I can’t tell you how excited I am to let you know that we’ve achieved a major milestone - PRODUCTION IS FINISHED! Here’s what still has to happen between now and launch. First, we've already submitted the game for certification on PlayStation 4 and Vita. While that's in process, we are taking care of pre-launch tasks like prepping all of the text for localization (which might be released as a post-launch update), getting our public bug reporting system back up and running, catching up on paperwork (and a million other small tasks) we've put off for the last few months while we crunched, and, most importantly, coordinating with Sony and Valve to pick the ideal launch date so that we’ll be able to give Chasm the exposure it deserves. The primary factors that we’ll be looking at are dates that are relatively not too crowded and making sure we give ourselves time to reach out to press so they can write up reviews in time for launch. We’ll make a follow up announcement once we lock the final date down. In the meantime, if you have any friends who haven’t heard of Chasm, please be sure to let them know to add it to their Steam wishlist!
Gotta collect them all!
It’s been a little while since our last update since we were just laser focused on finishing up everything in the game. Here’s a quick recap of some of the tasks we completed in the last few months:
<*>Lots of sound effects added. With the boss and enemy SFX finally completed, we turned our attention to environmental and scripted SFX. It's always amazing to see how much more immersive just a few sounds can make a scene.
<*>Weapons and items improved. We added a bunch of new weapons and items, as well as re-animating the majority of the weapons with more detailed and higher frame rate animations (around double the original frame rates). In addition to the visual side, several improvements to gameplay have been added like the often requested attack cancelling (cutting your air attack short so you can immediately attack again after landing on the ground for two quick hits), as well as new Rod and Pole weapon classes.
<*>Remaining environment art completed. The town was the first area created for the game, and fittingly enough, the last we worked on at the end. Room had to be made for a bunch of new NPCs, as well as some re-organization to make your trips to town as convenient as possible.
<*>Tons of detail in NPC side quests. I think the NPCs really bring the story and game to life. All of their quests are optional, but completing them all makes the town of Karthas feel alive.
<*>Bestiary completed. The Bestiary is a fun little side addition with extra information about the enemies you fight. Each enemy will take a pre-determined number of kills to unlock, and if you unlock all of them you will receive the Zoologist achievement. Please note their item drops cannot be seen until you've gotten them!
<*>We got our ESRB rating! We’re officially E10+ with Fantasy Violence, Simulated Gambling and Alcohol Reference descriptors. So if you were 5 when we did the Kickstarter, you’re old enough to play Chasm today. (ha ha… ha ha… sigh…)
First look at Rod weapons and attack cancelling.
That’s not even to mention all of the little plumbing details - improving load times, fixing edge case bugs, testing achievements and trophies, etc. - that are part and parcel of releasing a polished game.
We plan on getting Alpha-tier backers access to the full game as soon as possible. As mentioned above we have many post-production / pre-launch tasks to wrap up first, but we are moving as fast as we can. We're looking forward to everyone finally getting their hands on the game and giving us feedback for fine tuning. We anticipate it will be a couple more weeks, but we're not far off now.
Taking a break from adventuring with a card game.
Our next update will be a confirmation of the official launch date. That update could come next week, or it may come a few weeks from now. As soon as we know, you’ll know. Thank you again for sticking with us over these many years!
Chasm Is Coming!
Today’s a big day for us. After years of work, we’re finally confident enough in our estimates for the remaining tasks that we can officially confirm a release time window of this summer! To commemorate this occasion, we put together our first new trailer since around the days of our Kickstarter. Hope you like it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ihs1Sd9ILk
The good folks at Sony were nice enough to let us announce the summer release window on their PS Blog, which gets tons of visitors every day. I know this is the Steam forums, but if you have any friends who play consoles, be sure to point them there. And of course, please let your Steam friends know to add Chasm to their Steam wishlist!
Speaking of Sony, I should also mention that they were gracious enough to include Chasm in their booth at PAX East. So if any of you are going to be in Boston next week, please be sure to stop by and say hi to Dan, our business and marketing guy! Even though only the PS4 version will be playable on the show floor, the full game will be the same on PC.
For those of you who are curious about what we’ve been up to since our last update from a game development perspective, all of the spawn system changes are now done, as is the key background art, placeholder animations and enemy sound effects. We still have to polish the sound effects for the final boss and final cutscene, beef up the items, and polish out NPCs and side quests, along with general balancing and game polish. And then we’re done!
This has been an incredibly arduous undertaking - one that I’ve loved (almost) every minute of, but one that wound up being an even bigger challenge than I expected. I’m grateful for everyone’s support and patience. This community is what has been driving me. I know you guys are all looking for the most kick-ass action-adventure ever to grace a gaming system, and we’re doing everything we can to deliver on that promise. And now, we’re almost there!
Development Plan from here to Gold
Time flies! Between the holidays and cranking away at our task list, I just realized it’s been 2 months since our last update. Lots of progress has been made, so here’s where we are right now.
Working on my cannonball in the Gardens.
As I described several months ago, the entire team was given a couple weeks to play through the full build and write up all of our comments, required features, bugs, etc. The agreement we had as a team is that we would synthesize all of that, discuss what’s really important, and put together our final task list out of that. No new features were to be added beyond that list. We went through that exercise back in August and have been working off of that list ever since.
I’m happy to say we’re ticking tasks off of that list at a very steady pace, and we’ve been disciplined about not adding anything new. Just to recap the progress that’s been made, here’s a partial list of what we’ve completed since going through that exercise:
Improved backtracking and world traversal system
Implemented a system for players to upgrade their Spells
Implemented auto-formatting text system for multi-lingual support
Programmed and animated the final boss battle
Animated all boss intros and deaths
Animated custom deaths for most enemies
Reworked and improved Minibosses
Sound FX for all bosses (except the final) and half of the enemies
Improved Visual FX
Improved scripted scenes
Polished the Map Screen and other UI elements
Improved pacing by interspersing some “breather” rooms with less challenge and more resources, as well as balancing combat, platforming, and puzzle rooms throughout the game
There’s also a ton of other work - a lot of which took even longer to complete than those features listed here - that we got done in that time, but some of it just wouldn’t make sense as a feature in a list. Suffice it to say, those improvements make the game feel a lot tighter and encourage players to continue exploring the world.
The final background art for the Save Rooms.
We’re now about 50% of the way through that final list. We have a date in mind that we think the game will be done and ready to ship, but I’m going to hold off on saying it here just in case my estimate isn’t accurate. Here are some of the remaining tasks:
Replacing all remaining placeholder animations and background art
Improving the enemy spawn system to make sure that every enemy type shows up in every game, as well as maintaining a healthy variety
Sound FX for the enemies in the second half of game, the final boss, as well as environmental sounds
Beefing up secondary quests
More Items & Weapon system improvements
Additional variation in environmental art & Landmarks
Populate secrets in all areas
Polish NPC dialog and sidequests
Main Menu art
Economy improvements
Difficulty balancing (this will be one of the last things we do)
Again, there are some other tasks on our list that probably only make sense to us, so I’m leaving them off this list for now. Whereas we often felt like the more progress we made the further the finish line pulled away, we’re now seeing it get closer and closer.
As we cross off each of these tasks as we complete them, the list keeps getting shorter. As always, thanks for your ongoing support and patience. We’re getting close and I’m hoping you’ll feel that the wait has been worth it!
End of Year Production Update
Hello once again Chasm fans! We've had a very busy fall and have quite a few things to show off in this update, so let's dive right in.
Battling a Phantom in the dark.
In the last update I mentioned Glauber was working on death animations for all of the existing enemies. He wrapped those up in the early part of November, and then we began working on the final set of enemies that would fill in some of the sections you backtrack to later in the game. I'm proud to say we now have 90 fully animated creatures (including bosses) in the game for you to battle! With the enemy animations completed, Glauber will now turn his attention to animating the final boss battle, as well as some lower priority stuff like the boss intro and death sequences.
Getting pwned in the Arena by a Gelatinous Cube.
Dan has been working away on the last of the large backdrop pieces, and I'm happy to announce that the Arena has been completed! I mentioned it briefly in a previous update, but rather than make the Arena an additional mode, we decided to make it an optional challenge in the main game. If you want to work your way up to Grand Champion and win the grand prize, you'll have to battle through waves of beefed up enemies, as well as a couple unique creatures. The only remaining crowdfunding feature that hasn't been completed yet is the Crafting stretch goal, which we plan to tackle after the new year when we revisit the weapons and items.
The final look of the Map screen.
In addition to all the new content we've been adding in, we've also been doing final revisions to various UI elements like the Map screen. It received a bit of a visual overhaul making it more compact and easier to read, while also getting a couple new features. One in particular we're excited about is items or journals that you may have missed or couldn't reach are now marked on the map with a dot ala Super Metroid.
Auto-formatted bubbles, signs and journal entries.
One other slightly less glamorous thing we've been working on is full support for other languages. Many of the in-game text interfaces like the conversation bubbles, journal entries and signs were being manually formatted for display while we figured things out, but now that all the designs are finalized Tim began adding pre-processing routines to automatically format text for each of them. This mostly entailed adding automatic line breaking and key term highlighting, alignment options, and scrolling support. Now it should be fairly trivial to support any Latin-based language!
PSX 2017
Our final convention for the year will be at the PlayStation Experience 2017 in Anaheim next week. Chasm biz guy Dan Adelman and sound guru James Stevulak will be there manning the booth on December 9 and 10, so be sure to stop by and say hi!
Wrap Up
Well, that's it for this year. We'll be continuing to crunch towards the finish line throughout the holidays, but we'll be back in touch in January to let you know how things are progressing. Thank you once again for your patience and support while we strive to make Chasm the game we know it can be. Have a great holiday season, and we'll see you in 2018!
October Production Update
Hello again everyone! I hope this update finds you well. Last month we were working on several large tasks, most of which we can't really show you without spoiling things (backgrounds for the final boss, level design for late-game sections, etc) so I decided to just hold off on the update until this month.
Various improved FX
A few exciting things have been in the works though. When we analyzed the game back over the summer and made our final list of improvements, one of the things we realized we really needed to improve was the visual FX. This meant going back through everything and beefing up FX for various things like hits, deaths, breaking props, picking up items, leveling up, etc. Check out the GIF above for a preview of this work (please note it doesn't look as smooth as the real thing since it's running at half the framerate).
Right now the team is mainly focused on finishing up the core content. Dan is working on various pieces of background art for late-game rooms, Jimi is working on boss and enemy sound effects, Glauber is working on enemy death animations, Tim is optimizing engine code and tackling the remaining programming tasks, and I'm going through the main path of the game with a fine-toothed comb to find all the stuff we missed and wrap up work on the areas.
A new platforming challenge in the Gardens
I know everyone is anxious for us to reach Beta, but we still have a little further to go. Once this core stuff is done we will focus on the secondary content tasks like beefing up the backtracking and adding more weapons, items, and secrets to find. Lastly, once all the content is completed, we'll turn our attention to the final polish tasks like balancing, text cleanup, UI polishing, and of course testing.
Well, that's it for now! We'll be in touch again this fall to let you know how things are progressing as we steadily march towards the finish line. Thanks again for your support and patience!
End of Summer Production Update
Hello again everyone! As summer comes to an end we're working hard to complete our first month-long sprint of Beta tasks. There's a lot of general cleanup, polish, and bug fixing to do, but we've also been tackling a number of improvements identified from our testing.
The 3 levels of the Knife spell.
A new feature we're pretty excited about is upgradeable spells. Each spell can now be upgraded twice to improve its effectiveness. Above is an example of the Knife spell where the second and third levels add more projectiles and magical FX. When you reach the third level of a Spell you're also given the option of using a screen-filling Spell Crash that consumes half of your magic meter. We're still working on the visuals for the crashes and upgrade menus, but we'll show them off in a future update.
Collecting some resources.
One thing we heard a lot in the backer builds was how punishing the platforming was. Not only were pixel perfect jumps everywhere, but most of the drops ended in spikes making things even less forgiving. We also had enemies and traps jam packed into every space - partly a side effect of our early dungeon generator not having a good sense of how to pace things with different kinds of rooms. I went back through the rooms one by one and improved the flow, pacing, and difficulty. A lot of the tall rooms now give you a much needed breather with some light platforming and resource collection after fighting through hallways of deadly enemies.
The Death Knight miniboss.
Finally, we've also reworked and improved the game's minibosses. A couple just weren't up to snuff and were completely redone (like the Keep's miniboss seen above), while others were just tweaked with some new patterns and improved timing. We also changed our approach to them a bit so they feel more like tough-as-nails enemies versus weak bosses. It may seem like a pointless distinction, but in practice it feels much more organic and varied.
We also want to give everyone a heads up that Chasm will be at PAX West 2017 as part of the Playground! The Playground is a new space to hang out and play games, and we'll be sharing the space with others like Vlambleer, Finji, and Indiebox. Our biz guy Dan Adelman will be running the booth along with Musician James Stevulak and Environment Artist Dan Fessler. So if you'll be there too please stop by Booth #6111, say hi, and play some awesome games!
We'll have more updates on our progress towards the finish line next month. Thank you once again for your support and patience while we refine Chasm into the best experience possible!
Mid-Summer Production Update
Hello again everyone! We hope you're having a great summer, and staying cool inside playing some games. This month is just a quick update to let you know what's been going on the past few weeks.
First off, we're happy to announce that aside from the Crafting, all the Kickstarter Stretch Goals and Backer Rewards have been designed and programmed. We have just a few pieces of art left to wrap up, and we'll be getting to the Crafting when we revisit the weapons and items in a few weeks. We've also done our best to make the extras part of the main experience where possible. For instance, instead of the Arena being a separate mode it's an actual place in the world you can visit when you want to compete.
Running into Jinx in the Catacombs.
One of the rewards we thought turned out especially cool is our $2500 Backer's reward. It was listed as "Design your own enemy", but the backer thought a minigame of chance would add some more variety to the experience. Working together with him, we developed the character known as Jinx. For those with a sharp eye, you may recognize Jinx from the box art we had done a while back. Unfortunately, the character was cut after some story changes rendered him unused, but when we heard the backer's idea we thought he would be the perfect match for it. Jinx will appear at several locations throughout the world, and offers players a spin of his wheel for a chance to win a range of things from gold to stat points and items. Careful though, not everything on the wheel is a reward! You also run the risk of losing your hard earned stat points and gold to Jinx.
Before (top) and After (bottom) dungeon generation changes.
One other thing we're very excited about is some recent improvements to the dungeon generation. As you may remember from our previous updates, we've put a lot of effort into it to make sure the game feels varied and well-paced. One of the major breakthroughs that really helped us achieve that was breaking down the areas into "sub-areas" that consisted of about 10-15 rooms with a save point at either end. This did wonders to get things under control, but on the negative side we were left with a mess of a map that had lines drawn all over connecting these sub-areas together. One of our polish tasks was to hide these seams and make the areas feel like one large, continuous location. The save rooms are also inside the area itself now as normal rooms, so it should feel more like a classic Metroidvania experience than ever before!
Lastly, while we worked on the Kickstarter rewards we were playing the game over and over, fixing things, and building our final Todo list to reach Beta. I believe we have identified the weakest and most problematic areas of the experience, as well as what needs polished or is unfinished, and we now have a solid plan to reach the finish line. I know everyone is excited to hear dates, but we're not quite there yet. There's still a few tricky tasks remaining we want to make sure we don't rush.
As usual, thank you so much for your support and patience. We'll have some more updates next month on our progress to reaching Beta!
Production Update
I feel like I need to start off every update with an apology for how long the game is taking. Many of you have told me not to worry about the time and just focus on making the game as good as it can be. A few others have expressed frustration about how long things are taking. As I’ve mentioned probably a million times before, this project turned out to be way more ambitious than what I expected when I started down this path. Thanks to the team's perseverance and everyone's patience though, we've been able to overcome every obstacle before us and create something we're all very proud of.
The exclusive Blue Canary familiar for $50+ backers will attack foes and retrieve dropped items.
So where are we now? The game has been fully playable for a couple months. It is a game with a beginning, middle, and end. There’s a ton of polish we’re working on now to take it from being a functional game to a great game. Maybe one analogy is that we’ve just built a skyscraper, including all of the electrical, plumbing, elevators, etc., and now we’re going through floor by floor adding the furnishings.
Some old enemies have gotten bigger, more detailed designs.
One must-have bit of furnishing is the Kickstarter rewards! We've been working hard on them for the past few weeks, but here’s where they stand right now:
Exclusive items for $15/30/50 backers - Done
Backer’s Tome (name in the game) for $50+ backers - Done
Backer's Tavern (Hidden room) for $1000+ backers - Done
Special gameplay feature for $2500+ backer - In Progress
Stretch goal: Achievements for all versions - Done
Stretch goal: Extended Soundtrack Album - Done
Stretch goal: Alternate Chiptune Soundtrack - In Progress
Stretch goal: Arena - In Progress
Stretch goal: Crafting - In Progress
Speaking of the Extended Soundtrack, here’s a sample for you! Our musician James Stevulak put together a number of remixes for the album including this one. If you played the early build, you might recognize the theme of the track as the Catacombs:
I’m hoping to get the other Kickstarter rewards and stretch goals done in the next few weeks so those will all be out of the way. In the meantime, we’re playing through the builds over and over and asking ourselves the hardest question in game design - what’s not there that should be there? We’ve identified several features we want to add that will kick up the experience to 11 and have added those to the to do list. That said, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of continually polishing and adding new features and pushing out the finish line so far that the game is never done. We’re very conscious of that trap and will be questioning every new feature as we pin down our plans for the final push. The finish line is in sight, and we don’t want to stray too far from the path!
The travel scene has gotten some polish like twinkling and shooting stars.
Kickstarter Anniversary, Chasm Hits Alpha, Shows and Travel
It’s been a busy couple of months since the last update - and we’ve got some good news!
Happy Kickstarter Anniversary!
It’s now been 4 years since we launched our Kickstarter. By that point, I had already quit my day job and put in about 6-7 months of work to create a workable prototype and proof-of-concept of our dream game. That early build came together so easily and effortlessly that we naively assumed turning it into a full game would be just as easy! Since Kickstarter makes you put in an expected release date, we put down May 2014. Well, it turns out that we missed that date by a little bit, but we’ve stayed committed to the original vision and quality bar that we set out to hit from the beginning. I know I sound like a broken record, but I can’t overstate the appreciation we have for everyone’s continued support and patience. And with that, I’m incredibly excited to announce...
We’ve Hit Alpha!
The big announcement is that we’ve officially reached Alpha! Alpha means the world, story, characters, powerups, enemies, bosses, and major set pieces are all complete. The game is playable from the beginning to the credits and has all the required features. Our plan is to send out the Alpha build to a few trusted friends in the industry (mostly other game developers) to kick the tires and make sure there aren’t any major flaws that we’ve just overlooked since we’re too close to the game at this point.
The next step is Beta. That’s the version we’ll be sending out to all of the Early Access-tier backers from Kickstarter. To reach that stage, we’re working on adding all the extras like more content, items, FX, and lots of polish. Luckily the hardest part, creating an entire replayable world, is over, and now we get to focus on the details that will keep everyone playing for a long time to come. As much as we want to get the game in everyone’s hands already, we also don't want to rush things now that we’re so close to the end. I’m hoping that in the next newsletter, I’ll be able to give you a good ETA on when we expect to hit Beta. Once we reach that milestone, we’ll gather feedback from the backers, fix what needs to be fixed, and get ready to launch. There’s light at the end of this tunnel!
Shows and Travel
Staring at the same screen all day and tweaking and retweaking rooms and enemies for months on end can feel a little isolating. Progress is never as fast as you want it to be, and there are a million little details to get right. So going to a gaming show every now and then can be a huge shot in the arm.
Last month I went to Boston for PAX East. As always, PAX was a fantastic experience. I got to talk to a lot of people who have been following Chasm for years, and others who had never heard of it. However, the the most exciting aspect was probably that we were able to show off the opening scenes of the game for the first time ever. It really gives the game a more cinematic experience and makes it feel like a real game. The opening scene gives a lot of the context for why you’re in these mines fighting monsters and how all of that came to be.
The feedback from PAX East was truly fantastic and extremely reinvigorating. When you work on the same game for so long, you tend to notice all of the flaws, and for most of the last year, I was working on all of the technical plumbing and infrastructure that was super important but not fun in and of itself. It’s super gratifying to see people loving the game and totally getting your vision for it.
Kuwait? Kuwait!
A couple weeks before PAX East, we were contacted by a group of gamers from Kuwait, of all places. They invited us to the small gaming convention they hold every year and told us that even though most people don’t realize it, there are a ton of passionate gamers in the Middle East. We took them up on their offer, and Dan spent a week out there.
It was definitely different from what we expected. In some ways, it was very similar to an American or European show. People were super knowledgeable about games, and Dan had lots of conversations about the games that inspired Chasm, including Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. There were cosplay contests and a fighting game tournament - with world-class players. Even the male:female ratio was comparable to what you’d see at PAX. A lot of stereotypes about the Middle East were challenged, to say the least!
In other ways, it was very different. Unlike Western shows, this event started at 5pm and went until midnight. There is no alcohol in Kuwait, so there were no after parties like you’d see at PAX. And for the fighting tournament, they had to get special permission to play DOA, since the scantily clad female characters are not officially allowed in Kuwait. Overall though, there is much more that unites us than divides us. We’re all hoping that the common language of videogames will serve as a bridge of understanding for our and future generations.
Development Update, Bloodstained Podcast
Hello again! I know we've been extra quiet lately, but I promise it's for good reason. We've been working our hardest to make it to Pre-beta (a true Alpha build of the full game) for several months now. In the last update I said I was hoping to finish it by the end of 2016, but as they say the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
New features have been added like scripted animations to liven things up.
We're finally closing in on the "point of no return" where the base of the game is being locked down, so I decided to use this time to revisit things one last time and work out some final kinks in both design and storytelling. In addition to creating new content, we've also been focused on getting rid of old baggage that isn't needed anymore (the boss jewels for example), and improving the narrative since it wasn't quite as strong as it could be. It's been a difficult balance trying to have an interesting and well-paced story, while not taking the focus away from the gameplay. We want this to feel like a classic experience, so it's taken a lot of refining to find the right amount of each ingredient.
The Keep area was improved in December with bigger enemies and revised rooms.
Experimenting with some new puzzle elements.
I can't stress enough how grateful we are for your patience. It's proven to be a massive challenge designing a game that can hold up to our influences, but each day I'm surprised at just how well it's coming together. We anticipate to be done with the remaining Pre-beta tasks in the next few weeks, so we'll keep you up to date as we close in on our next milestone.
Conferences
In other news, it’s show season again, and we’re also getting ready to show off Chasm at a bunch of different press and industry events. The next ones on the docket are Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) where our marketing guy, Dan Adelman, will be showing the game in the Intel booth, and then PAX East. I haven’t had a chance to leave my dev workstation in months, so I’m really looking forward to show Chasm off to PAX East attendees. Every time someone picks up the controller and has a great time with the game, my batteries get a nice recharge, and that energy will fuel me and the rest of the team as we keep polishing away!
Bloodstained Community Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU6-zx2lsyU
We also did an interview with the Bloodstained Community podcast, and talked about Chasm at length with them. Both Dan and I had a great time doing it, so give it a listen!
