Alright, we're going to actually start posting some updates now!
A lot of the time of recent has been spent moving the project from unity's built in render pipeline to the HDRP pipeline which will give us much more control over lighting, which realistically for a horror game is a critical aspect.
Here some screenshots of this weeks work; and I promise we'll keep you updated a lot more now we can refocus 100% on the games development! Sarah has been scouting out more English props to make and we've got the production pipeline sorted now. Who said game dev was easy?.. oh right, no one.
Demo Patch 1.1 / Thanks to Your Feedback
Demo 1.1 Patch Notes --------------------
We decided to do a quick update today after reading player feedback. We can't act on every bit of feedback for the demo as we're working hard on the main game, but we're hoping this fixes a few of the larger problems that people have been having.
A big thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We're offering a chance to win a copy of the game AND money in Steam vouchers for everyone who plays the demo and provides us feedback in January. We'll be providing a more in depth response to the feedback received towards the end of the month.
- Added the ability to rebind the run and reload keys for keyboards and controllers - Set 'R' as the default gun reload key - Added tutorial messages for using weapons and items - Added UI for the gun showing bullets in the magazine and total amount of bullets - Fixed some minor graphical problems in the countryside park - Fixed a bug where the map wouldn't load back if you quit the game and reloaded - If Sam opens inventory near a wall it now gives a gentle nudge to stop visual clipping
If you've not downloaded the demo yet, give it a try now!
We've had our demo out for a few weeks now and we've received an overwealming number of downloads - so thank you for that. To be able to shape the game going forward and ensure the final release meets your expectations we're now looking for feedback from those who have played the demo.
As a small team we're going to be using this feedback to direct our resources and ensure we make a game we can be proud of. If you've not played the demo yet please do so before completing the survey form.
We are looking for feedback on the Winter Demo if you've previously played the halloween demo please ensure you've tried the Winter Demo before submitting feedback.
Those who have played the demo and completed this form will be entered into a competition to win 1 of £100 Steam vouchers, and 2x £50 vouchers. The first 50 responses will also receive the full game when released for free. We're also offering a heartfelt thanks which as we all know is pretty much the most valuable thing in the universe, right?
Already provided feedback? No problem - we'll enter you into the draw automatically but equally feel free to submit the survey response too.
The Summerford Winter Demo is now available on Steam for testing! We’ve added and overhauled some of the major systems based on feedback from players in the Steam Autumn festival.
Please keep in mind this is a test demo - it's not the finished, final product, but it is far closer to our final vision, and has been refined based on a ton of feedback from users on Steam and Discord.
If you encounter bugs or just want to provide feedback, it would be amazing if you could let us know on our Bug Tracker or on our Discord. We’ll only be updating the demo to fix major problems, but any feedback and ideas still have plenty of time for us to implement into the main game.
Here’s a few of the changes in the Winter Demo:
Combat System
Summerford now has a proper combat element! Alongside her original knife for use in emergencies, Sam now has a gun that she can equip, and she can find health and ammo throughout the world. There will be more enemies, weapons and items in the finished game.
For now, we’ve tried to balance the combat as best we can, though you may find it too easy or too difficult. Just like in other classic survival horrors, the game should be about avoiding combat where possible, conserving and exploring for items and ammo to stay alive. We hope to introduce difficulty levels in the final release.
Controls
We’ve done some tweaks to the overall controls, including making Sam slightly faster overall. We’ve set tank controls as the default for keyboard and mouse users and swapped some of the defaults around to make keyboard control much more fluid, though we’d still recommend playing Summerford with a controller. Nearly all the controls in the game are now remappable, too.
UI Overhaul
We’ve overhauled the UI to make it easier to use and more visibly appealing, which includes having all of the game notes, audio logs and items in a single easy to use menu. We’ve also made interactions generally easier to use and see, and made major visual and control changes to the notes system.
Maps
To help players navigate the world, there are now maps for each outside area which you can find as you explore. They track your location and places that you’ve already visited, making navigation around the game world and working out where to go next much easier.
Save / Load System
You can now manually save the game at telephones and telephone boxes in three separate places during the demo. The game also autosaves at the start of a new area.
Camera and Scene Changes
We’ve added around 15 new camera shots and tweaked every single shot in the original demo.
This means Sam no longer becomes too small or gets lost amongst the scenery, and it should be much more obvious where you can and can’t explore.
We’ve also been focusing on a common bug which leads Sam to get stuck on objects in the game world, which should now be vastly improved.
Horror Vibe and Tone
We’ve added a completely new section of the game that was previously not in the demo to give you a better idea of the “vibe” of the full game.
We’ve also made some other tweaks to the atmosphere of the game. Much like the games it’s based on, like Fatal Frame, Rule of Rose or Obscure, it’s designed more as an atmospheric adventure game with a horror theme than a pure ‘jump scare’ horror game.
There’s still some work to do on the overall tone of Sam’s character, who we know can come across as a little unphased by the whole situation, but we still want to maintain an adventure game level of personality rather than having our main character being confused and scared about literally everything she sees.
Performance Increases
Overall the game is running faster on the lower end systems. We think an i5/1060/8GB system will run the demo well, and we hope to be able to make many more improvements for the final release next year.
Summerford Demo: What’s Next?
So the demo is over! We’ve had a great time getting the game out to people, and we've had a lot of new wishlists and some great feedback. It's also fair to say some of the feedback has been mixed, and we've still got lots of development to do!
Expectations
Given the pure amount of demo downloads, and the amount of feedback we’ve had in general, it feels like there’s been a lot of interest in the game and loads of people adding us to their wishlists. We've also had positive comments on the visuals and atmosphere of the game, which is great as this is a part we've both spent the longest on in terms of creating content, and probably was our biggest worry as we have only a single artist to make a fairly complex game.
However, in terms of the games mechanics, It’s clear people were expecting something more complete and polished, and we didn’t have time to provide that experience. This demo was the first time the game had ever been installed on a computer not owned by one of us, so we knew there would be plenty of technical and gameplay issues, but the feedback has been a massive eye opener, too.
We’ve found at normal conventions, people don’t expect to be playing some close to finished game. With the Steam festival, people were expecting a proper slice of the full experience and we were being displayed next to more complete, and polished games.
That’s our fault: we weren't really expecting to go to any shows this year, for obvious reasons, so we haven’t really been developing the game with a demo in mind.
That meant that rather than having 100% of our systems and mechanics done for a small section of the game, we actually have a large section of the games levels complete but none of our systems where we want them. Some of our systems is working at 50% or less, and some are completely missing.
I would say to those of you who played or who are reading the feedback from others: don’t give up on us yet! We were web developers before becoming game developers, and interaction and improvement is in our nature.
Photographic evidence that at least one of three of us are working
Improvements
Rather than vanish for another six months and finish the game and hope for the best, we’re going to try and make major but incremental improvements to all our systems and get them out in front of anyone who is interested in helping us shape Summerford. We may or may not go as far as Early Access, but for the time being consider our plan to be a free early access for anyone who wants in.
The first of these improvements will be finished just before Halloween in a demo that will be available to anyone who gets in touch via Steam, Discord or Twitter.
It’s a bit early to say exactly what will get into the Halloween demo, but our plan is to release an upgraded version of the demo that is much closer to the final Summerford experience.
The changes will be partly based on what we simply didn’t have time to add or polish, and partly based on all the excellent feedback we’ve had on the demo. If someone has written something about the game, you can be assured we’ve taken it to heart and on board.
That means we’ll be looking at the following at a minimum, and perhaps even more if we get a chance:
Control enhancements to both tank and alternative controls, including remapping
Closer and more numerous cameras that should feel both more intimate and easier to navigate through
A larger focus on combat
A general increase in our horror and atmosphere through both additional elements and a more complete sound mix
Improved cinematic cameras for cut-scenes
Big UI and QOL improvements and polish in how you interact with the world
We already started working on these during the demo and patched the game ten times with fairly large updates during the last week, so we’re starting from a good place, and we’d more than welcome your opinion as we develop either here on the Steam forums, on Twitter, or over on our Discord.
We can’t promise the Halloween update is going to fix everything and be as good as the finished version, but we think it will be much closer.
After that, it’s likely we’ll start working towards applying everything to the first half of the game, get that in a great place and come back to the community for more feedback, and continue doing that until we have a game we are proud of.
This may mean the game takes a few more months to release, but if it means we release something worth playing, then we think it'll be time well spent.
Demo Improvements Overview
Join us for a live stream where the team (Rob, Dan and Sarah) will be going through the changes we've made in the demo, why we've made them and how your feedback has helped shape the product
We're also going to have a Q&A section so if you have any questions or comments you want to put to us live then do feel free to do so!
Summerford Dev Log #12 - Narrative & Inspiration
Demos are hard. Demos for narrative games are especially hard!
As we speak, we're working on the script of the Summerford Demo. It’s presented all sorts of interesting problems, not least the age old classic of how you make a demo of a narrative game that shows off the narrative elements without ruining it.
We've gotta capture a vibe that both sells the experience without selling too much of it. It has to do that in a relatively short period of time and in a market and festival with a lot of noise.
It feels the horror genre seems to have become more and more polarised in recent years in the way we tell stories.
Either they trend towards the supernatural and jump-scare focused games, or they’re labeled as psychological - a term which has become synonymous with characters having and dealing with various levels of off-screen abuse and trauma.
Remember the ORIGINAL Silent Hill? How the cult in Silent Hill 1 was... just a cult? And how it still managed to tackle fear on a more personal level than most every other game before it?
It’s still labelled as physiological, and I don't want to sell it short, but it’s actually played fairly straight, and it works so well.
Now, I could say that Summerford is darker and more serious than Resident Evil but not as relentless or oppressive as Manhunt. I could say our physiological aspect takes more inspiration from System Shock and Pathologic than it’ll take from Harry Mason or James Sunderland.
But these sort of X meets Y comparisons are more helpful for press releases than real human communication.
Hopefully over the next couple of weeks the narrative of the demo will solidify into something that sells our vibe in a way that just listing other franchises cannot do.
The other big thing we’re working on right now is that the writing is only a part of telling an interactive story.
With a single artist, we've got to work around the fact that Summerford has big limits in terms of facial expression and overall animation budget. Time spent on animation is time not spent on the world, and vice-versa. Voice acting, which is incoming, should hopefully go a long way here!
23 working days out though and it feels like things are starting to convalesce a little! In the meantime, you can set a reminder for our Livestream on the 9th, and wish-list us on Steam!
Thanks for reading!
Join the Summerford Devs Live on Stream on October 9th
Join us Live during the Steam Autumn Festival
Want to hear a team of industry experts provide you with a deep, insightful look at modern game development and the future of the horror genre?
Us too, that would probably be really helpful!
But while we look for those experts, you can always come and hang out with us on October 9th at Friday 8pm BST / 7PM GMT / 3PM EST / 12PM PST
We're first time developers making a horror game that builds off the classics without just copying them wholesale. We haven't done a livestream before, or a public demo for that matter, but we did once strap a VR backpack to one of our old team members for a YouTube video, if that counts.
We'll be playing through our festival demo, probably apologizing a lot, and chatting about some our design decisions. If you have any questions, we'll be very happy to be answering those too. It'll be fun, we promise.
Links to the Stream will follow closer to the event!
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Summerford Dev Log #11 - Dinosaurs & Ferris Wheels
Welcome Back!
We’re finally wrapping up act 2 of Summerford now! We’re running slightly behind where we hoped to be at this stage, but every area in this section of the game has ended up being a little larger than we had expected.
One thing that has always been our mind with Summerford is creating areas that are a little more unique than just abandoned houses, mansions and hospitals.
We also wanted to set as much of the game as possible outside, but avoid falling into the trap of endless woods, trees and areas not feeling distinct or memorable. With only one artist, that’s certainly been a challenge, but it’s good to see all these areas coming together.
Dream Valley
Dream Valley is a “Theme Park” - though perhaps not like ones you’ve seen in other games. It’s a “local” theme park, which although far fewer in number in England now, used to be much more common. These parks didn’t have the budget or scale of national parks, but offered more family focused rides and “cheap and cheerful”entertainment. Players will be exploring the whole of main park including the Summerford Pier, and interacting with some of the attractions at the park.
Estuary Island
A different type of park, Estuary Island is a typical English tourist destination: a ruined castle grounds turned into a park in the victorian era, struggling to stay relevant to modern families. Recently, the park purchased a selection of life-sized, fibreglass dinosaurs and, before the infection, were hoping that the draw of their new attractions would help them compete with the newly built theme park.
These destinations are some of the most intricate and dense locations in the game so far, and you’ll be able to complete them in any order you want, providing you’ve solved the right puzzles!
What’s Next?
We’ve essentially got three large chunks of work before we’re done:
The first is bug fixing and polishing what we have. Although not the most glamorous part of game design, it enables us to be in a healthy state to move to the final portion of the game.
Second is the third act itself, which will include the final sections of the game and the Summerford Power Plant. This should be around as large as act 1 in terms of play time, and hopefully in terms of the time it takes to create, as well.
Finally, we’ve got to develop our combat system and integrate that into everything we’ve made so far, which is obviously a big piece of work for any survival horror game.
We’re also committed to being more engaged with the community. As we move closer to launch, we’ll be tweeting and blogging more often and we’ll also be looking for testers and feedback on alpha builds by winter.
We do find ourselves getting stuck into the development of the game, so sorry if we vanish for a few weeks at a time! We promise we’re just really into what we’re creating!
Summerford Dev Log #10 - Modernising Survival Horror
Last week we spoke about some of the things that make Summerford a “survival horror” game, but even when making a game inspired by the “classics”, it’s hard to deny game design has moved on since Alone in the Dark released in 1992 (!)
So what common pitfalls of the genre are we trying to avoid?
Puzzle Logic
Puzzles are a big part of a survival horror title. They need to be hard enough that solving them feels like an achievement, but not so difficult that they ruin the pacing and tension you’ve created.
We have our own mostly-unwritten rules for all of our puzzles.
Firstly, we don’t ever want to repeat the same puzzle twice.
Secondly, all our puzzles must be solvable with information provided within the game (So no puzzles that require a knowledge of Chess, to use a very common genre example).
Thirdly, our puzzles need to be integrated well into the game world. We all know that survival horror tends to stretch the boundaries of suspended disbelief and we think that's absolutely a part of their charm, but while we aren't constrained to the logic of the real world, we want every puzzle to make sense in the world of Summerford.
It's logical to find money in tills, though somewhat less logical nobody would have nicked it yet.
The “Master of Unlocking” Problem
One common trap older survival horrors fall into is relying too heavily on a mechanic of opening locked doors.
It’s a great crutch for design as it lets you gate off areas easily, control progression and give the player a quick and understandable reward. The problem is, while this works in the moment, this often isn’t a very rewarding long-term player experience as it offers zero player input or choice.
Now, we don’t think the system is inherently bad, and Summerford isn’t immune to locked doors. We just think it can get tiring if it becomes the main focus of the game. Running between 10 unlocked doors in a corridor and hoping a key might work on one of them may have been an acceptable experience twenty years ago; now it’s just tedious.
Here we use un-coupling a lorry trailer as a way to thematically enhance a simple "unlocking" puzzle
One method of tackling this problem is simply to make less locked doors. Summerford is set in multiple locations including several large outdoor sections rather than a single indoor environment, so we have a lack of doors overall compared to games set entirely inside.
You’ll also never have to manually “use” keys you own. And all our keys are well labelled. Find a key for a room in the school? It’ll be obvious it’s for the school, and you won’t need to run around the map hoping it’ll work.
Respecting Player Time
Tying all of this up neatly is our final philosophy for creating a modern survival horror - respecting the players time. This is more important in horror than any other genre, because maintaining fear, tension and atmosphere is impossible if you get your pacing wrong.
The loop of exploring, solving puzzles, combat and managing resources has to be consistent, and it has to be constant. Within that loop, there needs to be variation and there needs to be a constant subversion of expectations.
The biggest balancing act of all is “backtracking”, and where and how you implement it into your design. The metroidvania style of opening new areas of the Spencer mansion is one of the things that makes the original Resident Evil such a tightly designed and appealing game.
An evolution of our church bridge shot, a place you can potentially return too a few times in your journey.
It's also a really convenient way for games to entirely miss the point and use backtracking as a way to make a game longer. Avoiding this is something constantly on our mind with our design.
Throughout Summerford, you can unlock shortcuts that will allow the player to navigate around the central area faster. Hopefully this will retain the sense of exploration and discovery from Resident Evil, while avoiding stretches of the game where you’re just waiting to arrive at the next objective.
We’re also working on an old coal mine that runs underneath the village which will allow the player to get to already visited areas much faster, though with a larger amount of risk of injury or loss of resources. After all, nothing convenient should be completely without risk in a horror game.
