Hey guys Indie, an amazing and entertaining Twitch streamer, will be playing Phantasmal this coming Saturday 11AM PDT! I'll be on the show too, so drop by - it's going to be awesome!
You can see Indie's announcement on Twitter here: @theRealIndie
Phantasmal Hits Full Release, and Notes of Thanks to all our Early Access Contributors.
It’s a huge day for the team today as Phantasmal reaches it’s final major milestone. Thanks to all of our awesome players who have influenced and shaped the game during the time of Early Access - we could only have reached this point with your feedback and your immense support. Thank you for buying the game and most importantly giving us your time, effort and passion. We appreciate you believing in us - that has been the most rewarding part of this journey.
I also just wanted to give shout outs to some exceptional fans:
@Fernando Esra - you are hands down the most loyal player on the forums! Thank you for your wonderful feedback, all your amazing screenshots, and your constant encouragement. Fernando, your support has kept us going - players like you are what make this whole project feel really worth all the effort! Immortalizing your name into the game was an honour for us!
@Mystra - your screenshots have been right up there - as amazing as the fantastic work of Fernando! At the same time you have been so humble and so nice. You are also a model player that any developer would be proud to have. We also salute you and you honor us by allowing us to have your name in the game too!
@sbobo1313 - you’ve been with us since the very beginning. You played our game when it was Infinity Castle, a crappy roguelike I made for the 7 Day FPS Game jam a couple of years ago. Thank you for your loyalty and also your enthusiasm and moral support. We’re proud to have your name in our game too!
@Chillywilly - thanks for your tireless testing for us! We couldn’t have come this far without you - your efforts at PAX Australia really saved the day. We’re honored to have worked with you and look forward to working with you for our next project!
@Iasperic - thank you for your patience in working through a critical memory and shopkeeper issue. You could have given up on us, and I wouldn’t have blamed you, but you didn’t you stuck by us and helped us to work out the issue for the benefit of every other player. We salute you!
@chillywilly2345 - (not to be confused with the other chillywilly!) thank you for your constant feedback and suggestions. If you have noticed, we have implemented a lot of your suggestions and bug reports. Your feedback has been instrumental for us to get to the finish line!
@Das Malefitz - you’ve stepped in numerous times to defend us, and that has not gone unnoticed! We really appreciate your support - thank you sir!
@Wooke - thank you for all the wonderful screenshots and bug reports!
@Vodkins - recently kindly overturned a negative review after a rational reasonable discussion with us and ended up giving us some great feedback!
Additional thanks go to:
@WillWire
@TheHillsJaded
@Kirie
@Hive365 | ryanjames1411
@Mr DarkNeT
@Teapot
@Snowfox
@ConVict -Q-
I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone else, but you’ve all been wonderful - thank you for being part of our long journey!
Ash
EDIT: Massive thanks to @Wristwatch4 for his backing and for winning the first ever Phantasmal contest at Digital Nationz in New Zealand!
Update 17.5: Mini-update
Hey All,
Just a sneaky mini-update before the end from continued final functional testing:
Corrected faulty light detection
Removed some invisible barriers
Balancing in the sewer level
Repaired medic bay hole in the ground
Weirdo sounds adjusted
Weirdo follow distance inceased so he's not right next to you
Various gameplay balancing across all levels
Minor errors in the intro page
We've done some exhaustive internal testing, so we hope that the majority of serious bugs have been dealt with.
Thanks to @fishpaste for his excellent feedback recently! ːPhantasmalSkullː
Ash
[Quick Player Poll] Is the UI Bright Enough?
Hi guys,
Just a quick question for you: is anyone finding the in-game User Interface (i.e. Map and Stats) still a bit too dark at the moment with the latest build?
Thank you to @Fishpaste for alerting me to the fact that it is a little bit too dim for him to read.
We can't make it too bright or it will look pretty awful from a stylistic perspective. However we can possibly make it a little brighter if this is a problem for people before full release this week.
Update 17: The Penultimate EA Build!
Hey AllːPhantasmalSkullː
One more week to go, and then Early Access is forever gone! ːPhantasmalEyeː
So we have been diligently testing and cleaning up of the outstanding bugs over the past few weeks and have a surprising amount of changes for you.
Junkie Animations have been completely fixed - it now has smooth transitions between animations. No more weird jankiness!
A forward dash has been added that can get you out of simple jams if you get caught between junk (double tap forward). You now have a much better chance of wriggling free rather than insta-failing the game (Thanks to Ghost for getting us to fix that!)
Increased chances to kill spiders with melee. It's slightly easier to hit spiders now
Quality settings have been revised
UI has been tidied up
Corrected a major pathfinding bug that we only just discovered recently
Fixed enemies getting stuck on the bottom of stairs
New death sound for Player
Added a new rare item (Gold Ingot Stash)
Sniper Rifle zoomed in adjusted
Added sound to SAN recovery
Fixed motion blur so that it no longer affects the reticule or the player arms
Fixed sewer elevator sound
Added idle sound to spitter
Increased Pipebomb damage significantly and reduced range very slightly- be careful you don't kill yourself! The sound has been adjusted too.
Huge thanks to ChillyWilly for his continued testing, and Ghost for alerting us to the physics bug.
Nearly there folks! Can't believe 2 years of work is coming to a conclusion so quickly! ːPhantasmalEyeː ːsteamfacepalmː
It's quite frightening actually!
Thank you again for your support everybody - looking forward to partying it up with you on release day! ːPhantasmalSkullː
Ash
p.s. let us know if you find any bugs - we will be fixing really minor ones coming up to release. ːPhantasmalEyeːːPhantasmalStarvedː
Update 16: The "Almost There" Build
Hey everyone! :PhantasmalSeeker:
Here is one of the last builds before launch, but we have a lot more improvements:
New radio object with music
Weirdo now speaks Cantonese
Junky now has multiple death sounds
Various gameplay balancing (creatures, sanity and items)
Flares now distract some creatures for longer
spiders shouldn’t trigger collision sounds any more with items
spiders have a new screech sound
green portal instances should not show up any more (please let us know if you see it again). It’s now replaced with a manhole you can go down.
Most trash fires fixed so they should restore sanity (was broken before)
Fade in has been re-added into level loads
Thanks to ChillyWilly and Sbobo1313 for their help and contributions this update! :PhantasmalSkull:
And if you feel like helping us out for the release in a couple of weeks, support us on Thunderclap!
We're not far off now. If you'd like to help us get this build polished up please feel free to log any bugs in the discussion forums. If there are any urgent bugs we will get on to them right away. :PhantasmalEye:
From our internal testing, there are many low priority bugs and a couple of medium priority so it's looking good internally, but it's always helpful and great to get your feedback! :PhantasmalEye:
If there are any youtubers out there who would like to get review codes, please feel free to get in touch! ːsteamhappyː
Edit: As pointed out by -Ghost- it's sometimes quite annoying to get stuck on junk and not be able to move any more. I've added in a forward dash which can help you wiggle out when you're jammed in junk. It won't work 100% especially if you're jammed right in, but it should get you out of annoying situations the odd time when you are jammed between chairs and other physics objects. You can dash by double tapping forward. :PhantasmalSeeker:
Hey Everyone,
Two years' of work is rapidly coming to a conclusion in a couple of weeks time. We will finally be releasing to Steam fully!
I just wanted to say again thank you to all of you for being with us on this fantastic and some times personally turbulent journey. It's not been easy getting to this point - it really does feel like the last mile of a marathon where we're all limping and crawling to the finish line! ːPhantasmalSkullː
We couldn't have done this without each and every one of you though! You all share with us the passion for horror gaming and that's what has been fueling us to finish this project. I consider all of you as part of the team - you've stuck with us the whole way through and for that you have my eternal thanks!
If you'd like to help us out with a social media boost on the day of launch, we've prepared a Thunderclap campaign.
Basically if you use it will automatically post on your social media on the day all at once.
If you could help us out that would be truly wonderful! We still face an uphill battle to be noticed so every bit will help immensely.
Thank you again everyone - or I should say thank you extended Phantasmal team and family ːsteamhappyː
Hey Everyone,
Two years' of work is rapidly coming to a conclusion in a couple of weeks time. We will finally be releasing to Steam fully!
I just wanted to say again thank you to all of you for being with us on this fantastic and some times personally turbulent journey. It's not been easy getting to this point - it really does feel like the last mile of a marathon where we're all limping and crawling to the finish line! :PhantasmalSkull:
We couldn't have done this without each and every one of you though! You all share with us the passion for horror gaming and that's what has been fueling us to finish this project. I consider all of you as part of the team - you've stuck with us the whole way through and for that you have my eternal thanks!
If you'd like to help us out with a social media boost on the day of launch, we've prepared a Thunderclap campaign.
Basically if you use it will automatically post on your social media on the day all at once.
If you could help us out that would be truly wonderful! We still face an uphill battle to be noticed so every bit will help immensely.
Thank you again everyone - or I should say thank you extended Phantasmal team and family ːsteamhappyː
Update 15: Bug Fix Extravaganza!
Hello! And time for some more improvements! :PhantasmalSeeker::PhantasmalEye:
The gamma/brightness has been a huge pain in the ass, but we have mostly fixed it.
Unfortunately as the settings were spread across 3 scenes and our implementation wasn’t very good, they conflicted with each other, so we’ve removed it from the intro area. ːsteamfacepalmː
It should by in large be working properly now, although there are a couple of final niggles we need to iron out.
Other fixes:
- Reticule changed to a dot to make it less intrusive
- Multiple changes/refinements to art assets
- Slight change to loading screen
- Fix to intro scene lighting
- Fixed effects for subsequent playthroughs of the game
- UI fixes (sometimes became too dark)
- Minor balancing tweaks
- Initial Unity Dialog box removed - now all resolution/quality settings are done in game
- More Voice Acting
As usual, we’ll continue to try to squash as many bugs as possible.
One you’ll notice is the floors in the sewers have missing textures so they will show up bright pink at the moment. We’ll try and rectify that sooner than later. The junkies also have a minor issue with their idle behaviour currently.
ːsteamfacepalmː:PhantasmalBoard:
Massive thank you to all our player for helping us out!
Fan shout outs Thanks to sbobo3113 for his help and support.
Thanks to the following peepz for excellent screenshots! I'll be posting these up in our Facebook/Twitter soon.
