The Past Within is out now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515210/The_Past_Within?snr=1_2108_9__2107
Join our Discord!
The Past Within
š“ Live Now: MemoryCubeRecording_03152
The Past Within is out now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515210/The_Past_Within?snr=1_2108_9__2107
Join our Discord!
The Past Within - Update 7.3.0.0
We've heard rumours again about the MemoryCube_recording_03152 being broadcast today at 17:00 CET on our Youtube channel and Steam page. Are you ready to start searching for the 4th scroll?
In case you do run into any issues, please reach out to us on our Discord help channel. It's the best place to receive help and the quickest way for us to get started on a fix!
Patch Notes 7.3.0.0
- Fixed soup related save game issues in Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed paintings not being clickable in Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed setting time not progressing the game in Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed crash after blood pump in Chapter 2 The Past
One week after release + 40% Launch discount is extended š
Thank you so much for your massive support for The Past Within this week! We are honored to read so many amazing reviews from our fans trying out our first co-op experience, it truly means a lot! We also received some viable feedback from you as well, especially about the length of the game. We can completely understand if the game can feel too short, or the experience may not be something for you, or perhaps you still prefer single player.
Our team put 2.5 years of blood, sweat and tears (not to be confused with the in-game substances) into this project to create something new and exciting. When we started a little prototype in 3D, with a few 2D elements (looking into a shoebox), we had no idea what the game could or would become. We kept on iterating and decided to keep on pushing even when it became really hard and we almost pulled the plug out of the project. Luckily the first beta test of the co-op mechanism gave us the confidence to move forward and challenge ourselves in many ways: we had to move from Flash to Unity, we had to transform our distinctive 2D style into 3D style and, yes, also learn to create co-op puzzles for the first time ever. Keep in mind that we, as developers, also need to go out of our comfort zone from time to time to create the new things. Feel free to read more background info about the development in our devlogs or in our community interview. And this 2.5 years we didn't sit still; soon a new metro will arrive and it comes in sooner as you think!
We are very proud of what The Past Within became and in case you didn't try it yet... we hope you will take the chance to experience this game with a friend, family, colleague or even a stranger (feel free to join our Discord.gg/rustylake). We hope it brings a smile to your face and you both will have have a great (and hopefully special) experience together, like we saw on many occasions during the countless play test sessions. We extended our 40% launch discount with one more week, so now it is the perfect time!
As always, thank you so much for your support and letās make some (more) memories!
Rusty Lake Team
A few extra things:
- We are working on new trading cards, stay tuned!
- We have a little contest on social media to win an exclusive The Past Within t-shirt.
- Make sure to keep an eye on mysterious broadcasts on our Steam page and Youtube!
MemoryCubeRecording_02932
The Past Within is out now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515210/The_Past_Within?snr=1_2108_9__2107
Join our Discord!
The Past Within - Update 7.2.1.0
Before we get to the actual patch notes, we've heard rumors about the MemoryCube_recording_02932 being broadcasted tomorrow at 16:00 CET on our Youtube channel and Steam page. Don't forget to miss it if you're craving some more puzzles!
In case you do run into any issues, please reach out to us in the Discord help channel. It's the best place to receive help and the quickest way for us to get started on a fix!
Patch Notes 7.2.1.0
- Fixed not being able to place cold soup in Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed smoke not going away in Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed 3rd fuse not showing up in Chapter 1 The Future
- Fixed no matches in Chapter 2 The Future
- Fixed crash after pump puzzle in Chapter 2 The Past
- Fixed not able to rotate the cubes in 3D
The Past Within - Patch Notes 7.1.0.0
If you havenāt left a review yet, please consider taking a moment to share your experience with us. We couldnāt do this without your invaluable help!
Oh and if youāve been wondering whatās going on with those mysterious broadcasts on Steam and Youtube, a lot of people have been puzzling together with the contents of these videos in our Discord! If youāre curious to learn more or get involved with the theory-crafting, we hope to see you there soon.
Patch Notes 7.1.0.0
- Laptops with touch screens are now supported
- Low Quality is now supporting more low-end devices
- Fixed clock snapping back to certain hours Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed stuck peek hole sliders Chapter 1 The Future
- Fixed crash when loading the next chapter
- Fixed crash after red emergency lever Chapter 1 The Future
The Past Within - Patch update
If you havenāt left a review yet, please consider taking a moment to share your experience with us. We couldnāt do this without your invaluable help!
Oh and if youāve been wondering whatās going on with those mysterious broadcasts on Steam and Youtube, a lot of people have been puzzling together with the contents of these videos in our Discord! If youāre curious to learn more or get involved with the theory-crafting, we hope to see you there soon.
Patch Notes 7.1.0.0
- Laptops with touch screens are now supported
- Low Quality is now supporting more low-end devices
- Fixed clock snapping back to certain hours Chapter 1 The Past
- Fixed stuck peek hole sliders Chapter 1 The Future
- Fixed crash when loading the next chapter
- Fixed crash after red emergency lever Chapter 1 The Future
MemoryCube_recording_02715
The Past Within is out now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515210/The_Past_Within?snr=1_2108_9__2107
Join our Discord.
š¦ THE PAST WITHIN IS OUT NOW! š
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515210/The_Past_Within/
The Past Within is the new co-op experience from Rusty Lake! Play together with someone you deem trustworthy: one in The Past, the other in The Future. Observe and communicate what you see around you. Solve the puzzles and uncover Albert Vanderboomās plan.
The Past Within is a co-op-only game. Both players will need a copy of the game and a way to communicate with each other. Play together with a friend, or find a partner on our official Discord.
ā-
We are beyond excited to finally share The Past Within, our new exciting co-op experience, with all of you!
The development of the game has been an amazing journey of over 2,5 years that lead us to this point. It all started with a simple shoe box idea that turned out to become quite the unique co-op experience which - in our opinion - is the closest weāve ever gotten to creating a real-life escape room!
We are incredibly proud that we made it through all the hurdles and can finally share this unique co-op experience with you all. Many of you are probably already familiar with our devlogs where we shared the struggles we had to overcome for this project to come to life: our first 3D project, switching from Flash to Unity, and above all creating our first co-op puzzle game!
And we couldnāt have done it without the incredible team behind this project. For The Past Within we had to grow our very small team to more than 25 people that have been working relentlessly behind the scenes. All of those people are listed in our credits, so please take a moment to appreciate all of them after finishing the game. In particular, we want to thank our core development team Luuk Waarbroek & Martijn van Buul for their amazing effort in overcoming all the struggles we faced along the way. Our 3D artist Bart Wiltenburg and 2D artist Maarten Pelders both of whom masterfully helped transform our distinctive 2D style into 3D. The soundtrack of the game unsurprisingly turned out to be once again a masterpiece under Victorās capable hands, despite all the difficulties of co-op. And wow can we talk about the sound design from Jorick & Gilliam of Driftwood audio? Their work elevated this project to new heights beyond everything we could have hoped for.
From our community Manager Andreea to our Q&A team Ruben & Bart, all the amazing help from our brilliant translators that brought this experience to more than 22 languages, our beloved Discord mods and of course the hundreds of beta testing couples - thank you all so much for all your hard work and effort!
Most of all, we want to thank all of you for your ongoing support! Itās been quite a while since weāve released anything new, and The Past Within is definitely something new and different compared to anything weāve made so far! And while we understand it wonāt be for everyone in our community, we hope that, over time, you can give it a try with someone you think will enjoy sharing this experience with you! And to everyone who is excited to play: Are you ā¬#TeamPast or šØ#TeamFuture?
Together, let's make some memories! š
Ps.
A mysterious broadcast might come up again, make sure to keep an eye out!
Q&A with Rusty Lake about The Past Within - Devlog 7
Q&A with Rusty Lake
First of all, thank you all so much for taking the time to send us so many awesome questions! It was very hard to only pick some of them as, unfortunately, time did not allow us to go through all of them. This time we decided to stick mostly to The Past Within related questions. But we surely plan to do this more often! First a little introduction in case you are new to The Lake:
About Rusty Lake
Rusty Lake is an indie game studio based in Amsterdam, founded by Robin Ras & Maarten Looise. Since 2015, we have developed 15 surrealistic point-and-click adventure games in the Rusty Lake Universe. The story of all these games are intertwined and every instalment reveals more about the Rusty Lake mysteries.
We have released the following games on PC and mobile: Cube Escape Collection (bundle of our 9 Cube Escape episodes), a free remake of Samsara Room and four premium games: Rusty Lake Hotel, Rusty Lake: Roots, Rusty Lake Paradise and The White Door. The Past Within is our first co-op experience and will be released tomorrow, November 2nd, on Steam, Itch.io, Android and iOS.
A community interview:
1 realcreativesmol @instagram - I'm curious to know where the idea for a co-op adventure in this style came from? Was it more appropriate for the story in this game? Did it make the experience more enjoyable?
Creating The Past Within was a long and difficult journey, a story weāve also been sharing in our devlogs. It all started with what we called the shoebox idea. We created a 3D puzzle box with a peephole through which you could see a classical 2D room. Back then, the project was still intended to be a single-player experience. But the more we playtested the game, the more it became clear it was way more interesting to separate these worlds and let one player control the inside of the cube (a 2D room like Cube Escape) and the other player the outside of the cube (a 3D puzzle box). As soon as we changed the experience and tried it with two players, we knew we were onto something new and exciting. For the first time, we saw two fans enjoy communicating and puzzling together while having different perspectives, and for them it came very close to a real-life escape room experience.
2 sabiaqueosabiasabiaassobiar @instagram - What engine was used to develop the game? What was the hardest part of development? Did you guys ever had to scrap the whole game and start again from scratch during development?
We used the Unity engine to develop The Past Within. It was a huge step for us because weāve made all our previous titles in Flash. Our core development team, Luuk and Martijn, had to build everything from scratch while also facing the big hurdle of bringing our distinctive 2D art style into 3D for the first time. Once we finally tackled that issue we made the very difficult decision to change the whole concept to co-op, which basically meant we had to, once again, start from scratch - or close to it, as we still had the ground base to make the game what it is now.
3 hankatwojafanka @instagram - Where there some things that surprised you during development? Did you underestimate any aspects of making a coop experience? š
The biggest surprise was that we had to test every puzzle we made with two players. We probably made hundreds of puzzles, but since every puzzle has to be communicated between two players, we also had to test it with two people, preferably two new ones each time. This was not easy, especially during the Covid lockdowns.
4 rosti_catcat @instagram - How do you test the riddles and how do you know that the riddles you invented will be difficult but not too much ?
It took us quite some time and effort to test the puzzles. Because of the co-op structure and the importance of communication between the two players, we needed new playtesters every time for each new version of a puzzle. Some puzzles we changed maybe 20 times, with small or big alterations in every new version. Sometimes it turned out to be too easy, sometimes it turned out to be too hard. But we feel like we eventually found a nice balance.
5 mativallejos97 @instagram- Is this a sequel or prequel? š
We would say itās more a spin-off story to Rusty Lake: Roots, not exactly a sequel or a prequel. You will definitely recognize quite some elements from Roots, but you will enjoy a completely new story with a new āco-opā gameplay mechanism!
6 anxka.croxx @instagram - im curious, where did the idea of the storyline of Albert Vanderboon come from? is it based of personal experiences or the life of someone you know/read about? was it completely made up? what were your influences? i would love to know!!!!!
In our opinion, Albert was one of the most interesting characters from Rusty Lake Roots. He is evil, but also a sad and tragic person. Weāve been meaning to return to this character for quite some time, plus he seems to also be a fan-favourite. Next to him, his daughter Rose is quite fascinating as well, and her story has an open ending in Rusty Lake Roots. So we decided to focus on their father-daughter relationship for the narrative of The Past Within. Despite the narrative branching out from Roots, people that haven't yet played Roots can still understand their story. Some of it at least, because we believe their story is still quite complex.
7- Vicky Soria @twitter- Do you have like a "Rusty Lake bible" to keep track of the stories and how things work in its universe? If so, is there more to what we know about it so far? š
When we started working on Rusty Lake, with āSeasonsā and āThe Lakeā, we had clear ideas about the general themes of Rusty Lake: The memories, the cubes, the lake, and the corrupted souls. But of course, with every game, the universe expanded, so we began writing down ideas and building a little ābibleā which over time became not so little anymore. And we are happy to see that fans are also helping to document the Rusty Lake bible on the Rusty Lake fandom pages for example. Weāre definitely holding on to some untold stories that we hope to bring to life in the future. So yes, there is absolutely more than you know so far!
8 stopjenny @instagram - I would love to know what Victor's creative process looks like when composing music for Rusty Lake?š¹ I'm a big fan of the games & the music, can't wait for the release!!
Hi there, here is a direct message from Victor to answer your question: I am fortunate to get involved by Rusty Lake / Robin and Maarten from the creative starting point of every game. Talking and brainstorming about the storylines, characters and locations helps me to give shape to a main theme. In most cases, I use the main theme as the foundation of the soundtrack, and variations and various themes mostly get born out of the main theme, in one way or another! If I need inspiration, I play the main theme and see if some magic will happen :)
There are two recurring challenges for me when composing Rusty Lake games: I want to create catchy and haunting themes and melodies that can be listened at many times over and over again while playing the game and get stuck in your head, but without (ever) getting annoyed by them. Secondly, I need to leave quite some room in the levels for silence and sound effects, so every now and then I need to hold back my wild musical ambitions and keep it small and in the service of the gameplay. I hope you will enjoy my new soundtrack for The Past Within!
9 Troy Happy Game fan @discord - How do you use good voice acting and good sound effects?
For The Past Within, we cooperated with Jorick and Giliam of Driftwood Audio for the first time. All the sound effects are custom-made by them, and most of them are made by hand and recorded in a studio or outdoors. We believe itās a huge step up from our previous games, the sounds are bringing all the items and interactions to life. Like always, Bob Rafferty did the voice acting. Itās getting harder for him to find a new voice every time, but he once again did an excellent job!
10 Hanna Bachta @facebook - How refreshing was it working with a new concept like co-op? Did you like exploring a different format or do you prefer the one you're already familiar with?
We really enjoyed exploring this new concept and it gave us quite some new possibilities for new puzzles. But on the other hand, it was quite difficult to design and it took way more time than usual to test and improve the experience. So our next game will have a more familiar format as we donāt want to have you waiting for another 2 years!
11 Sylwia GojdÅŗ @facebook - What were you striving for when it comes to player interaction? Were you surprised during playtesting by the way some players worked together?
There are huge differences between how players interact, which is fun (and sometimes frustrating to see). Some players are really structured while others are really chaotic. Some are describing everything they see, others totally forget to talk. Some are really patient, others are pushing their partner to hurry up a bit. We were striving for a fun experience for both players, so we tried to balance the 2 worlds in the game as well as possible. We also tried to not have too much distraction in the game, the players should be focused on working together, not on exploring the world on their own.
12 Alex @Serogath @twitter - Is there going to be any replay value by playing both sides?
We believe the game can still be interesting to play from the other side because everything you see will be new to you. We also added a āreplay modeā, so that you will not recognize all the solutions to the puzzles from the previous playthrough. The game definitely wonāt be the same when you play it for a second time.
13 bellla.p @instagram - Iāve always wondered, is there a reason matches are featured in each game? (As an item to pick up/use)
Without matches, Rusty Lake wouldnāt exist! Ps. we cannot promise anything but The Past Within might contain matches!
The Past Within is a co-op-only adventure and comes out tomorrow at 13:00 CET/08:00 PDT and you will be able to play the game cross-platform on iOS and Android (and soon Switch). Please be aware that both players need to own a copy of the game in order to play. Itās a premium game and will cost around ā¬/$ 5,99 on Steam (but with a 40% discount in the first week)!
If you are not sure this is a game for you; please check out our demo: you can still download it here on the Steam or download it on Mobile! Also, you can find a partner or a free voice channel on our Discord! You are more than welcome to join š
Please enjoy and letās make some memories!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1515210/The_Past_Within/