0.1.7 | Patch Notes - New Difficulty System Added!
It's the update that you've all been waiting for!
Are you worthy? We're ready to discover our ultimate Sker champions as our devs bring you a difficulty system with a unique twist! If you've been wondering about the purpose of that Sword Statue, you now have your answer.
Interacting with the Sword Statue will increase the difficulty of enemies and make the Cursed Lands of Lavernock even more challenging! Do you have what it takes to survive? There's only one way to find out!
That's not all! Here's a breakdown of the full patch release.
New!
- Added Difficulties: You can find a Sword Statue in the levels, interacting with it will increase the difficulty of enemies - Improved Muzzle Flashes on Shootable Weapons - Adjusted Trial Objective requirements based on feedback - Added an Option to Hide Objective Markers
Once again, we'd like to invite everyone over to our Discord channel to chat with the devs and the community, and also please do leave the game a review over on the Steam page which supports our Early Access Beta journey!
Sker Ritual - Episode 1: The Cursed Lands of Lavernock Trailer
Descend into hell and take a look at the Sker Ritual - Episode 1: The Cursed Lands of Lavernock Trailer
Check out some new gameplay and improvements made since our Early Access launch, PLUS a preview of what's to come in the future as we explore The Cursed Lands of Lavernock.
Brave the hoards with friends or go it alone, upgrade weapons and your abilities to take on some of Sker Islands' formidable elite enemies and cursed villagers. Each match can be unique with a variety of Miracle builds and enhancing perks to collect.
Need a friend? The Abraham Plushie is still available to purchase now over on Makeship
Stick around as we have plenty more planned on our Roadmap, return to The Ashes of Sker Hotel in December 2022, venture into the Sewers of the Dead in February 2022 and take a romantic trip through the Deadly Lover's Fortress in April 2022.
Don't forget the Draigs Terror and Friends in the Darkness DLCs available now!
0.1.6 | Patch Notes - New Trials and Localisation Added plus Bug Fixes!
The devs have been busy with this latest update that continues to improve performance throughout the game. This update will be going live today, the team have continued to listen to your feedback and implement updates ready for our next update
- Adjusted Elite & Boss enemies health, their health increases at the same percentage as Normal enemies - Fixed an overflow in Damage Done score and increased the number range it can show - Fixed text wrapping incorrectly on certain UI elements that represent Button Tutorials - Fixed waves progressing if players just waited in Ghost mode - Improved issue caused by Usernames having symbols that aren't included in the font that displays them - Fixed an internal issue caused by objective inheriting data from another objective
Once again, we'd like to invite everyone over to our Discord channel to chat with the devs and the community, and also please do leave the game a review over on the Steam page which supports our Early Access Beta journey!
We want the Sker Squad kept up-to-date with what features we are currently working on. Please note that this is not everything we are working on and is only a response to the majority of features requested in the Steam Forum, Steam Reviews and on the Discord and doesn't include many of the on-going development such as new episodes (and the base content released for each episode), optimisation, network improvements, balancing, UI and QOL etc. We can't list every single request but be aware we are listening and recording all feedback, requests and suggestion so do keep them coming!
COMPLETE
Optimisation (on-going)
Ping System
Re-roll Miracles
Increases POV
Reduced time for enemy auto-respawn
Reduced XP requirement for Sker Pass
IN PROGRESS / COMING SOON
The Ashes of Sker Hotel (Sneak Peek Incoming)
Miracles 2.0 (Sneak Peek Incoming)
Main Easter Eggs
Side Easter Eggs
In-game difficulty selector
Challenges & round modifiers
Improved difficulty curve
Updated Abraham boss fight
Voiceovers, lore & cinematics
In-game communications
More special weapons, map specific
Improved weapon animation
Improved player animation
Primary melee weapons
Advanced mouse sensitivity options
Lobby code invite system
Improved music and ambient sounds
Progressive advances on weapons
Localisation
IN CONSIDERATION FOR EARLY ACCESS
Mod workshop
Prestige system
Twitch drops
More base weapons
Miracle pause (solo only)
Character outfits
Feedback for applying settings
Advanced controller mapping
Smoother settings
1200x800 Steam Desk resolution
IN CONSIDERATION FOR 1.0
Modded maps
Miracles setup/planning in Lobby
VR support
Round leaderboards
Joining running matches
In-game Social / Pre-game hub
OPTIMISATION
We've made significant progress on the optimisation since the Early Access release just a few weeks ago and this will only get better with time. We've held many internal QA and community feedback rounds and believe that, although we know more optimisation will always be worked on, we can now focus a little more on bringing you the content & feature updates we've been promising.
Stay tuned as we drop some sneak peeks very soon!
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT Want to support the game? Steam reviews are easily the biggest way you can contribute to supporting the game right now. We appreciate any and all Steam reviews!
Have any more feature suggestions? Comment below or join the Discord forum to submit a request!
The devs have been busy with this latest update that continues to improve performance throughout the game. Eagle eyed players here on Steam and over in our Discord will have spotted this update going live Friday evening and since then, the team have continued to listen to your feedback and implement updates ready for our next update!
The devs are listening...
The support from the community has been overwhelming and we want you to know that we have been listening, recording, and [where necessary] taking action on all your feedback and reviews since the initial beta launch. We will follow up in a separate post letting you know in detail all of the features we are working on or will be working on based off of the communities requests. Diolch yn fawr, thank you!
Bug Fixes & Optimisations
- Improved Performance of Shader Prewarming - Improved performance issue caused by creating animators for unpooled NPCs - Fixed performance issue caused by the Thunder Bomb miracle - Added Damage Done statistic to Scoreboard - Fixed Floating Combat Text showing incorrect numbers when Insta-Kill is active - Fixed Incorrect Position for Aiming Down Sight of "Thunderbolt" - Fixed an issue when using the Auto-aim miracle and aiming at Damageable Object - Fixed an issue that caused the game to take too long to launch the first time - Rearranged Play Menu - Further Optimization to the Cursed Lands of Lavernock level - Fixed an issue where Lucky couldn't spawn a Tier 5 weapon - Fixed an issue where if Lucky spawned the same weapon of a higher tier as the one in your holstered slot it wouldn't upgrade when interacting - Fixed a CPU spike caused by looking at anything that will make the Interact UI Font appear for the first time
Once again, we'd like to invite everyone over to our Discord channel to chat with the devs and the community, and also please do leave the game a review over on the Steam page which supports our Early Access Beta journey!
The devs have been busy with this latest update that continues to improve performance throughout the game. Eagle eyed players here on Steam and over in our Discord will have spotted this update going live Friday evening and since then, the team have continued to listen to your feedback and implement updates ready for our next update!
Bug Fixes & Optimisations
- Improved performance when shooting weapons - Improved performance when a lot of enemies are in the level - Improved performance when enemies are surrounding a player - Improved performance of spawning impact decals & particles for the first time - Improved physics performance - Fixed Back button not working in Miracles Menu - Fixed an error that caused an enemy to spawn incorrectly - Fixed an issue with the Mariner Beam appearing incorrectly - Fixed an issue that caused LODs to pop out sooner at higher Field of View - Lowered the wave enemy stuck timer - Limited sounds from AI playing beyond certain distances - Fixed a rare error in NPC animation set initialization - Identified a performance issue with the lightning bomb miracle
This is just the start of many patches to come for both bug fixes, optimisations and rolling out new content. Please see our roadmap for a general guide to what's to come and we will soon be releasing a more detailed roadmap of what's coming very soon!
Once again, we'd like to invite everyone over to our Discord channel to chat with the devs and the community, and also please do leave the game a review over on the Steam page which supports our Early Access Beta journey!
Everyone's favourite villain has had a cute and cuddly makeover all thanks to Makeship! Complete with bowler hat and pocket watch, this plush is literally made of scare and guilty of a murder or two at Sker Hotel. Speak to the manager of the sker-iest hotel around and pray that you live long enough to check out.
Abraham is featured in Maid of Sker, the critically-acclaimed award-winning British horror and the new co-op horror FPS, Sker Ritual, both from Wales Interactive.
Make Abraham a squishy reality by heading to our Makeship campaign . Order yours now and if funded, this one of a kind plush will always be on hand to give you a SKER.
0.1.3 | Patch Notes - Bug Fixes
Sker Squad,
Thank you all for playing and reviewing the game on Steam. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive but of course we recognise some issues thanks to the community here on Steam and over in our Discord. Our developers have been working hard the past 24 hrs to iron out as much as possible and after updating to patch 0.1.2 we have also now released Patch 0.1.3!
Bug Fixes & Optimisations Patch 0.1.2
- Improved the performance impact of multiple transparent effects (impacts/miracles/torches etc) - Fixed one of the Menu Music unlockables incorrectly locking - Improved performance impact of Audio Sources with Audio Occlusion - Fixed an issue causing Abraham to get stuck and not attack - Fixed an issue where the Lamb-baah-ghini achievement would unlock incorrectly - Improved performance of terrain - Fixed several instances of enemies that come out in unaccessed areas - Lowered XP Needed per level - Potentially fixed an issue causing players to get stuck in the environment when entering Ghost Mode - Fixed an instance causing the Lamb not reach its destination - Increased Max Upgrade Tier to 5 - Increased the cap for Revive Token to 150000 from 15000 - Increased the amount of sounds that can play at one time - Identified issue causing mouse input lag (will be addressed on the next update) - Fixed an issue causing the game to take a while shutdown - Increased spawn rate of entrails by 10% - Corrected typo in one of the achievements - Identified a major performance issue caused by G-Sync Monitors and playing in Windowed mode
Bug Fixes & Optimisations 0.1.3
- Widescreen support (initial implementation, some menu backgrounds will need to be updated for it) - Fixed Small Interactable indicators not appearing unless you're looking at an Interactable objects - Improved the performance of a lot of particles - Fixed Tier 5 Weapon Cost - Fixed a bug that caused the game to break if an enemy with a Damage over time effect
This is just the start of many patches to come for both bug fixes, optimisations and rolling out new content. Please see our roadmap for a general guide to what's to come but we will be releasing a more detailed roadmap of what's coming very soon!
Once again, we'd like to invite everyone over to our Discord channel to chat with the devs and the community, and also please do leave the game a review over on the Steam page which supports our Early Access Beta journey!
Thank you all for playing and reviewing the game on Steam. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive but of course we recognise some issues thanks to the community here on Steam and over in our Discord. Our developers have been working hard the past 24 hrs to iron out as much as possible and have now released Patch 0.1.1!
Bug Fixes & Optimisations
- Fixed Profile Negative XP Bug - Fixed Potential Issue when Spawning Certain Items Online - Fixed a bug where having too many friends was causing performance issues - Fixed a bug where friend updates were causing performance issues - Fixed an issue where Buffs would cause an error - Fixed a lot errors caused by null references - Fixed an issue where being hit would cause an error - Added more text to disconnect reasons to help diagnose problems - Added a command line to enable more debug logging to help diagnose problems - Identified a performance issue caused by too much Audio playing - Identified a performance issue caused by lag compensation colliders - Fixed an issue found in matchmaking - Fixed an issue where enemies were spawning in wrong - Fixed issue where the game doesn't end if the last player with a Life Token exits and the others are in ghost mode without a Life Token - Identified cause of game hanging when it tries to quit
This is just the start of many patches to come for both bug fixes, optimisations and rolling out new content. Please see our roadmap for a general guide to what's to come but we will be releasing a more detailed roadmap of what's coming very soon!
Once again, we'd like to invite everyone over to our Discord channel to chat with the devs and the community, and also please do leave the game a review over on the Steam page which supports our Early Access Beta journey!
Calling all inhabitants of Sker Island! The gates to the Sker Ritual Early Access are open for all who dare enter on October 6th. We're proud to reveal our roadmap for the beta development which we intend to complete by April 2023. By the end of this announcement, you'll know what to expect on launch followed by every 'Episode' update until the 1.0 launch.
What to expect on launch:
Episode One; the very first map 'Cursed Lands of Lavernock' is near completion. The map will feature all objectives, trials and a boss fight with the only major feature missing being some of our top secret Easter Eggs.
Sker Pass; a completely free cosmetic reward system with absolutely no premium pass option, just like they used to make 'em. The Sker Pass will launch with 50 free items (including masks, animated menu backgrounds, player icons, menu music, weapon charms and more) and each Episode update will offer 25 new items to unlock.
Discounted Full Game; we asked our community [including Discord members] how much they would pay for the game after having played the Alpha demo and the results were more than we were expecting. As we would like to encourage more people to play the game we decided that for Early Access, Sker Ritual will launch with a base price of $14.99 / £11.39 / €12,49 (early adopters keep an eye out in October) which will be raised for the 1.0 launch.
Additional DLC; optional bundles of themed cosmetic items will be available to purchase on the Steam store for $3.99 / £2.89 / €3.29. These are purely cosmetic to show off in-game.
Languages; the initial launch will feature English only however, we are already working on the localisation for several other languages which we will implement as soon as possible. Want your language in the game? Let us know!
So much more! So you want to know more? Well it just so happens our dev team are lurking in the official Discord server. If you need even more specifics, just ask.
What to expect with every Episode update:
An Episode will be a new map update with the added bonus of some Sker story (with some voice acting) that follows on from the events of Maid of Sker. There's been some confusion in the community about whether the game will feature a separate Story Mode and to answer that, it will not. Sker Ritual is a round-based co-op FPS and is not a replacement for a [hypothetical] Maid of Sker 2.
Each Episode will add tons of new content including new maps, Elites, Bosses, objectives, trials, easter eggs and weapons. Plus you'll get major gameplay updates on the Miracles system, an in-game communication system and so much more. Our update schedule is as follows:
October: The Cursed Lands of Lavernock December: The Ashes of Sker Hotel February: Sewers of the Dead April: Deadly Lover's Fortress
