Ghostland Yard update 1.2 is now available! Today, we're pushing one of the biggest update yet, and you may not notice anything new! Yeah!
As we prepare the console version of the game, we have made a lot of changes to the way data is handled in the game. The overall build size will unfortunately be larger, from 600Mb to 900Mb, but the individual scenes will load much faster. You may have to re-download the whole game as we have drastically changed the way we handle assets, sorry about that.
The main menu was entirely reworked, as the leaderboard panel and the stats info panel at the end of each stages.
If you experienced small stuttering before, rejoice, they should be gone now!
Also, we added a small modification on how the game handles resolution:
The game now supports ultra wide resolution! In a future update, we will add additional features to change your resolution, and change between fullscreen / windowed!
Here's the patchnote:
Main menu was reworked: going from 14.000 game objects to 2.000, making the scene loading way faster
Leaderboard panel was reworked and visually slightly improved
Stage endpanel was reworked and visually slightly improved
Background visual of every scenes was improved, expect some minor difference with the previous version
Changed time display separator from a xx : yy : zz format to a better format (thx Tara)
Changed how music variation was picked: music is now pick randomly between the different variation when you start a world
Chinese translations were improved
And a lot of other small improvements
Known issues:
The navigation in the scene selection menu is not as smooth as it used to be, but we will fix it in the next patch
The xenomorph and asteroids in the 6th world took some time off, they will be back shortly
The loading spinning wheel in the bottom right of the game sometime doesnt spin to win, and we dont know why and it's a minor issue, it might stay like that forever
We encountered a very rare bug: in speedrun mode after navigating in the options and trying to go back to the main menu, the game crashed. We were not able to replicate this bug, but if you encounter it, please let us know
As said previously, you may not see any differences between the previous version and this one, but we can guarantee you that we made a lot of modifications in the backend. We will write a devlog about this optimization update and the console version of the game in the future, so you will be able to see exactly how we made the optimization and why we made it!
This update has been very important for us, as it has laid the foundations for the version that will be on the console of our best plumber before the end of the year.
As always, if you see any issues in the game or if you have any feedback, do not hesitate to communicate them on our discord or steam forum. In the coming days we will hotfixes some remaining bugs and continue to polish the game.
Talk to you soon,
The Obelisk Studio team
Update 1.1.2.2
New languages
Ghostland Yard update 1.1.2.2 is now available. Today, we're adding new languages into the game!
We need to be 100% transparent: almost every languages were translated with the help of online translation tools(Google Translate and Deepl).
Menus are now translated in the following languages:
English - Human made
French - Human made
Spanish -Human made
German - Human made
Polish - Human made
Italian - Online translation tools
Japanese - Online translation tools
Chinese simplified - Online translation tools
Korean - Online translation tools
Russian - Online translation tools
Czech - Online translation tools
Danish - Online translation tools
Dutch - Online translation tools
Finnish - Online translation tools
Greek - Online translation tools
Hungarian - Online translation tools
Norwegian - Online translation tools
Portuguese - Online translation tools
Romanian - Online translation tools
Swedish - Online translation tools
Turkish - Online translation tools
Ukrainian - Online translation tools
We are a very small team with very limited resources, we sadly cannot offer the services of professional translators for now.
However, we're planning to hire professional translators to check and re-translate the different languages when we have more resources.
In the meantime, if you see any mistakes or incorrect translations, please feel free to jump into our discord server or steam forum and leave us feedback, we will update the translations as soon as possible.
Talk to you soon,
Update 1.1.0
Ho ho ho!
Ghostland Yard update 1.1.0 is now available!
We heard that you enjoyed the music, but only 1 music per world (not counting the music for the race nor the one for the boss) is not ideal. While we lack the resources to create brand new soundtrack, our sound designer realized an amazing job and created alternative versions of the soundtrack. This should greatly improve your experience!
There is now 3 music variations per world (except the first one) instead of 1.
And that's not all, we added a small visual variation to Poe... a christmas costume!
We also added an option to toggle off the christmas skin in the menu, dont worry.
As usual if you find anything suspect or an issue or whatever, feel free to leave us a message on our discord or on the steam forum!
From the whole Obelisk team, we wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year!
Launch Update
IT.IS.DONE.
We are all very proud here at Obelisk Studio. This is it, after almost three years in the making, Ghostland Yard v.1.0 is now live. And it is live thanks to our dedicated players who helped us during the early access!
This final update brings minor bug fixes, optimizations, the long awaited cutscenes, brand new sound effects and improved sound mixing !
In the game, you can now find:
20 classic level per world
1 bonus race level per world
1 boss fight per world
6 worlds with their unique visuals, features and music
120 additional level -Apocalypse- with new and revisited stages
Friend and World Leaderboard
Replay mode
Race mode
Speedrun mode
Some great accessibility features
Ghostland Yard is our very first game here at Obelisk Studio. The studio started with two schoolmates, then a third joined and we officially created the company, then a friend joined us, now we're discussing with 3 additional people to join the studio.
This was quite an adventure This is only the beginning of our journey!
What's next?
Now that the game is released on PC, what's next for Ghostland Yard and Obelisk Studio?
First of all, we won't be very far. Our discord and steam forum will remain open and we will keep a close eye to your feedback. If you find any weird situation or issue, do not hesitate to report them directly to us, we will do our possible to fix this as soon as possible. (kudo for Ampo one of or programmer who sometime patched small issues in less than an hour after the report!)
We started to work on our future title (we won't talk about this one before a veryyy long time), but we are also still working on the other versions of Ghostland Yard!
As said in a precedent post, we're working on the Nintendo Switch version! We will update the PC version in 2.0 once the console version is done, this update should drastically improve performances. (this update should happen Q2 2024). We will try to release Ghostland Yard on as many platforms as possible!
This project was made possible thanks to the incredible people who supported us during the development.
Talk to you "soon"!
Major Update #3: The Apocalypse - Part 2
Well, it is done. The final content update for Ghostland Yard
This update brings the second part of the Apocalypse World! You can now fully enjoy (or hate because it's kinda hard) the Apocalypse World
The Mountain Apocalypse
The Submarine Base Apocalypse
The Station Apocalypse
You now have 60 more stages to discover! Note that they are still no souls to collect in the apocalypse world, but you still have medals to earn!
If you enjoyed the bonus stages, you may be surprised with the 6th Apocalypse world..!
We added the Apocalypse World soundtrack to the game, we hope that you will like it! We also added for the Apocalypse World some new death sound effects.
Some bugfixes
The super-fast-rising-lava-bug was fixed
We introduced a critical bug with the last update, the final boss was not doable without checkpoints, it is fixed
There was some color issues on the apocalypse menus, it is fixed aswell
What's next?
We will release the game in 2 months and push the last content update, but this is not the end - yet! We still have to complete the cutscenes and add some polish to the game - for example, a very big and obvious indication to press "X" to swap to the Apocalypse world.
Once the game is released on PC, we won't be far anyway, we'll still patch the game and fix what needs to be fixed, but we won't add additional content to the game: no plans for DLCs or sequel at the moment.
As usual, we are still eager to hear your feedback, do not hesitate to use the "feedback" panel in game or to join us on discord. Thank you very much for your support and feedback!
Talk to you soon!
Update 0.10.0.3
It's us again!
Ghostland Yard update 0.10.0.3 is now available! This update brings fixes for bugs that we missed:
Speedrun panel navigation now works as intended
Apocalypse world speedrun has been fixed (it previously sent the player to the normal version of the world)
Speedrun now disables god mode and bonus jumps on start
You can no longer send replays on the leaderboard with bonus jumps enabled in the options
You can no longer go out of bounds using moving platforms in Apocalypse 3.15
And that's it, do not hesitate to give us feedback or report any weird things you may encounter, we will adress it as soon as possible!
Talk to you soon!
Major Update #3: The Apocalypse
This is it, the third major update for Ghostland Yard is now available!
Named "The Apocalypse", this update brings the first part of the Apocalypse World! This bonus world is divided in 6 smaller ones, you can access the first 3 apocalypse world:
The Caves Apocalypse
The Castle Apocalypse
The Temple Apocalypse
You now have 60 more stages to discover! Note that they are no souls to collect in the apocalypse world, but you still have medals to earn!
This update will be split in two parts, the first part wont include the music and new sound effects for this world and will contain only half of the stages, the rest will come later this summer!
Still inspired by the early access of Against the Storm developped by the amazing Eremite Games, we are going to indicate which changes were inspired by the community with a 💎
💎Gameplay improvement
We made two improvement on the character controller based on your feedback.
Vertical coyote time
Jump-buffering for multijump pickable
The first one, the vertical coyote time, is working exactly as the horizontal one: if you're not grounded anymore, the game allows you to jump for a very small amount of time! This was not the case before and made the experience inconsistent between the floor jumps and the wall jumps.
The second one, the jump buffering for the multijump pickables, will greatly improve the experience on some stages in the 5th world - the submarne base. Basically, if you press jump just a few frames before picking up the multijump pickable, it will save your jump input, and you will perform a jump once you pickup the bonus.
This wasn't the case before and it caused some frustrations, now they're gone!
New checkpoint system for the bosses
The final boss of the game was designed with checkpoints in mind, but this wasn't the case for the other bosses, so we thought, why not?
You can now access in the options the checkpoint panel: you can choose to leave it by default (with only the chekpoints enabled for the 6th boss), or you can customize your experience!
We also made some bug fixes and optimizations on the game! We still have some work to do on the optimization part but the game is already pretty stable and smooth and we are quite happy with the result.
Some good news
We wanted to share with you two good news: today is Pierre's birthday, our art director! Happy birthday! For this very special day, his daughter made the very first fanart we ever received for Ghostland Yard, do you recognize Poe ?!
The second good news is that we may have a release date... October 31st 2023, for Halloween!
We will make an official announcement very soon, but this is almost it: the game is going v.1.0 before the end of this year, yeah!
As usual, we are still eager to hear your feedback, do not hesitate to use the "feedback" panel in game or to join us on discord. Thank you very much for your support and feedback!
Talk to you soon!
Update 0.9.1.1
Ghostland Yard update 0.9.1.1 is now available! This update brings the final boss of the game, yeah! As usual, do not hesitate to give us feedback and to tell us what you think. We are pleased with the result, but there is always room for improvement.
The changes indicated with a 💎 were inspired by your feedback, thank you for your support!
Final boss: the boss is now playable
💎2nd Boss: added a small delay at the beginning of phase 2 so players have more time to understand what's going on
💎607: level was reworked base on your feedback, note that your time and replay for this stage was removed
💎Options: you can now access most of the options directly from the pause menu
💎Leaderboard: you can now access the leaderboard directly from the pause menu, meaning that you can start a replay or a race against one of your friends or one of the Top10 in the world without having to go back to the main menu, FINALLY
We are done with the main content of the game, this is a very important milestone for us! In the coming weeks, we are going to release some minor updates bringing QoL improvements, bugfixes and some polish on various things while we are still working on the Apocalypse World.
We are at this very moment at 50% of the Apocalypse world done (60/120 levels). If everything goes right (note that it rarely is the case), we should be able to push the Major Update #3 at the end of July.
Regarding the Apocalypse World update, we still have some plans for few improvements:
A godmode in the options to help you pass the most difficult stages (note that this godmode will probably break some parts of the game!)
Improved character controller: there is no vertical coyote time nor prejump for the multijump pickable at the moment and those were requested, we are going to work on it very soon
Level order modification: some stages inside a world are not are their right place, we are going to balance the order in order to smooth the difficulty curve
Polish: some visual effects and sound effects deserve a bit more love and the overall mixing of the game needs a bit more cooking before the final release
For the Apocalypse Update, there might be a little change of plan though as we met some publishers for Ghostland Yard!
The console version (Nintendo Switch) is still planned but we do not have any ETA to give you yet. There is a timeline where we have to delay the v.1.0 PC release in order to make a multiplaftorm release in 2024, but this will happen only if we find a deal with a publisher. Otherwise, the game will release on PC at the end of the summer, and on Nintendo Switch sometime in the future
We are still eager to hear your feedback, do not hesitate to use the "feedback" panel in game or to join us on discord. We are building this game for you the players, so if you like or dislike anything, let us know and we will see what we can do to improve your experience!
Talk to you soon!
Major Update #2: The Space Station
Finally, the second major update for Ghostland Yard is now available! Named "The Space Station", this update brings a brand new world with his new race, a new feature, some bug fixes and more!
This update will be split in two parts, the first part wont include the boss or the cutscenes which are still work in progress :(
Still inspired by the early access of Against the Storm developped by the amazing Eremite Games, we are going to indicate which changes were inspired by the community with a 💎
New world: the Space Station
Explore a brand new world... in space! You will find twenty new stages and one bonus stage in this last update. The final boss isn't ready yet, but he's coming very soon! Note that the speedrun mode for the 6th world is not available yet, it will be unlocked once we push the update with the last boss!
💎User Experience improvement
You can now access almost every options available directly from a level instead of going back to the main menu!
We also added a button "restart" in the pause panel. We have plans to add the leaderboard panel inside the pause panel, so you will be able to start a replay/race without going back to the level selection menu.
💎Visuals improvement and optimization
We worked on the rendering and optimization of some elements:
Improved performances on the Sumbarine World
Reworked foreground visuals on the Submarine World
Reworked the lighting and rendering on the Submarine Boss (still WIP)
Bug fixes and modifications:
💎Added an audio feedback for the unlock race animation in the level selection menu
Fixed a visual feedback issue on the 5th Boss
Fixed an issue with long nickname not displaying correctly
💎 Small nerf on the Castle Boss: you will now have a small second at the end of the elevator before the boss start chasing you
And some minor tweaks on some stages!
We are getting closer to the v.1.0! We are still working on the Apocalypse World, the 6th and final boss and the cutscenes. We still need more data and feedback before doing the main balancing work, but we will change some level layout and swap some stages to smooth the progression
We will push another update in the coming weeks with the final boss! We are still working on the Apocalypse World, to apologize for the delayed and 2 parts update, here is a teaser of what is coming next... it's going to be a hot summer!
As usual, we are still eager to hear your feedback, do not hesitate to use the "feedback" panel in game or to join us on discord. Remember, we are building this game for you the players, so if you like or dislike anything, let us know and we will see what we can do to improve your experience!
Talk to you soon!
Update 0.8.1.0
Ghostland Yard update 0.8.1.0 is now available! This update brings a huge twist: you can now switch your leaderboard from friend mode to world mode, and have access to the top 10 best times (and of course, replay) of each stage!
As usual the changes indicated with a 💎 were inspired by your feedback, thank you for your support!
💎Shroom cannons: Nerfed (reduced) the collision box on the cannons to better fit the visuals
💎New feature - world leaderboard:Added a world mode to the leaderboard panel
Added a "default" text to the default colors in the customization panel in the options
💎Changed the default color for the ghost's replay in race mode, it's now red!
💎Performances optimization in the 2nd world - The Castle
Fixed visuals issues on some chains in the 4th world - The Mountains
💎Fixed visuals issues between fishes and shark in the 5th world - The submarine base
We are still eager to hear your feedback, do not hesitate to use the "feedback" panel in game or to join us on discord. We are building this game for you the players, so if you like or dislike anything, let us know and we will see what we can do to improve your experience!
