
And that’s it. This was probably our lengthiest update ever, and I trust you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your support while we get ready to open the doors of the asylum and finally let you explore its innermost, dark secrets. Until next time! 👋🏼
—Agustín
ASYLUM Demo Aftermath
Hi everybody! 👋🏼
I just wanted to get in touch with you after the period of demoing ASYLUM. Last week was pretty intense and exciting, the biggest week yet in the entire development! We got so much feedback and suggestions that we're still filtering your impressions and reports. It's been hugely fun to share the first glimpse of the game with you.
The balance of the demo is overwhelmingly positive: exceptional performance in general, very few bug reports, and many happy players. Of the platforms we're currently supporting, Linux clearly needs the most work and rest assured we'll get to it. Everybody will be able to enjoy ASYLUM without issues. Most importantly, you really seem to have like the game so far! Which is a relief as it looks like we didn't throw 10 years of our lives down the drain 😅
No, seriously, I must confess that I wasn't expecting such an outstanding reaction — after all, ASYLUM is old school, it can be a bit of an acquired taste, and shouldn't be the kind of game that has mass appeal. But it did! Thousands of people played the demo and it was extensively featured on YouTube, even by prominent streamers. And I swear, the reactions have been nearly unanimously positive! This is clearly the game you wanted to play and the one we wanted to make, so it's a match made in heaven (well, or hell, given the subject matter).
Two aspects stood out: first, we all agree about the kind of game this should be. From the moody intro to a prevailing sense of strangeness, as well as a few occasional jokes, nobody said "I wasn't expecting this". Or "I thought it was going to be survival horror". Even though the demo is brief and not much happens story-wise, we got to test the mechanics, dialogue system, atmosphere, puzzle design, etc. and it all works. No major changes are needed and this is very good news. All your requests are queued now, crucially the skipping subtitles behavior which isn't consistent when you're exploring vs. dialogues, so that's a priority. But the takeout is: the game works.
The second aspect is how much the game reminded you of Scratches. And that's a very good thing because we've been touting it as its spiritual successor. Scratches became a beloved title so we have much to live up to, and so far so good. Whether they where playing the demo or watching it on YouTube, people said that ASYLUM nails the "Scratches feel". It's going to be 15 years since it was released, so I'm very glad that we managed to reproduce that feeling 😊
One final bit of good news is that we reached 40.000 wishlists on Steam. Which is quite a lot, especially for a point-and-click adventure. Based on the metrics from the Steam Game Festival, this is easily one of the most anticipated horror games right now, which is both exhilarating and intimidating 😬
In short: the ASYLUM demo was a trial by fire and we passed the test with flying colors. The whole Senscape team wants to thank you very, very much for your enthusiasm and support 🙏🏼 We're back to work to finish the game as soon as we can, knowing it's something you'll want to play. I can't stress this enough: the demo was a mere introduction. No matter what you expect or think you may have figured out about the plot, we will surprise you. The story, the atmosphere, the puzzles, the horror, everything that comes next is better in every regard. And we can't wait to share it with you!
So from the darkest bottoms of our cold and twisted hearts, thanks again. I'll be sure to keep you posted of our little odyssey, and yes, try and decide on a launch timeframe soon. Stay safe!
—Agustín
ASYLUM opens its doors in humongous demo!
ASYLUM is a first-person adventure developed by a small and dedicated team with a style reminiscent of early 80s grindhouse videos. It draws inspiration from H. P. Lovecraft's atmospheric stories, the memorable Hammer Films gothic series, as well as twisted Euro Horror from the likes of Lucio Fulci. As players traverse the halls of the massive, decaying Hanwell Mental Institute, they will unravel a mind-bending story and solve puzzles taxing their wits and intuition rather than quick reflexes. Over 10 years in the making and featuring 15 hours of gameplay, ASYLUM is an epic love letter to the point-and-click genre and the spiritual successor to beloved cult classic Scratches.
ASYLUM Q&A With Team
Join our ever-growing Discord community to chat with the entire team behind ASYLUM. Ask us anything you want about the game, its development, our favorite adventure game, horror movie, preferred murder weapon, you name it!
The Senscape server has become the place to discuss adventures on Discord, but if you don't want to join, we'll take questions right here in our Steam forums as well.
ASYLUM Live Stream
Join us as we play the brand new ASYLUM demo and share insightful details about the development of the project, where we are standing, and what to expect next.
You'll be able to ask questions, give us feedback, praise us, insult us, and summon your Elder God of choice (success not guaranteed).
The live stream will happen right here on Steam, at our store page on Wed, June 17, 12:00 PM PDT:
Given the circumstances, the Steam Games Festival has been postponed until June 16. Our ASYLUM demo won't be launching next Tuesday as expected, out of respect for the ongoing social movement affecting the world. We commend Valve for taking this difficult decision and Senscape stands by it 100%.
Even though this is happening in the USA, the issue of racism and inequality affects all of us. There are instances of racism everywhere —sometimes involuntary, sometimes deeply hateful— which are strongly tied to the brutal inequality currently plaguing the world, both economic and social. You often hear that “things can't go back to normal” after the pandemic, and this is true: we must strive (all of us, all together) to achieve a more equal and just society, where everybody has the same opportunities and rights.
Don't be fooled by the fallacy of “they think differently” — racism isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s fundamentally wrong and goes against our human nature, so we have a moral imperative to decry it.
No tolerance for the intolerant. Always.
We know many of you needed a refuge space now. You've waited for so long and we are sad to do this, but it's the right thing to do. We'll be back soon with the promised news. In the meantime, we unreservedly extend our support to this movement and demand justice for victims of racism.
Love you all,
— The Senscape Team
ASYLUM to be part of the upcoming Steam Games Festival!
Yes, it had to happen someday. It's true: you will be able to start playing ASYLUM as soon as next month. For free. Around 2 hours of polished gameplay. Right here on Steam.
So mark your calendars: from June 9th-14th, this time-limited demo will be part of the Steam Games Festival. Yeah, it's the Summer Edition and the game is kinda more suited to cold winter nights, but it will do. We'll make sure to send rain and thunderstorm your way.
This is the culmination of many weeks of hard work and we're beyond excited to finally let you play the game as we envisioned it. We're also a bit terrified 😬
But seriously, I'm genuinely comfortable with how the game looks and feels, and the demo is representative of what to look for in ASYLUM: lots of mystery, some fun parts, and of course the scary parts. It's Scratches-like through and through, but different at the same time. We sincerely can't wait to hear what you think of it!
Stay tuned as we're readying several activities during this period, including a livestream and live interviews. As always, thank you for your patience and your support while we finish this thing 🙏🏼
—Agustín
Pandemics? HA! Nothing can stop development of ASYLUM. Well, maybe children.
Whew! It’s been barely over a month since our previous update, but it feels like entire years passed by. At least it looks as if the entire world has changed (and indeed, it may be a very different world after this pandemic). Yet here we are, safe at home for the time being and enjoying good health. The team is accustomed to work from home, so we certainly can’t complain ourselves — others, however, are having a very rough moment these days.
That’s the first thing before we proceed with the quick report: if you need to talk, connect with other people, or any sort of assistance, feel free to ping us. Anytime. We’re ready to help in any way we can. We should all understand that people are coping with this pandemic in different ways, and being alone at home for an extended period of time can be distressing.
One particular measure we took, after we consulted with the community, is to set up a #covid-19-discussion channel in our Discord server. At first we couldn’t tell if it was a good idea or not, but turns out lots of folks wanted to talk about the situation, and the result was a lively channel with responsible information and contention.
As always, adventure game group plays are being constantly organized in the server and we’re preparing other interesting activities during this quarantine. We're also giving away Steam keys for Scratches during this period if you've never played the game or want to replay it.
It’s hard to tell how long the quarantine will last, and it will greatly depend on where you live, but the top recommendation right now is to stay at home as much as you can. If we can stick together virtually, it will be easier to endure.
AND NOW... THE LARCH. SORRY, THE STATUS REPORT.
As for us and the project, everything is more or less proceeding according to plan. I won’t lie to you, things are exceedingly more complicated now — two of us are locked up with children (even multiple children) and some of our days are truly, unbelievably chaotic. The streak of productivity we were having beginning this year has taken a noticeable hit.
That said, we’re luckily at a time when the project is solidly under control and we have a comfortable budget thanks to the Epic MegaGrant we received last year. We’re getting ready to wrap up a series of demos (for Kickstarter backers and journalists), and over one third of the game is playable in one go and in the bag!
All things considered, we’re very much working on the game even in this situation and still eyeing a release late this year. As I explained last time, the first 1/3 of the game was by far the most intricate and busiest moment of the game in terms of assets and design. But that’s done and it’s all progressing faster now. Currently, we’re putting the finishing touches to just a few rooms that needed work and more items: the Laboratory, featuring the mysterious Dr. Miller, and the Museum. I’ll be showing you more of the Museum next time, which had some outdated graphics and is enduring a decisive facelift — we’re including some truly sinister stuff in that place 😬
MORE INMATES IN THE ASYLUM!
And last but by no means least, we’d like to welcome Rocío to the Senscape team! She happens to be Tais’ sister 😄
Hi, you two! 👋🏼
Rocío is a terrific artist who specializes in 3D modelling and texturing. It’s her first foray in the game industry, and talk about a complicated project to begin with! Her first task was to design disturbing medical instruments and severed hands, among other repulsive things. I’m so sorry, Rocío 😅
It’s funny: after a strange turn of events, serendipity has brought two sisters working together on the game while quarantining during an unprecedented pandemic. What a weird year! So thank you Rocío for joining us and help us put finishing touches to this cyclopean beast of an adventure game 🙏🏼
That will be all for now, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted. It’s a difficult year to be sure, but know that we’re determined to make you happier in a few ways before it’s done. Lots of cool ideas are on the plate, as well as a game that’s getting closer to completion. Stay tuned!
—Agustín
Attention, Beloved Inmates. It's Time for Your Treatment. Today: SHOCK THERAPY!
Hola hola, my lovelies! Yes, we had a longer gap than usual since our previous update. Between the end of the year, some much needed vacations, and work as usual, I couldn’t get back to you earlier. But, I’m happy to report that everything has been progressing according to plan, and we have so much to tell you! ASYLUM is finally (yes, finally!) coming together and it’s becoming the game of our dreams. We have prepared a lengthy post filled with loads of new stuff to see.
But first of all, last time I told you that Epic gave us money via a MegaGrant and, as expected, in spite of my reassurances, there was a bit of discomfort. It was our most disliked update ever, even though it was the best news in a while. Look: the Epic grant comes with no strings attached. It’s an ongoing program that gives financial support to developers using Unreal Engine. They don’t ask anything else in return, except that we complete the game. And we all want that, right? 😬
So let me stress this again: ASYLUM is still coming to Steam and GOG on launch date. I don’t like exclusives. I won’t betray the trust of fans who have been supporting us for years no matter the amount of cash involved. We’re not in this for the money — only the power and glory.
Now that we cleared away the confusion…
THE CLOCK IS TICKING
ASYLUM is storming into the new decade with equal doses of hope and despair! The team has been keeping up with a strict schedule and meeting our goals. As you may know, the entire ASYLUM experience is roughly divided into hours or “chapters”. The first hour took a huge deal of work worth several months, as it involved lots of set up, many locations, events introducing the narrative, conversations with a character, etc. The second hour —which features a rather intricate puzzle— still took a lot of time, but relatively much less than the first hour. The third hour, though, was nearly a breeze in comparison. And now it looks like the fourth and upcoming hours will take even less.
As expected, the latter stages of development are proportionally taking us far less time. This is a rather common thing in adventure games, and especially true in the case of ASYLUM: the story is designed in a way that you get to meet several characters at first along with a slew of key plot elements, which requires a big development effort. You could say that we now have the entire structure of the game in place, both in terms of game logic and engine framework. In fact, we’re barely doing changes to the framework at this point!
This is good, folks. This is all good.
What this basically means is that we have around one third of the game in a playable and fairly polished state. There’s always going to be one final pass of bug fixing and tweaks before we can happily say “it’s all over” and cry tears of joy and resume our lives, but what we have now is already rock solid. This is because we’re being methodical and careful while implementing gameplay and, luckily, the amount of bugs we’re overlooking seems small. Backers who decided to try the game can attest to this. Moreover, we have feature parity —both in terms of performance and stability— across all announced platforms: Windows, macOS and Linux. If you knew all the stuff we must do to support Linux… For example, converting all our videos to sequences of JPG images. Ouch 🤦🏼♂️
How about we all go back to MS-DOS for our next game? You know, it was way easier back then. Would you play an ASCII adventure? Look, we could release 3 or 4 ASYLUMs per year if we do them in ASCII. I swear.
ATMOSPHERE WITH A CAPITAL 'A'
There’s not much I can tell you about the new sections of the game we’re working on as it’s delicate, spoiler-ridden territory. This might even complicate future updates too, as I must strike a balance between informing you without showing much. For now, let’s say the story and puzzles are coming together as we expected. We’re eager to hear feedback from backers to see if some game mechanics need adjustment, or for example tell us if a puzzle blatantly sucks. I don’t think so — I would love these puzzles as a fan of adventures, and they’re decidedly less obscure than what you found in Scratches. They’re challenging without being unfair, demanding wit and observation rather than logical thinking. There’s a few surprising environmental puzzles too. I’m sure you’ll love all of them!
What I can show you are the little touches we’ve been adding here and there, such as completely reworked and custom sky. It’s small things like this that can add so much to the ambiance of the game! Remember: these sorts of details are more tricky to add because we’re not working with full 3D. All the locations are pre-rendered 😅
It’s a fantastic and fun phase of development when you know the underlying mechanics are working and you can now focus on the atmosphere and soundscapes of the game. We have a lengthy list of details we’d like to add (and we’ll see how far we can get) but rest assured this is an environment you won’t ever forget.
A big upgrade worth mentioning is a higher quality format we’re using for our textures. The difference is very noticeable in-game, especially in darker areas, and there’s no trace of pixelated regions now. I’m testing ASYLUM on a Retina display and, let me tell you, it looks stunning:
Finally, I prepared a short video showing you how the in-game menu works and a nifty feature: near instant resume of gameplay. It’s so quick and sudden that we’ll be adding some sort of pop-up, indication, something to let you know that, yes, this all normal, you can just keep playing:
[previewyoutube="IctPLEJYkfc;full"]
LOOKING FORWARD
We believe we’re still on track to wrap up the game later this year. You know the drill: I honestly can’t confirm this and I’d like to be extra careful when announcing a solid launch date. Given the size of the project —as well of our team— and its unruly, atypical nature, it’s incredibly hard to assess the pending volume of work. But, every passing day is less work, and a firm date gets closer to reality. When the official date is announced, it will be set in stone. For now, we’re eyeing late September. But remember: it’s an [I]estimation.
Among our plans is welcoming a new team member soon (thanks to the Epic grant) to assist us with pending assets. We now have all programming aspects covered but are noticing a potential bottleneck in our assets workflow (it was the other way about a year ago). This will give us another big boost 💪🏼
Throughout March, we expect to have 50% of the game completed. We hope to be distributing three builds of the game soon with varying degrees of content: all backers (3000+ people) will have access to the near-final version of the 8:00 PM chapter, the most polished and releasable content (which may become a public demo eventually). VIP backers (~100) will be able to play from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM. We’re also producing a special version for the press featuring from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM as we feel it presents a more interesting cliffhanger for previewing purposes and less chances of leaked spoilers. Remember that those game hours have no correlation with real life hours: the VIP build is already worth 5-6 hours of gameplay. That’s as much as many finished games!
It will be really exciting exciting from now on as you’ll be hearing about ASYLUM from many more sources. We’ll let everyone post captures of the game up the 9:00 PM chapter mark. ASYLUM everywhere! 😄
Speaking of which, we’ve been doing great in the hype department. We now have 7000+ followers on Steam and close to 38.000 wishlists. I can’t stress how positive this is! It would be amazing to reach 50.000 wishlists by the time the game gets released, so if you haven’t spread the horror--I mean, word, we’d be delighted if you do so!
It’s been a long time, yes, we know. I want to assure you that we’re working hard on the game, making solid progress, and our vision is coming to life as we expected. The playable content feels great and you’ll be both entertained and creeped out for a long time once it’s ready. I want to thank all of you again for your patience, kindness, and support. We couldn’t be creating such an ambitious project without you 😊
I promise to keep you apprised of further developments soon. Until next time, —Agustín
PS: I collected all the snippets from this update in a higher quality video with full frame rate. Talk about service!
