Remnant Records has now been out for more than a month, and what a ride it has been! We can never thank you enough for your engagement and support.
Still, this is only the beginning of this project. There is a lot more we want to show you, and you’ve already had a glimpse through the roadmap. Here’s a little reminder:
Do note this isn’t an exhaustive list. Expect surprises in the coming months!
One of those surprises is the very subject of this devlog.
RANDOMLY GENERATED MYSTERIES
If you’ve already played the game before, you know how a mission works: you enter a haunted place, look for clues to understand what happened to the people that used to live here, and use the information you’ve gathered to perform the exorcism.
Piecing together the story is the core gameplay of the investigation phase of a mission. For players to keep enjoying it, it needs to stay fresh, to surprise them occasionally, and to be believable.
The system works right now, but some aspects have left me unsatisfied. Here is what’s planned to make it more solid and engaging.
THE STORY OF A PERSON RATHER THAN A LIST OF EVENTS
With missions being procedurally generated, some will inevitably feel better than others. Our goal is to finetune the system to encourage coherent and natural storytelling. Right now, some missions can feel like fetch quests, with every text mentioning an item and being quite disconnected from each other. We want each mission to feel like a complete story that gets unraveled, with the protagonist being our ghost.
One of our solutions for this is the upcoming personality system. Each ghost will get multiple personality traits assigned to them, and the texts they leave behind will depend on those. This will help each ghost feel like a real person with their own personal story, their own way to express themselves, and their very own character.
In the future, these personality traits may even get reflected in the ghost’s behavior during the investigation and exorcism phase. Stay tuned!
NOT ALL DOOM AND GLOOM
As we all know, people who’ve had peaceful lives don’t become ghosts. However, that doesn’t mean that ghosts should have had only terrible or tragic moments in their lives. We want to put more emphasis on positive events that happened in the ghosts’ lives, and make them feel even more like real people, with qualities and flaws, good times and bad times.
To help with that, we also plan to put more focus on environmental clues. There are already quite a few in the game: all the information you’re looking for isn’t always in the texts. For example, try putting flowers on the exorcism table when you notice that the ghost’s room is full of plants!
MORE OF THE SAME
All those changes are very important, but we’re very aware of what the investigation phase needs the most: more content. All upcoming content updates will include dozens of new texts and new items, to help keep the experience fresh.
AND THE BEST PART: YOU CAN HELP
If, when playing the game, you sometimes feel you’ve been suddenly struck by inspiration… here’s a way for you to leave your mark in the game, and help create more content! We've setup a form in which you can submit texts to be used in the game. Do note: there is no guarantee the texts you send will be used, and they may be lightly or heavily edited.
Your texts don’t have to be perfect, or even complete. Don’t hesitate to even submit simply “ideas” for texts. We’re always grateful for your contribution and support!
Everything that’s been mentioned in this devlog is planned for the coming months. That doesn’t mean that’s it: the story system will keep improving over the entire duration of Early Access, and we want to do even more ambitious things with it, though I can’t go into details on this right now. Keep the suggestions flowing, we’re listening!
I hope you enjoyed reading this devlog. More will come, on a very irregular schedule. Don’t forget you can come and chat with us and the community on our Discord.
Yours truly, EraKles
The Roadmap: what's coming in 2022 and later
Hello everyone!
Today marks a month since the release of Remnant Records. Your support has been amazing, and we hope you'll keep enjoying the game in the future.
Until now, we've been focusing on bugfixes and minor balancing. The game is now in a mostly stable state, though not to worry: your bug reports are still being taken into account and will be addressed in later patches.
Work has now resumed on new content, and we can't wait to show it. We've got some pretty cool things in store, and here's a teaser:
Adjustments - Optimized performance on all maps - Optimized the chains that appear at the end of the exorcism - Reduced the max range of the cartomancer's detector talisman - Improved the way bug reports are sent to allow for quicker bugfixing in the future (especially for people getting random disconnects) - Added a keybinding for suicide (helpful in case of game-breaking bugs)
Bug Fixes - Fixed a bug where in some cases the mission failed when someone left midway through - Fixed a bug that made it impossible for dead players to read books - Fixed a bug that stopped the shusher's souls from guiding players - Fixed the collider of the bin in Eastwood House bathroom - Fixed a bug where the mannequin could get bugged at the beginning of a game and never attack at all - Fixed typos in some texts - Fixed the fridge that was being culled too early - Fixed ghost notes not having a back side - Fixed a bug that made it impossible to adjust FOV while dead
Patch 1.2.1 is up now
Bug Fixes - Fixed a bug that would cause games to not end correctly after one player had died
Update 1.2.0 is up now - the Musclehead got a little boost!
New Features & Changes - Added a new ability to the Musclehead: they can now free their friends from the clutches of the ghosts! - Added a button in the room browser to quickly switch server regions
Adjustments - "Custom difficulty" is now enabled by default when you open the window. A warning appears instead if the contract you selected has a special condition you haven't unlocked - Added an error message when getting abruptly disconnected from the game - Added subtle visual effects when players are caught by ghosts - Increased the speed of objects when they're getting moved to prevent them getting out of the player's view - Increased the running speed of the orphan - Increased the speed of the orphan's dolls - Adjusted the shusher's senses during the exorcism to feel more fair - Made the ghosts hear the piano from Gamara Villa from further away - Optimized the orphan's exorcism for the host player (still a work-in-progress) - Added a minimum delay between Steam invites
Bug Fixes - Fixed a bug where getting disconnected from a game would lead to the subsequent games being very bugged (no items spawning) - Fixed a bug where the runner would hear non-host players from further away than the host player - Fixed multiple text displaying issues in German - Fixed a text that wrongly displayed "leaving the room" instead of "quitting the game" in German - Fixed the text on the second page of children's diaries not being the correct font - Fixed a bug where books would appear without text when multiple ghost were trying to read the same one at the same time - Fixed a bug that caused dead players that fell under the map not to reappear back up - Fixed a bug where handguns would fly off into space with the special condition "zero gravity" - Fixed a bug where the teddy bear would not count as a toy for the orphan - Fixed a bug with a poster that would spawn with a wrong rotation - Fixed a knife spawn on Eastwood House - Fixed a bug where the knife would sometimes not spawn on Eastwood House - Fixed a bug where dead players would "ping" the medium when interacting with the pause menu - Fixed a bug where the mannequin's exorcism would award twice as much XP as it should - Fixed a bug where the cartomancer's helper card would not appear when summoned on stairs - Fixed a bug where the "ready" icons on the bottom right of the room would display inaccurate information
Update 1.1.0 is up now - the German translation has arrived!
New Features & Changes - Added full German translation - Removed the ability to rename rooms > A new system is coming in the future, with the ability to indicate what kind of players you're looking for, what languages you speak, etc - In the room screen, added little checks next to the "start mission" button to know if everyone is ready
Adjustments - Disabled collision between dead players - Disabled collision between players and broken door parts to fix issues where players would get stuck in the environment - Changed the color of the "experience earned" text at the end of a game, depending on whether the mission succeeded or not - Reduced the volume of the tutorial "voice" - Increased the minimum distance between the shusher and the players at the start of the exorcism - In the room screen, made it more visible when the "start mission" button is disabled - There will now always be at least one contract with a special condition after having reached level 5 - Made contracts with special conditions stand out more - Changed the fonts of handwritten notes and diaries to support all accents - Added even more contrast during the room tutorial, to make highlighted areas stand out more
Bug Fixes - Fixed a bug where you could get 5 blue objects and the exorcism still failed - Fixed a bug that caused ghosts to try and get out of Gamara Villa using the main entrance - Fixed a bug that caused players to get teleported under the map in Gamara Villa - Fixed the quit confirmation text that always appeared in french - Fixed spots where the fusebox could spawn on an important item - Fixed incorrect number of vouchers earned being written on the game end screen - Fixed a typo in one of the runner's tips - Fixed a bug where the helper talisman would overshoot its target - Fixed a spot outside Rock's End Farmhouse where players could see inside - Fixed a spot on Eastwood House behind the pool table where players could see through the wall - Fixed a bug where some stories would feel incomplete because they could not generate in their entirety
Patch 1.0.5 is up now
Adjustments - Reverted the number of orphan dolls to what it was before the last patch
Bug Fixes - Fixed the huge lag caused by the orphan exorcism - Fixed the bug where orphan dolls could get stuck and stop moving
Most major bugs have now been fixed. Patches should be a little more spaced out in the future.
Patch 1.0.4 is up now
Adjustments - Reworked the exorcism help colors to be clearer - Added a little animation when the helper talisman can't find anything of value - Changed the prioritization of targets of the helper talisman to make him more useful
Bug Fixes - Fixed a bug that would force "one soul in two ghosts" to have the same ghost type when in custom difficulty - Fixed a bug that caused the microphone to stop working seemingly randomly - Fixed a bug where resetting objects position would also try to reset broken door parts - Fixed a bug with push-to-talk where, when a player would stop pressing the button, the game would not reset their voice level - Fixed a bug where changes to voice settings would not apply when set from the main menu - Fixed a bug that caused players to freeze in midair if they jumped they opened the pause menu - Fixed an armchair that was being culled too early in Rock's End Farmhouse - Fixed a spot under the stairs on Rock's End Farmhouse ghosts could try to path to
Patch 1.0.3 is up now
Adjustments - Added an option to select the microphone type (between "Photon" and "Unity"). This may solve some problems for people that had microphone issues, try it out! - Reduced the cooldown between apparitions of the orphan - Reduced the volume of the alarm - Reduced the volume of doors breaking - Reduced the volume of adding/removing an object from the exorcism table
Bug Fixes - Fixed a bug where various objects such as the exorcism table and the fusebox could disappear when a specific door was broken on Gamara Villa - Fixed a bug that allowed ghosts to catch players outside the barrier - Fixed a bug that allowed the shusher to shush people outside the barrier - Fixed the "orphan doll dance" - Fixed a bug where the orphan would keep accepting the same toys - Changed "sleepyyyyy" to "sleeeeepy" in a specific text - Fixed a bug with the "reset all objects" button - Fixed a bug where you could get stuck on the pile of books on Gamara Villa - Fixed a spot in Eastwood House garage where you could see through the door - Fixed a bug where the runner's bells would stay after the exorcism - Stopped the helper talisman from going through furniture - Fixed a bug that prevented ghosts from going outside on Rock's End Farmhouse - Fixed a bug where the helper talisman would collide with invisible ghosts - Fixed a pathfinding problem on Gamara Villa that could cause the shusher to get stuck during the exorcism
Patch 1.0.2 is up now
Adjustments - Added a warning when trying to invite friends while the room is closed - Reduced the number of dolls during the orphan's exorcism - Reduced the volume of doors breaking - Reduced the volume of adding/removing an object from the exorcism table
Bug Fixes - Optimized the orphan's dolls' AI (deeper optimization will come in next patches) - Fixed a bug where the orphan would keep crying while counting down at the start of the exorcism - Corrected a text on the cartomancer's pause screen - Fixed early culling of the billiard table - Fixed early culling of a small rug - Fixed a bug that allowed players to see through doors and walls at specific angles
