As already announced a few days ago, the DLCs for the game are now available. If you like the game, you can support it that way despite being free-to-play. Thank you very much in advance! :)
Furthermore, I would like to thank you for the positive feedback during the first few days. We had a packed crowd on the Discord, more than I ever expected. It was nice to see you helping each other out. Also, the found bugs were endured bravely ;)
Next up will be the Spanish language integration for the second room. That update will come later today or tomorrow. Many thanks for that to SilverNox!
The usual fixes
- fixed another wall glitch - fixed voice recorder bug after loading (subtitles not in sync) - typos corrected - fixed a passage where you had to jump, walking is fine now - prepared network code for itch.io
Small fixes
- added colliders for not glitching through walls - attempt to fix bug when hints are stuck after loading (you need to make a new save file before this takes effect)
Some more fixes
- no accidental save after ending the game - added collider - lowered blinking speed once more
Loading fix
Walls should no longer disappear when loading. There can be a slight decrease of FPS until you move a bit around after loading.
Small improvements
- adjusted blinking speed - translation fixes
Part 2 release date announcement
Hello everyone,
Almost 19 months ago, the first part of "Escape Room - The Sick Colleague" got released. I never imagined it to be so popular and only your positive feedback kicked off the development of part 2. Thank you for that! It feels like ages ago and I have to thank you for your patience in not knowing an exact release date. So today I am very happy to be able to tell you, that part 2 will be available the next week on the 6th of April! :)
My initial plan was to not only release the game but also two very minor DLCs you can spend money on if you want to support the game. However, I am still waiting for my new tax ID to arrive to be able to set a price for the DLCs on Steam. This has led to the situation for the last few days that I am not releasing a free game for which some of you have been waiting a long time for the reason of... money. And this seems ridiculous to me. So I won't delay it any longer and put the game out now and the DLCs a bit later.
I hope you like the new room and that it is in a state you can play without any major bugs. The testing team did a really good job of pointing things out that are fixed now before you have to suffer through them (if you want, come to the Discord and thank the testers for suffering for you :D). I also want to give a special thanks to Urwis12 and Abdullah Ali Waleed for not only testing a lot but also helping on the Discord and being very helpful in discussing issues regarding the game.
Not everything is finished though and there will be a few updates in the next weeks. Some translations are still missing and Spanish will be the next one to arrive. Also, the possibility to rebind the controls in-game is planned as a future update.
Like I said above, there will also be two very optional DLCs so nobody gets left behind regarding the main game. I will announce them later on but here is a short hint of what is planned for them:
Supporter DLC
Here you can buy a highly decorative support sticker that will show up in-game. You can also print it out and put it on your jacket, you will be regarded as highly sympathetic at parties :)
Character pack DLC
For the multiplayer mode, this pack contains six new characters to choose from. They are all very intelligent so puzzle solving will be easier than ever :)
Thank you very much for your company on this journey! It has been stressful at times but also quite fulfilling. :)
Download temporarily disabled
Dear players,
Today I have sad news for you. The download of the game will have to be disabled temporarily in the next few days.
The owners of the real-life escape room, on which "The Sick Colleague" is based, have contacted me and although they acknowledged the effort that went into the digital remake, they found it to be too similar. Therefore they have the rightful concern that someday someone might visit their real-life room knowing how to solve it already because of playing "The Sick Colleague".
Because of that, we agreed to disable the download until I have changed it to a significant amount or until their room gets decommissioned one day. Changing the room would mean a lot of work and my priorities lie with the second room at the moment (which is around 80% finished right now).
If you already downloaded and played the game you will still be able to do so. I will also keep the multiplayer servers up and running. I am sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you.
This event leaves me quite sad, but I hope to finish the second room soon so you can start escaping with your friends again in the near future. Thank you all for playing and the wonderful feedback so far!
State of progress for part 2
Hi all,
Sorry for the long time without updates but things are getting slower than I wished for them to be. This is mostly caused by my lack of modeling skills that I am still developing. The new room has a lot more "complex" objects and I tend to make them more detailed than maybe necessary. But I think this is good for my personal development so I will stick with it for now. Also, in my enthusiasm for modeling, I injured my arm and wasn't able to do anything for the whole month. :( At least I can say that a part of the room is almost finished so I am thinking about putting it on a beta branch so some of you may test it out and look for bad puzzle design.
In other news, I got in contact with the great devs from Pine Studio. They are also developing an escape room game and we had a few good chats about the problems we are facing. Definitely feels good being able to cooperate with someone. They were kind enough to send me their game to check it out and I have to say it is looking really great. It has some similar features as The Sick Colleague like being able to move and throw (and break!) most objects in the room. You can play it in co-op as well and the biggest feature for me is a level editor where you can create your own rooms and share them in the Steam workshop! Since some of you asked me about that for my game, which right now I am not able to do because I still have to learn how to do that, I think this might be interesting for you. They have a demo version so please hop over to their page and check it out and put it on your wishlist if you like it. That would help them a lot! :) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1435790?utm_source=1301720_steam
That's it for now, thank you for staying patient, I am hoping to be back with more news soon!
About part 2
Hi all,
Today I am not writing about some bug fix or improvement on the game but about the progress on the second part of the game since many of you said they would play it rather sooner than later :) We are on the same page here, I would like to finish it as soon as possible while making sure the quality is the best I can do. The whole process takes longer as you might expect because like I already told on the Discord I have a day job to pay the bills and to keep the game free for everyone. That means programming more or less 8h and after that working on the game. Sadly this is not possible every day because often the job takes most of my brain energy away. So thinking about some clever puzzles was taking sooo long in the last weeks. I am planning to reduce my working hours from 40 to 30 per week to be able to focus a bit more on the game. I hope you are able to stay patient and understand the situation ;)
Now to the information: part two is planned to be included in this game so you can choose which part you want to play and no other download in Steam will be needed. It will continue the story of part one and the concept with all puzzles and flow of the game are finished right now. At the moment I am making some placeholder objects in Blender to build the room as a crude prototype so I can walk around in the room and see if everything checks out and if the puzzles make sense. So I might go back and change a few things until it feels right.
After that, I will start modeling the objects in a detailed way and build one section after the other. Hopefully, this will go faster because it takes a different "energy" from me and I even find it relaxing. Some programming will be needed to make new types of puzzles possible but much of the code from part one can be reused. I am thinking about making some beta versions available once a section is finished to get some feedback from some players because part one had a few issues that were unclear. If you work too long on one thing you can't see those issues for yourself. Let's see, I will give updates about that on the Discord and here as well.
In other news: I contacted Steam about the game having limited profile features (e.g. achievements not showing in your profile etc.) and they had a look and decided to remove that limitation. Thanks to Alden Kroll from Steam for that!
Some improvements for the game are also planned when I find the time. For example, I'd like to add Steam cloud saves and name tags on the players in multiplayer so you can easily call out the right friend for making shenanigans :D
That's it for today, have a nice weekend, I hope to have new updates soon. Let me know if you are interested in that kind of update from our journey to part two!
