New Arena : House of Hunger The House of Hunger is now available! This arena is based on “The Picture in the House” short story by Lovecraft and is part of the Rural environment.
Added House of Hunger to the arena selection.
House of Hunger is locked by default. Play other arenas to reveal it!
This arena will eventually features the portraits of owners of the Elder Ones’ and Outer Gods’ Kickstarter Pacts.
Analytics With this update, we are adding Unity Analytics to Sacrifice Your Friends. Like all developers, we need data about how players interact with the game so we can better plan updates and address balance issues. The data recovered by Unity Analytics is strictly technical and gameplay related: no demographic or personal information is collected. Feel free to contact us if you have questions regarding this subject.
Added Unity Analytics.
Added an analytic event with arena and gamemode information when a game ends.
Added an analytic event with character and gameplay information when a game ends.
All analytics events we generate are logged in the Player Log. For those curious, the log of your last game session can be found in “C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Astrolabe Interactive\Sacrifice Your Friends\Player.log”. Each event log start with “Analytics event” and is followed by the event name and the values sent.
Arenas tweaks
Whispering River: Entering a cave will cause a Mi-Go to carry the player out of the arena.
Whispering River: Mi-Go attacks can now occur faster after the warning light appears.
Whispering River: Mi-Go attacks warning light is now green to better fit the creature.
Whispering River: The rock platforms on the upper river have been enlarged.
Flyby of Leng: Improved the animation of the planes when they are hit
All Arenas: Reduced the amount of chromatic aberration (fisheye distortion) that occurs during end game.
Audio
Added the soundtrack of the Nameless City in Hidden Depth, Nameless Chamber, Tomb of Alhazred, and Temple of the Unseen.
Added Intro and Outro to the Nameless City soundtrack.
Added a new sound effect when a player is expelled from the arena.
Added Flyby of Leng ambience loop.
Misc
Recolored the Shogg-hat so it doesn’t look exactly like the hat of Logan Paul. (We swear this wasn’t intentional.)
Removed controller and keyboard input when the game client is not in focus. A setting to change this behavior will be added to the Gameplay option menu in a future update.
Avatar of Cthulhu claw VFX now properly appears in online games.
Updated game engine from Unity 2019.2.8 to Unity 2019.2.12.
Various fixes and tweaks.
What’s next? These changes are not yet in the game, but they are arriving fast. Stay tuned!
Complete revamp of characters’ animation. (Almost done)
Online quickmatches. (Almost done)
New item: Miska-Tonic (Almost done)
New item: Pitchfork (in a week or two)
New item: Tentacle Whip (in a week of two)
New arena: Gilman House (in a week or two)
New arena: Innsmouth Chase (in a week or two)
New arena: Cavern of the Elders (in a few weeks)
New arena: Iceberg (in a few weeks)
New arena: Mountain of Madness (end of the year)
New arena: Old Road (end of the year)
Arena revamp: Color from the Well (in a few weeks)
Solo/Co-op mode (end of the year)
New Cult: Nyarlathotep (in a few weeks)
New Cult: Dagon (end of the year)
New Cult: Shub-Niggurath (2020)
New Cult: Shoggoth (2020)
Your feedback is always appreciated! Join us on Discord [Link] and participate in the ongoing development of Sacrifice Your Friends!
Closed Beta Patch 0.9.1.2
New Arena : Flyby of Leng Today, we add the first arena from the Mountains of Madness (Antarctica) environment. Flyby of Leng is certainly the most hardcore map we plan for the game release, so watch yourself.
Added Flyby of Leng to the arena selection.
Flyby of Leng is locked by default. Play other arenas to reveal it!
Technical While investigating issues with the game on Windows 7, we concluded that systems still using the old 32 bits architectures were likely too outdated to support the game anyway. We will now build the game for 64 bits systems, which could bring major performance gains on some computers.
Changed the build architectures from 32 bits (x86) to 64 bits (x86_64).
Audio
Fixed in-game music not responding to the Music Volume option.
Fixed music not playing in the Whispering River arena.
Added SFX to the Whispering River arena.
Misc
Main menu: Various tweaks and improvements
Online: Fixed an issue where 2 spawn points would appear when respawning.
Alpha patch 0.8.3.1
Unless something goes wrong, this should be the last patch of the Closed Alpha, which is scheduled to end on October 15. Important note: unfortunately, this patch will cause all profiles to be deleted.
Online
Added the ability to connect to a specific regional server.
Accepting an invitation to join an online room will connect players to the host's server.
Fixed an issue with Cult transformation where the return to the original form would not be synced for all players.
Various fix and tweaks
Alpha hotfix 0.8.2.4
Hotfix
Fixed a major issue with online mode introduced in version 0.8.2.3
Profiles can now be renamed from the profile menu.
Sacrifice Your Friends is live on Kickstarter!
Sacrifice Your Friends in now on Kickstarter! Come join us and get the game early on the console of your choice. We have plenty of exciting rewards for backers, including exclusive access to the Closed Beta on Steam.
It is now official: SYF’s closed alpha will end for all users on October 7, 2019. On this date, all alpha keys will be disabled and the game will no longer run on Steam. We at Astrolabe would like to thank everyone who took the time to test the game and report issues on the Discord channel. Your feedback has been invaluable, and your enthusiasm kept us going.
This journey. however, has just begun. This October, Sacrifice Your Friends will be available for pre-purchase on Kickstarter. The campaign will run from October 1st to October 27th, after which all backers will receive exclusive access to the Sacrifice Your Friends closed beta. We hope you all stick with us as we approach this last phase before SYF is unleashed unto the world. Note that we have some exclusive pledges for early backers, including the 24-hour only First Born Pact pledge.
See you on the other side!
SYF alpha version 0.8.2.3
Online
Fixed several issues with disconnections and reconnections.
Fixed an issue where player and team names would appear incorrectly.
Remote players can now invite other players to an online room.
Fixed some issues where game settings (game mode, settings) would not sync properly.
Fixed an issue where the game would end even if there were multiple local players after the last remote player leaves the match.
The loading circle that appears when joining a room now looks cooler.
Arenas
Renamed Falling Block to Nameless Chamber.
Tweaked volumetric lighting in some arenas.
Audio
Fixed volume sliders not working properly. (Only the SFX and Master sliders are used at the moment)
Added SFX to Temple of the Unseen.
Added SFX to Nameless Chamber.
Added SFX to Tomb of Alhazred.
Added SFX to Manuxet Bridge.
Added SFX to Innsmouth Dock.
Option menu
Updated the tooltip for anti-aliasing settings.
Closed Alpha - Update v0.8
Today, we are releasing version 0.8 of our SYF’s closed alpha! This major update brings numerous exciting new features including the highly requested Online Play! Invite friends via Steam or manually send room codes and join up for a game through the endless nether realms of the internets.
Participants wishing for additional Steam keys to give to their friends can send me a message via private message on Discord. We will be hosting online games with Alpha tester during the next month, so fellow to the SYF Discord channel and join up! Streamers, we can join up with you and play a few matches live if you invite us in advance.
Version 0.8 is not just about online play however: players will be able to try out the new Cult features. Cults are a complete rework of the old “Madness” mechanic. When your stress bar is full, unleash the power of your cult and transform into an avatar of your chosen Ancient. Only the cult of Cthulhu is ready for testing at the moment, but more are coming in the next few months. Yes, you read that right: you can be Cthulhu.
Here is the brief version of patch note 0.8.2.1:
Updated our engine from Unity3D 2018.3 (HDRP) to Unity3D 2019.2 (HDRP).
Added online play.
Added the Cult of Cthulhu.
Added progression system.
Added unlockable hats.
Added player intro before games.
... and much more!
The full patch note can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1050160/announcements/detail/2978491455739769620
See you all in the arena!
SYF alpha version 0.8.2.1
Engine We are updating our game engine… this might seem a rather boring change to start off with, but trust us: it’s important.
Updated from Unity3D 2018.3 (HDRP) to Unity3D 2019.2 (HDRP)
Post-processing effects have been completely redone with the new API.
Removed the option to change Bloom settings.
Added the option to change Fog settings. Changing the Fog from Volumetric to Simple can bring major performance gains on lower-end hardware.
Dev Note 1: This update brings numerous stability improvements and numerous new features for us to use.
Dev Note 2: Keeping up with the new release of Unity will pave the way to console porting. From the start, we have been using very powerful experimental features of Unity such as the High Definition Render Pipeline and the VFX Graph. These features were a bit too volatile for console until recently, but after discussion with devs at Unity we are now assured that porting will be able to begin before the end of 2019 on XBox and PS4, and in Spring 2020 for Switch.
New feature : Online Play It’s finally here! Thanks to everyone for their patience. We hope you have fun! Alpha testers wishing for additional Steam keys to give to their friends can send a private message to Non-Euclidean Overlord on Discord.
Added the ability to play online with friends.
Players can host games and invite other competitors via their Steam friends list or by sending a room code.
For online play, multiple players can play from the same computer with other players on another computer. (Ex.: You can play a 4 players game with 1 player on computer A (the host), 2 players on computer B and 1 player computer C.)
Temporarily disabled the Crypt of Alhazred as it is not yet ready for online play. It will be returning in the coming couple of weeks.
Dev Note: Let’s be honest, this is the first alpha release of the online multiplayer. There will be bugs, there will be desynchronizations, there will be crashes. It’s just not very stable at the moment. Please report any issues on the #bug-report channel of the SYF Discord. We will keep the alpha updated as issued are found and fixed.
New feature : Cults We are completely revamping the “Madness” mechanics. Now, players can choose a Cult; once the Stress bar is full, triggering the Madness will transform the player into a monstrous avatar of their chosen Great Old One! While transformed, players have access to mighty attacks and new abilities. The Stress bar gradually drains for the duration of the transformation, but the opponents can speed up the process by inflicting damage. Added the Cult of Cthulhu, the first to be added to the game. The Avatar of Cthulhu offers a mighty close-quarter moveset with the following abilities:
[Attack Button] Ancient Claws: The Avatar performs a quick and brutal strike, similar to unarmed combat, only far more powerful.
[Dash Button] Greater Dash: The Avatar performs a Dash that covers greater distance than the regular Dash. Very useful to close up on helpless victims!
[Grab Button] Coming soon! (For now, this does the same base attack as the Attack Button)
[Madness Button] To the Stars:While on the ground, the Avatar leaps into the air.
[Madness Button] To the Depths: While in the air, the Avatar slams the ground with great force. Just be careful not to actually slam into the void.
[Passive] Winged Aspect: While in the air, the Avatar glides to slow its descent.
New feature : Progression system
Experience is now awarded based on game performance.
Profiles can level up, unlocking new characters, skins... and hats.
Added hats to the character selection menu.
Dev Note: The progression system is still early in development. It will be progressively expended in the coming months.
Match intro
Replaced the old countdown sequence at the beginning of each match by a quick close up of every player.
Added an option to disable the player intro.
The loading screen before a match now features a preview of the players and the arena being played.
Dev Note: We will most likely modify which information are displayed on the loading screen in the coming weeks.
Others
General post-processing now change as the game progress, getting progressively stranger and darker.
Added an option to disable controller vibration.
Added an option to disable screen shake.
Reduced shadow resolution of certain light emitters.
Replaced the model of the bridge in Manuxet Bridge. The new bridge is wider than the old one. The textures of the bridge will be modified in the following week to better harmonize with the surrounding structures.
Removed the old music from the game. Expect the new soundtrack in the next couple months.
Fixed some issues with end game animation.
And lots of minor fixes and improvements...
Alpha preview
After 1 year of development, our steam page just got live!
What you see now is in alpha only and some features are still to be implemented in the game.
Tell us what you think and follow the development on discord and facebook!
