We're already in Autumn, but the Autumn sale has just started.
And to celebrate this fine event, Syndrome is 70% off!
Syndrome
Autumn Sale: 70% off
We're already in Autumn, but the Autumn sale has just started.
And to celebrate this fine event, Syndrome is 70% off!
Those Who Remain EGX Trailer
Things are really heating up in Dormont!
You can check it here: https://youtu.be/74XgqwzAQas
https://store.steampowered.com/app/715380/Those_Who_Remain/
Updated Monday (Those Who Remain)
It's Monday, the most hated day of the week... we can't skip Monday, but we can share some updates to try to bring some joy.
We've been posting development updates about our latest game Those Who Remain on our social channels, but most of you probably don't follow us, so here are some screenshots from the last weeks:
Next month we're heading to the Eurogamer Portugal SummerFest show, so if you're in Lisbon, drop by our booth and try the latest version of Those Who Remain.
We're really close to be content complete; the game is about 90% finished.
If you want to get the latest news about the game, upcoming promotions, launch dates and all sort of interesting and useful information, then please subscribe our mailing list:
https://t.co/OIAroBsOsn
Thanks and have a great week!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/715380/Those_Who_Remain/
Those Who Remain - Announcement
We've just announced our latest title, a psychological thriller called Those Who Remain.
It's a psychological thriller that takes place in a typical American town.
It's a game about (bad) choices and its consequences, addressing touching sensitive subjects like infidelity and bullying.
The "typical American town" mentioned above is anything but typical: the whole place has been cursed by a demon, and the only way to survive is by staying in the light.
As if that wasn't enough, there are also strange portals that connect this world to another, similar yet different. Both worlds seem to be a reflection of one another, as actions in one place have repercussions in the other.
It's due later this year, but you can already check the game page and trailer here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/715380
Syndrome VR
As some of you might know, we planned to release Syndrome with VR support.
We believe the setting and gameplay is perfect for a VR game.
But unfortunately we got to some technical obstacles that prevented this from happening, and the idea was dropped.
Our partner Bigmoon Entertainment was working on porting the game to PS4 and Xbox One and decided to try to create a VR version for consoles too. They eventually got into the same obstacles (level design, FPS count, etc) and concluded that it wouldn't be possible to make a full VR port at this time, so they created a VR survival mode, that's now also available for PC.
-Syndrome VR is not the full game in VR. It's an endless survival mode-
So how will this be available on Steam?
The original plan was to release this VR mode in a DLC. But unfortunately there were also some technical difficulties with how Steam works:
"Syndrome VR" contains the full game with some minor changes from Bigmoon Entertainment and the VR survival mode. If this game could be accessed from a DLC, it would overwrite the original Syndrome in your game library.
What we wanted was for you to have both games in your library: "Syndrome" from Camel 101 and "Syndrome VR" from Bigmoon Entertainment, since both versions are slightly different.
But unfortunately this couldn't be done through a DLC.
Our only option was to have "Syndrome VR" from Bigmoon Entertainment as a new game.
Of course it wouldn't be fair for Syndrome owners to have to buy another Syndrome game just to play the VR mode, so after discussing this with our partner Bigmoon Entertainment and Steam, we both decided to offer Syndrome VR free of charge to everyone who's bought Syndrome.
It should be available right now on the game library.
This offer is targeted solely for current owners of Syndrome.
We hope you enjoy the VR survival mode!
Syndrome VR is developed, published and supported by Bigmoon Entertainment. All support enquiries regarding Syndrome VR should be addressed to them.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/579210/Syndrome_VR/
Untitled
Chinese Syndrome
As you probably know, Syndrome has been available in Chinese for a few months now.
But we don't feel like we're been reaching the Chinese community as we should.
As such, we decided to partner with WhisperGames to help us improve localization and community support of the game in China.
The first step was to proofread and improve the game translation. From what we've been told, it wasn't very natural.
Whisper Games helped us improve the translation and proofread all the text.
We've updated the game with this new translation now.
We hope you enjoy it.
Patch 4 - version 1.06f
We've just released an update, containing a number of fixes and improvements:
- Added a new dialog near the ending.
- Fixed the "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free" achievement. It's now possible to pick up all logs and collect the achievement.
(Make sure to pick up the 3 logs on the first level, as it won't be accessible anymore after you leave)
- Fixed an issue where a pool of blood would "disappear"
- Fixed a font substitution issue on the Polish language.
- Fixed displaced maps on Italian and Spanish languages.
- Fixed incorrect deck numbers on the maps, on the Turkish language.
The patch was released for PC. The Mac version will be updated shortly during the next days.
EDIT: The Mac update is now live.
Here's to Summer: 50% off!
Still working? Not on vacations? Daydreaming about the beach?
Well, there are no beaches on Syndrome, only creepy and cold starships.
But the crew members left a lot of pictures of their own vacations. Better than nothing, right?
Syndrome is 50% off, so it's the perfect chance to visit a starship that has no beaches, but pictures of beautiful beaches!
Syndrome and what’s coming
We’ll be posting some blog posts in our Steam games updates.
If you find it interesting and want to know more about what we’re doing, make sure to follow us on Twitter or Facebook
Syndrome was our first survival horror game.
A lot of people enjoyed it, while others didn’t, but I guess that can be said about pretty much every game out there.
Our next game is being planned for quite a while. We’re actually changing the way we create our games.
While Syndrome was being developed, it was played by different groups of people: friends and public at exhibitions and game events. We got great feedback that we used to improve to game.
However, if we really want to increase the quality and balancing of our next title, we need to have more players and more testing sessions.
One of the things that we have in mind is to perform extensive gameplay sessions with a tech school in Lisbon that we’ve partnered with (ETIC).
What makes these sessions complicated to organize, is that a large part of the game has to be done with high quality – art, sounds, balancing – so we can see if we’re getting the mood we want in a particular scene.
Our next game (let’s call it Project X) has been in development for about 6 months.
Although the images that we’ve shown before might point to it being a survival horror game, it isn’t.
It’s a dark adventure focusing on narrative and emotion.
The market is full of horror games, survival games, etc so it’s not feasible anymore to make a survival horror game. We do love the genre, but we also need to make a profit so that we can take care of these annoying tasks like eating, paying bills, etc 😊
So, what’s a dark adventure game?
It’s an adventure with a strong focus on the narrative, where we explore both the character’s and the player’s emotions, and where we give the player choices to advance the narrative in one direction or the other. Which means different choices equals to different end scenarios.
We’re powering the game with high quality scenarios, lighting and creatures, and also VR.
Yes, VR.
When we started Syndrome we were totally confident in getting VR working in the game, and at some point the game was indeed working with the old Oculus DK2.
But Unity was very unstable and we were having a lot of issues like shadows not working in both eyes, for example.
Every new release of Unity would break something else in the game (updating a game engine during development is a bitch) so eventually we dropped VR from the game.
We made a major mistake: getting VR working when a game is already done is not a trivial thing.
There are many situations in the game that don’t work in VR, like interacting with computer consoles, crouching inside the vents, the death sequences, scripted animations, etc
But as you may know Syndrome is coming to PS4 and Xbox One next month, and the game does have VR support.
VR was implemented by our co-development partner Bigmoon Entertainment, but it’s not covering the full game because of the reasons that I explained before.
What this version has is a really fun last man standing mode inside the ship with full VR support.
But moving along to the present, Unity is now stable enough to start the production of a VR title, and this is what we did.
VR obviously has issues specific to that platform, so we decided to split the game builds.
We have the game in two branches, one with VR and one without.
The game framework was prepared in advance, and everything is working quite nicely.
So the screenshot on top is obviously from our “Project X”.
As you can see, light and darkness has a major role in the game, and the balance between both is actually one of the gameplay mechanics.