The below update is now live! I am currently taking a summer break which has meant I haven’t been able to work on Estranged a whole bunch over the past couple of weeks, but updates will resume their regularity soon.
Introduction Improvements
The introduction to the game has been tweaked to include the distress audio sequence from Act I, to provide more context to the player in the first few scenes.
If players are new to the game, this scene is vital to build their understanding of the story, and provide enough of an introduction for them to want to play on, and find out more.
Level Checkpoints
When you load up this update, you will find that the levels (aside from the first) are all locked – to unlock subsequent levels you must play through the game. This change makes a lot more sense for newer players, as they are now presented with a logical ordering of levels to play through, and progression matters.
Apologies to those that have completed the current set of levels before, you will have to play through again from the start – that’s a one-time thing.
More work in this area will be done in the future, and this system will likely evolve into gameplay saves.
Danish Translations
Thank you to Ruby from the community who contributed Danish translations for this update, with some work from Niels. Including English, this brings the number of languages supported by Estranged up to 11!
Thank you for everyone that has been involved in the project so far – as ever, in-game feedback, email, the forums and Steam reviews are all ways you can contribute to the project!
Alan
Steam Reviews
TLDR; If you haven’t already, leave us a review! Tell us what you think about Estranged – we read every single review.
The reviews on Steam are very important, as players use them to decide which games to play. Estranged: Act II currently sits with an average Steam score of over 70%, which we are extremely proud of for an unfinished Early Access game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/582890/
Addressing Reviews
I check the reviews on a regular basis, and work to either make a conscious effort to reply with corrections, or weigh up whether a work item should come out of the feedback to change the game.
A good example of that is this review, where the author highlighted some pain points with the current game. I had the changes in the pipeline anyway so decided to prioritise them for the next build, and the author updated the review once they were put live.
Early Access
The cases are not always that simple however, some of the pieces of feedback which are difficult to address revolve around the game not being finished yet. That is always quite frustrating and in some ways paradoxical feedback – I decided to put the game forward for Early Access to get it into the hands of players sooner and get them involved in content during development.
That does mean that the game is in an unfinished state during that time – and the expectations for Early Access vary from player to player. I think we need to do a better job at communicating at what state the development is in to players picking up the game for the first time. Ideas for that are welcome.
The Switch to UE4
There are a lot of reviews covering the switch to UE4, with some players rating Act II unfavourably as it no longer runs on the Source Engine.
Addressing that kind of feedback is tricky – the decision to switch to UE4 was made by the team, to make development easier using the industry standard game engine tech. This is a case where a change made development easier for us as a development team, unfortunately disappointing the fans of Source.
We are committed to continuing the feel of the first game in Act II, even with the engine difference.
Like I said in the opening of the post, if you haven’t already please leave us a review! If you like the game, it lets us know we’re on the right track, and if you don’t it lets us know what to do to improve.
Thanks for playing Estranged!
Alan
Detailing, Level Tweaks and Spanish Translations
I am currently taking a summer break which has meant I haven’t been able to work on Estranged a whole bunch over the past couple of weeks, but updates will resume their regularity soon.
Detailing
The office, the sewer level and the earlier pool level have all received detailing updates, along with some updates to the first outdoor level to prevent players from getting stuck.
The levels in general are getting brighter, which has been a point of pain for some players.
Elevator Changes
The elevator on the pool level has been tweaked - now instead of using the in-game physics engine, it uses triggered logic to count the number of props added to the elevator.
Once the mass reaches a certain level, the elevator drops down as before – however using an animation sequence, rather than a physically driven simulation.
This provides greater control over this sequence, and means that it behaves the same for every player.
Spanish Translations
The game is now localised to Spanish thanks for a contribution by Rafael P.H. This brings the list of supported languages in Estranged: Act II to Bulgarian, German, Spanish (Spain), French, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian and Slovak. Thank you to all of the people that have contributed their translations to the project!
If you’d like to translate Estranged to your language, drop me an email at alan [at] alanedwardes (dot) com. The translation sources are public and can be found on BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/estranged/insulam.localization/src
Thanks for playing! If you have any feedback, let me know directly, or use the in-game feedback, the forums or Steam reviews.
