Past Cure
Past Cure v2 DevLog (Contains Spoilers)
After months of work, we finally deliver Past Cure v2. Since the release, there have been a lot of criticism we received and we decided to opt for a patch that addresses some of these.
First of all, I assume it would be fair to give you the status of the studio. We are now down to 4 people, a team of a programmer, an animator, an environment artist and a character artist. This definitely made working on the patch harder, especially if we take into account Past Cure being on three platforms.
So for the changelogs, I would like to go over them with the general criticism that we received so far. A note however, due to time and manpower limitations, it was not realistic to tackle everything on the desired intensity.
- Gameplay and some levels are repetitive and boring
This was quite the case on the chessroom and parking lot levels. The main reason for the chessroom to be in this format was generally testing of the game with people that do not have too much previous game experience. Just to pass that you can use certain abilities in certain combinations made chessroom long and boring. We revamped the chessroom massively so it is not just a map that contains tutorials, it has more story integrity, less repetition and more cohesion with the game.
In the case of parking lot, it was a different case, it was just going through similar looking environment, shooting enemies and repeat this x times. The cause of this was picking an environment that doesn't necessarily contain too much that can go on. If you were to think about that, what can you place into a parking lot, other than concrete and cars? So the first design basically was a victim to this. After the feedback, it was obvious that something had to be done. We first thought of shortening it, but this meant reduction in playtime and we were not really happy with going with this approach given it meant less value for price, which also was a debate in the criticism we received. However we could capitalize on supernatural elements of Past Cure, which allowed us to add more to the parking lot, other than concrete and cars (Will only state this much just not to spoil more).
- Superpowers are not fun and abusable
So one of the issues we observed was the power of slow motion, coupled with the sanity regeneration mechanics the game has. Basically you could use slow motion, leave cover and shoot, stop slowmo and cover back and wait for your sanity to regenerate. Knowing this, most of the players took the safe path of doing this which made the game dull. There were a few ways to address this, which one was to improve the AI to push you out of your cover but the ability problems were still there. Attempting a fix on AI was something we wanted to stay away from given broken AI is much worse than stupid AI and this is a part that requires a lot of polish. We instead took another approach of 1. limiting the sanity regeneration and 2. causing a side effect to sanity usage (Ignoring the screen blur that is caused on low sanity, which doesn't hinder the user that much, not to be confused with the screenshake upon reaching zero sanity).
Now sanity no longer regenerates below 35% automatically. Instead upon reaching 0 sanity, sanity regenerates to 35% but spawning porcelain figures. Killing porcelain figures increase the maximum regeneration above 35% so technically is a method to convert your ammo into sanity if you have abundance of it. If your sanity reaches to the maximum regeneration point, all spawned porcelain figures get destroyed (And you can also take a blue pill to trigger this). This behavior only triggers on real world sections given loss of sanity brings nightmares of Ian to surface and does not trigger on nightmare sections of the game.
Also, compared to slow motion, mindfly had much less going on, allowing you to only interact with select few objects and some scouting. Also the amount of sanity drained with this ability was making it feel like a less wise way of spending your sanity. Because of this, we added the ability Mind Bash to mind fly. If you hold Aim and Fire buttons during mind fly, you will spring backwards and upon releasing the buttons, you will execute a mind bash, hitting the object in front of you. This replaces the interaction mechanics with the space bar button so everything you had to activate with space bar, you now have to mind bash. You can also hit human enemies with it to stun them, allowing you to kill them while maintaining your stealth. You can interact with some objects that contain electricity to electrify your mind bash which launches faster and further and killing human enemies upon contact. Also mind fly now does not contain sanity over time, only executing a mind bash does so it can be used for scouting purposes without worrying much about your sanity. And finally, activating mind fly will create a shield around Ian, absorbing damage taken by the cost of sanity (Bear in mind, your mind fly can still be interrupted). This makes mind fly an option during an encounter.
- Bosses are not fun, smart and can easily be cheesed
This issue contained a few parts of the game and we tried our best to address them. Due to sanity changes, cheesing mechanics were compansated for but we wanted to add more. However we found ourselves in a state which a change required some fine tuning or complete revamping. During Amos fight, we added a mechanic which you had to mind bash the shield surrounding Amos to break it but it seemed to make the boss fight too hard, even on Easy difficulty so we ended up reverting the change.
- Forced stealth sections
This was a part that took A LOT OF criticism. The biggest issue we had upon tackling this was the environment design, time limitations and repeating the same mistake of repetitiveness. Basically, converting the stealth section to pure fights would make them just another gunfight section, which we have plenty and the environment design would make them poor action sections. We could redesign the environment to fit either puzzles or better designed action parts but the time and manpower limitations we had forced us to opt out of these decisions. We ended up with triggering a timer upon detection which offers player a grace period in which they should kill all enemies in the area, otherwise it would fail. This also has the effect of magnifying the power of slow motion since it would also affect this timer so it can be used not only for aiming better, but also giving the player more time to eliminate enemies.
- Overall feel of the game
If you played the game before the patch, you will not notice a lot of changes on how the game feels mechanically in terms of shooting or moving but we believe it will feel substantially different in terms of decisionmaking, managing your resources (Ammo, sanity, pills) as well as your environment (Do I have enough space if I lose my sanity, is it worth to have 4 more seconds of slow motion on my current state?).
Wrapping Up:
As stated before, now with even more limited resources, we wanted to redeem some parts of Past Cure with efficiency in mind, trying to make decisions that does more impact to the game for the time and manpower we have. It is a fair wish if we could change more but this is not always possible, especially when a change can impact a lot other areas. As always, we would like to hear your opinions, especially the ones comparing it to the previous version of the game so we can evaluate ourselves if we made correct decisions and correct executions of them.
And my personal apologies for still not bringing in mouse control on the menu:(
Best wishes,
Kaan, on behalf of Phantom8 Studios
Past Cure v2 Patch Notes
Here are the patch notes for Past Cure v2. A dev post will be included soon for more insight over the patch.
Past Cure Changelog
Gameplay Changes
* New Ability - Mind Bash: Ian can now utilize his mental powers to interact with the environment in more ways. This allows you to stun enemies, destroy various objects and even kill enemies when powered up to overcome obstacles.
* Sanity Changes: Now sanity, instead of recovering when it is below 35%, does not recover. Instead, upon reaching zero sanity, Ian’s nightmares surface to the real world and creating even more threats. These threats can be fought with brute force or can be avoided until Ian’s sanity recovers. Mind Fly no longer depletes sanity unless a Mind Bash is initiated. The amount of sanity Mind Bash consumes are reflected on the user interface.
* Using Mind Fly now creates a shield around Ian, making him bulletproof. This shield consumes sanity upon taking damage. Ian can however can still be interrupted by melee combat during Mind Fly.
* Improved Auto Aim
Map Changes
* Most of the maps are tweaked in conjunction with the gameplay changes.
* Hotel no longer has the forced stealth mechanics. Instead a timer is triggered which its duration varies depending on the difficulty you are playing that demands you to kill all enemies within the area. This timer can be manipulated with the ability Time Perception.
* Parking Lot is revamped, containing new areas that contain action based puzzles that requires you to use Ian’s abilities, as well as cutting down the linearity of the previous version.
* Chessroom is revamped in a similar manner to the Parking Lot, adding tutorials to adapt the player to the changed mechanics, culling the tutorials in size.
Story and Cinematics
* Additional story items, voiceovers.
* Some existing cutscenes were reworked and some cinematic sequences were converted to gameplay.
Bug Fixes
* Fixed button icons occasionally lingering on the screen.
* Memory optimizations are made to reduce unnecessary memory usage.
* Fixed various localization errors.
Packaging Changes
* Changes made to the filesystem to improve the loading times and patch sizes. This has a side effect of making this patch bigger.
Patch Notes / Upcoming Patch Announcement
Below are the patch notes for the Past Cure. Bear in mind that it might take a few hours for the patch to land on the system.
UI/Control Improvements:
- Keybinding Settings are added. You can access these from Options->Controls->Key Bindings
- The game now automatically detects if you are using a gamepad and changes the icons accordingly
- Button Icon Layout option is reworked: Now it gives a selection to display in which Gamepad Icon Layout it should display. PC option is deleted due to the introduction of automatic detection
Graphics:
- Fixed an issue where VSync is not responsive to the selection on the menu
- Fixed various visual glitches
- Added an option to remove Letterboxes. This does not have an effect on cutscenes.
- Texture and shader improvements
Localization:
- Fixed various localization issues present on some languages
Achievements:
- "Bull in a China Shop" achievement is now awarded correctly.
Gameplay:
- Adjusted aim assistance for gunfights for controllers.
- Fixed various bugs that hinder progression
- Adjusted few cases where enemies could detect the player where they shouldn't
Sound and Cutscenes:
- Fixed various synchronization issues
What is next?
Since the release, we have received a lot of comments regarding Past Cure's gameplay, story, features that pushed us to listen to these and come up with some changes which changes the gameplay. Below are some of the points we have highlighted, some in the direct form of the statement:
- Gameplay and some levels are repetitive and boring.
- Superpowers are not fun
- Bosses are not fun, smart and can easily be cheesed
- Forced stealth section, this is 2018
- The game lacks a little bit of "Oomph" to it
We will be addressing these issues with a major patch that contains radical changes to the gameplay. To compliment these changes, there will be tweaking or overhauling the levels, bosses and AI.
More updates will follow highlighting some of the upcoming changes.
Thanks everyone for their support and their criticism that pushed us to take action.
Phantom 8 Studios
Upcoming Patch / Testers needed
Upon checking the community's response to the game, we have decided to deploy a series of patches to improve some aspects of the game and we are in need of testers.
Below are the topics that are under development:
- Keybindings
- Removal of the black borders (Only for gameplay)
- Several bugfixes
If you would like to participate in the testing program, you should contact us via testing@phantom8.studio (You should have a copy of the game to participate) with the below details:
Steam UserID/Profile Link:
PC specs:
Gamepad Access and Model if yes:
Bear in mind that the info is to collect more reliable info and does not reduce your chances for participation.
Best,
Phantom8Studio
Release Announcement
So, Past Cure is out. Thanks a lot for your interest so far.
As you might have occurred on the discussion boards, we have been trying to listen to the community to bring forth some features.
Among those, we could fix a lot of critical issues before the release and we will be keeping an eye on the game in case any unexpected behavior would arise.
Also as stated in the discussion boards, we made a mention about Keybinding mappings being on the release but due to lack of testing time, we decided to postpone the feature for a few days in order to not introduce the game any issues hence compromise the stability.
We hope that you will have a blast with Ian.
Thanks,
Phantom8Studio
Pre-Release/Demo Announcement
First of all, we would like to thank you for your interest in Past Cure. We believe that the community interaction is the key-aspect for us to thrive and give you a better experience, hence your input is extremely valuable to us.
Below are some of the answers to a few questions we have encountered from various people that tried the demo version.
Q: The game has no keybinding settings. Is this the case for the final release?
A: The release version will have keybinding settings along with other settings that are specific to PC Platform.
Q: My controller does not work. Does the game have no support for controllers?
A: The game has controller support. We use XBoxOne official controllers for testing and if you encounter with the issue, plugging your controller and ensuring it works before launching the game should help. Otherwise, you can specify your controller model so we can investigate the issue.
Q: I have performance problems
A: The specified minimum hardware settings are not for the high quality graphics settings and if your hardware is not strong enough, you should be lowering down your settings. If this is not the case for you, please inform us with your specs and the problematic part so we can investigate the issue further.
You can use the Bug Reports subsection to inform us about any bugs.
You can use the Feature/QoL requests subsection to ask about any feature or quality of life changes that you would like to see for the game (Extra options etc.). We will be updating this announcement for the already fixed/implemented or will be fixed/implemented cases.
Once again, thanks for your interest in Past Cure,
Best regards,
Phantom 8 Studio