Howdy folks! We once again hope you are doing well! We're here with our second patch after release, and unlike last time, there's not too much to say about it. With that said! It is worth keeping in mind that when we make adjustments or fixes to levels that might impact saves, the game will auto-restart you at the beginning of the level in order to prevent any game-breaking issues. This was also the case during our early-access version, but with the full release, it's caught some folks off guard, so I thought we might clarify.
We've been keeping our noses to the grindstone, reading reviews, taking in feedback, and we'll continue to do so. Several of the changes present in this and even the prior patch have come in lieu of said feedback.
So with that out of the way! Here are your patch notes!
Tweaks:
Buffed Shredder damage from 20 to 22.
Dash can now be used even when you're standing still.
Reduced cooldown between Punches from 0.1 to 0.08.
Rebalanced Melee Damage to Corpses.
S.O.S. Assassins and Adopted Void Drifters now have a distortion effect when going invisible.
Tweaked Pathfinding of the S.O.S. Assassin, Watcher, and Adopted Void Drifter Enemy Types.
Tweaked S.O.S. Assassin Hologram visuals.
Tweaked Armor quantity dropped from U.S.C. Drones.
Nerfed Watcher Damaging Frequency.
Nerfed Watcher Damage Range.
Tweaked Pathfinding of the "C1L4 - Disposable Danger" Boss.
Nerfed the Health Pool of the "C1L7 - Evanescent Evacuation" Boss.
Added Crusher Warning Light sounds during the Boss Fight in "C1L7 - Evanescent Evacuation."
Added Extra Ammo to "C2L1 - Eastern Evisceration" on Narcolepsy Mode.
Added Respawning Cell Ammo in "C2L2 - Cthonic Crypt."
Made killing balcony U.S.C. Grenadier non mandatory for progress in "C2L2 - Cthonic Crypt."
Tweaked the Position of the "C2L4 - Ethereal Egress" Boss Autosave.
Nerfed the Health Pool of the "C2L4 - Ethereal Egress" Boss.
Nerfed the speed of the "C2L7 - Arche Ascension" Boss's homing projectiles.
Tweaked lighting in "The Heuristic Halls."
Increased Health Drop despawn times from 5 - 7.5 seconds.
Fixes:
Fixed issues with lock-on.
Fixed backing out of the help menu when accessing it from the pause menu.
Fixed looping melee charge sound.
Fixed "press any key" prompt being inaccurate in the main menu.
Fixed "The Heuristic Halls" locations being incorrect when going between profiles during the same session.
Fixed "C1L4 - Disposable Danger" elevator softlock.
Fixed elevator buttons in "C2L7 - Arche Ascension" not being reactivated when they should.
Fixed softlock with Chapter 3 Rotating Puzzle Pillars.
Fixed "C3L7 - Alter Alvus" boss fight autosave.
Fixed an issue when trying to unbind an input.
Enemies should now jitter up and down less, and should no longer randomly play the first frame of their walking animations for one frame while they're standing still.
Fixed Drone armor not despawning.
Fixed "Rough and Tumble" achievement.
Fixed the scaling of the Yellow Key in "C1L2 - Stifled Storage.
Fixed Switches clipping through floor in "C1L1 - Containment Carnage" and "C1l3 - Fragmented Folly."
Known Issues:
Some menus in 'ultrawide' aspect ratios are cut off/ugly. With the changes to how backing out of the pause menu works, these shouldn't lock you into a menu anymore, but better-looking menus will be coming in a later patch.
There's a bug that occasionally causes Ambient Audio/Music to be inaudible.
Once again, thank you to everyone for your support; it means the world. We hope you've been enjoying the game and that you all have a wonderful day! God bless you all!
Viscerafest 1.1 - The Big Nerf
Ahoi folks! We hope this finds you well and that you have been enjoying Viscerafest! We're now coming at you with our very first post-launch patch, and it is kind of a big one! So, for starters, let's talk about the big change!
Two days prior to launch, I was doing a playtest on the game's Extreme Difficulty, this being the difficulty below Nightmare. I've been doing most of my testing on Nightmare, and a lot of our in-house testers played the game on Narcolepsy mode up through to Brutal, so Extreme difficulty hadn't really gotten much love on the testing front. In the midst of playtesting extreme, I was kind of struck by just how similar it felt to Nightmare... to the extent that most of the differences, though in theory were substantial, in practice did not feel so.
Because of this, and because Viscerafest sort of holds something of a meme status regarding its overall difficulty, I have decided to systematically nerf every difficulty below Nightmare. This being done to give the jump between Extreme and Nightmare some meaningful breathing room. I figured this would be a change few would object to, as those who enjoy the game's uh... "Cruelty" (or at least that's how folks describe it to me) will still have that, and the people who don't, well... they should be afforded a bit more headroom now.
In addition to the above, this update should address most of the major bugs experienced by our players so far with the full-release version. We'll be continuing full steam ahead, making further tweaks and improvements to the overall experience and aiming to address any reported issues. A big thank you to everyone who has taken the time necessary to report and work through some of the issues with us! It means the most! And here are your patch notes!!!
Tweaks:
Enemy Damage Values have been nerfed on all difficulties below Nightmare.
Enemy Projectile Speeds have been nerfed on all difficulties below Nightmare.
The Hellbirds health pool has been nerfed from 450 to 300.
Added a guiding light to "Prelude - Intruder Inbound."
Changed the Elder Banshee introduction and how the autosave works, making it much easier to get back into the fight than before.
Tweaked the timing and speeds of the shifting pillars in "C2L4 - Ethereal Egress" during the boss fight.
Shortened the Melee Uppercuts Windup from 0.8 seconds to 0.48 seconds.
UI navigation with a keyboard now respects the spacebar as a confirm key and not just "enter."
Controller aim assist no longer adjusts your pitch when you're close to an enemy.
Controller aim assist is disabled on the Carcosa's Wrath and Pung Cannon due to these weapons usually wanting to be shot off-center of an enemy. (Further weapon-specific tweaks to aim assist may be made in the future)
Pressing the pause button in the pause menu no longer quits straight to the game, and instead returns you to the previous menu.
When the bunnyhop option is set to toggle, the input buffer is no longer used since it's redundant in this mode, and makes toggling the jump off feel not as responsive.
Fixes:
Fixed bad collision on door in C2L7 allowing you to exit the map.
Fixed oneliners not playing correctly.
Fixed idle singing not playing at all.
Fixed "I need a key" lines playing over the top of other Caroline VO.
Fixed hub tutorial not going away after the intro intermission.
Fixed the back button in the help screen soft-locking the game.
Fixed explosive damage against the player being inconsistent.
Fixed names of certain keybinds being inconsistent depending on the state of the game.
Fixed shop for non-16:9 resolutions.
Fixed back button sounds not playing when on controller.
Fixed a keyboard UI navigation bug caused by a movement key being bound to the mouse.
Enemy Projectile graphic scaling across all difficulties have been fixed.
Fixed bathroom shower doors clipping into the floor above in C1L5.
Fixed a broken enemy spawn in "C1L2 - Stifled Storage" on Brutal Difficulty
Fixed a broken secret line of dialogue in C1L4
Known Issues:
Some menus in 'ultrawide' aspect ratios are cut off/ugly. With the changes to how backing out of the pause menu works, these shouldn't lock you into a menu anymore, but better-looking menus will be coming in a later patch.
Enemies can still jitter on rough geometry, and their walking animations will still occasionally play the first frame at random. A fix for this just needs to be tested a little more before making it live.
There's a bug that occasionally causes Ambient Audio/Music to be inaudible.
As one final note, another thing some folks have asked of us is to make the prior Early Access build available to play again, and this was something we were already planning to do! So with that, you should now be able to go into the game's Steam properties, select betas, and nab the old Early Access version!
Regardless, thank you everyone for your feedback and support! It means the world that you would spend time playing our game, and we hope you have a wonderful day!
VISCERAFEST IS OUT NOW!!!
Hello, ladies and gentlemen! The time has come! Viscerafest has left early access!!! And we are very tired...
Regardless, there are some initial things to keep in mind.
First! Your save data with older builds will not be compatible with the full release. This is because the game, from top to bottom, has undergone a substantial facelift with virtually every system, mechanic, weapon, enemy, level, etc, etc, etc... being subject to a cacophony of change.
So many changes have been made, in fact, that there is no possible way we could ever dream of cataloging it all. But to give you a very, very, very... truncated rundown of the changes...
Every weapon has been rebalanced and received significant visual updates along with major mechanical changes.
Every enemy has been rebalanced and received significant visual updates along with several enemies receiving new attacks.
Brand new enemies have been introduced into the already existing chapters.
The gore system has been reworked.
The tutorialization has been reworked.
The pacing of enemy and weapon reveals across the campaign has been heavily altered.
There's new story dialogue.
Most of the levels have been completely remade.
And believe me, I could keep going...
None of this even touches the brand-new chapter, the updated hub space, the now functioning shop! The now existing Lorebrary and Bestiary!!! There is so much just within the realm of what technically already existed in the early access build that has been updated and changed that the game is radically better, overall much more refined, and basically... just a brand new experience. Even if your saves were compatible, you would definitely want to replay the game from it's start because in not doing so you would be missing out on so much.
But then! We get to what's actually new!
12 new enemy types! (not including the new enemies introduced in chapters 1 and 2)
3 new boss fights! (Not including... actually never mind... Pretend I said nothing :3 )
8 new levels!
30 Gameplay Modifiers and Cheat Codes you can buy using Skullies and play around with when replaying levels!
The Lorebrary, where you can read up on the game's universe!
The Bestiary, where you can read up on its critters!
So yeah! There's a lot that's in store for you! And we really hope you enjoy the efforts of our sleepless nights. Additionally, we do, in fact, have another brand-new feature worth noting...
Narcolepsy Mode
Did you find Viscerafest too hard? Even on the easiest difficulty setting with the assist options turned on? Do you have no shame? Are you so coddled that you cower in the face of moderate pretend adversity? WELL THEN HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU!!!
We introduce to you... NARCOLEPSY MODE!!! An even easier easy difficulty setting with extra ammo pickups and enemies so pathetic it's almost merciful to put them out of their misery!
Enjoy pretending that Viscerafest is, in fact, meant to be played like Doom and enjoy mindlessly blasting foes!!! Or, ya know... be a cool way to break your little kiddos into gaming or whatever, that too.
Please Note
So, those of you who have actually been following us relatively closely will know that life and circumstance have not treated us kindly. This release date of April 14th was unshiftable, Viscerafest needed to come out today.
Now, Viscerafest is content complete, but there are several things we wanted to finish before release that we have been unable to. First... Let's talk about the elephant in the room...
The OST
John S. Weekley was going to compose the music for Viscerafest chapter 3, and a good chunk of that music is *almost* done. But last month's life circumstances saw John having to put his work on Viscerafest on hold, and as such, the OST for the game's final chapter was not completed in time for this release. For chapter 3, none of the current music fits the tone we were striving for, and as such, chapter 3 is pretty musicless, save for a few key moments.
We will be striving to keep folks posted on what's going on with the OST, and we hope to add it in as soon as possible, but for the time being all we can do is wait until life calms down for John.
The Hub
Chapters 1 and 2 are still using their early access sub-hub variants, we wanted to update these before release, but we did not have the time. As such, whilst they function perfectly fine, they are a little uglier than their respective chapters are now. We hope to rectify this fairly quickly, and the updates to these will likely be coming in about 2 to 3 weeks.
C2L7 - Arche Ascension
Chapter 2's finale has received several updates, but its updates were not able to be completed in time for the "Full" release. The levels more than playable and honestly probably in better shape than it was in the early access phase, but understand the opening of the level is visually a little rough if you pay too close attention, and we'll be cleaning her up and making her as pretty as the rest in the weeks to come.
Chapter 3 - Static Story Moments
There are a number of in-game story moments in chapter 3 that are... well... a little less visually interesting than we wanted them to be. There's some spice to those moments we did not have the time to add, and this is yet another thing we will be looking to fix up in the coming weeks.
The Ambient Audio Bug
There is an infuriating issue we were not able to address prior to release where sometimes when you hit a transitional point for a levels ambient audio the ambient audio just... does not play. Again, we'll be working to fix this asap.
Enemies Having a Seizure
Another issue that cropped up like... 2-3 weeks ago? Enemies now hate slopes and weighted surfaces now for some reason, and traversing them causes the enemies to vibrate with intense rage. Functionally, this doesn't have much impact gameplay, but it looks dumb and I hate it. In addition sometimes enemies might... just... kind of... wobble in place, jittering their walking animations, again.... both of these issues are things we will be aiming to address as soon as possible.
Flying enemy pathfinding
There are a couple of doorways in the game where flying enemies just make... bafflingly daft navigational decisions. Yeah... we'll be working on that.
Some U.I. Jank
We wanted to give some of the menu's a bit more love before release but... yeah... you know the drill. A couple of the U.I. elements are a bit ugly, which... I mean... was also the case in early access but we wanted to fix that before the game came out. Needless to say, we will be fixing now that the game is out.
And Probably More
There are no doubt many more issues I have not cataloged above, and if you come across please report them in the Steam forums, or... far more preferably, our discord server, which you can join here.
I will likely be making another post within the next few days, updating everyone on the situation, and walk out our post-launch goals in a bit more detail, but for now! Thank you so much for your support; we really hope you enjoy our game! And as always...
May the Lord bless you, keep you, and make his face to shine upon you. God Bless you, and have a wonderful day!
From, Noah Dickinson
Viscerafest - Release Date Announcement
Howdy folks! We hope this finds you well! Viscerafest will be leaving early access on April 14th, 2025. And with that announcement, we've got a new little trailer for ya!
So, with that announcement, I thought we might clarify what's coming with the full release for everyone who has been a little out of the loop.
For Starters, the entirety of the game's early access content will receive a substantial update. Chapters 1 and 2 have seen all their levels heavily updated with visual improvements, layout changes, new secrets, revised and new combat encounters, new enemy types, new story dialogue, new scripted sequences, revised tutorialization, etc...
In tandem with the above, most of the weapons and enemies have been rebalanced, and some have new/revised attacks. They have also been visually updated. There's a newly revised gore system with bouncy gibs! And more, I'm probably forgetting.
And all that is just the old content; almost none of that is to address what's new... Because coming in this release, there are now 13 new enemy types, 4 new bosses, 8 new levels, a working shop where you can use your collected skullies to buy cheat codes and gameplay modifiers, the lorebrary where you can unlock lore entries that allow you to read up on game's universe, and the Bestiary where you can read up on all the game's little critters!
But More is Yet to Come
It's worth noting that this is not the end of the road for Viscerafest either. Post-release, we'll be working on adding a NG+ mode with the main campaign's levels, including and being balanced around the late-game content. We also plan to add some unlockable bonus levels, and in addition, we have something of a free side-campaign in the vein of something like "Wolfenstein: The Old Blood" we hope to add if all goes well.
Some Caveats
Those who have been following us closely will likely know we've been having a rough go of it, and unfortunately, it seems this will, in fact, impact the launch version. Something has come up with our composer, John S. Weekley, and as such, it seems the new music will not be ready in time for the full release. In addition, we're still having issues with Markie, and it's very likely probable that some of the story dialogue will either be missing, placeholder or using rough outdated recordings that we had originally planned to replace. The music situation will impact the new 8 levels, the story dialogue situation will likely be isolated to C1L7, C3L1, C3L7, Cinematic 7, and Cinematic 8.
We're hoping to address these as quickly as possible, but unfortunately, especially regarding the OST, that stuff will take a bit of time. Ordinarily, it would be my preference to delay the release in light of this, but that's unfortunately not an option. I apologize for this. I've been working on this game for over 12 years now, and this is certainly not how I wanted to release the game. Until everything is wrapped up, we will be including a bit of a statement when you boot the game just so everybody is in the know.
Regardless, we really hope you enjoy our game, it has been an intense labor of love, and we look forward to seeing you on or after release day!
We pray God Bless you,
Noah Dickinson
Viscerafest's Full Release is Near - Audio Updates, and Price Raise
Howdy folks!
We have a bit of a quick update regarding the full release. The game is pretty much on track to hit the previously announced release window of April this year. There is, however, one minor hiccup.
Our lead sound designer, Markie, has been going through one heck of a tumble dryer with all life has been throwing at him; as such, we've had to bring in another sound designer to help us wrap up everything. Even with this, however, there's a very real possibility that Viscerafest will launch with some placeholder/missing audio. We'll be working to make sure that doesn't happen, and if it does, we'll be aiming to patch in the missing sounds as quickly as possible.
On a similar note, if you've not been following our youtube channel, we've been posting a few extra little sneak peaks as of late, including some looks at the new tracks for the OST by John S. Weekley.
We'll be announcing the exact date of release fairly soon here, but for everything to fall into place, we have to raise the price of the game to its final value of 19.99 USD/EUR (and its equivalence in other currencies, based on the Steam pricing matrix). This will go into effect on Friday, March 7th. With the full release will come the game's third and final chapter, massive changes and revisions to chapters 1 and 2 (with some of the levels being longer than their originals), new enemy types, a new weapon, the lorebrary, the shop, gameplay modifiers, and... probably some other stuff I'm forgetting...
So with that if you want to grab Viscerafest at the lower, Early Access price, you better hurry!
We can't wait for you all to see the fullness of what's in store for Viscerafest and we really hope you enjoy your time with the full game. In the meantime if you'd like to hang out with us and chat, come join us at the Viscerafest Discord server and if you haven't follow us on Twitter to keep up with our shenanigans! Thank you for your time, we hope you have a wonderful day! God bless you.
Viscerafest - Developer Update: Aren't I a Stinker
Howdy, ladies and gents! And welcome back to that thing I said I wouldn't be doing again!!! Aren't I a stinker!
Last time we chatted, I said that devlog would probably be the last one we did, and I meant it. But! I still intended to post something of substance for you all to read. I was hemming and hawing about what to post, though. Something about the game's development history? Perhaps something about the game's story? But now did not particularly feel like the right time for any of the ideas I was coming up with.
Regardless, enough work and developments have accumulated that I do, in fact, have something to talk about from a developmental perspective. It was getting to the point where I was honestly planning on ending whatever I posted with a mini-devlog of sorts anyway. So I thought... "Eh, why the heck not? What's one more devlog? It's not like anybody is going to care..."
So! Without any further ado... Here's one more devlog for your reading pleasure!
OST and Sound
We've been in the trenches a bit working with our new composer, John S. Weekley, on establishing and refining the sound of chapter 3's music. Thus far, the score screen track and the song for C3L1 are just about done save for some final polish. Up until recently, John was working on Coven, which just dropped recently, but now his schedule is a lot more open, so we're heading forward at a much quicker pace. We recently dragged Markie into the equation to help refine the sound of the music a bit, and because of that, we've mostly been tinkering with the two above songs to make sure they're perfect before moving on to the rest of chapter 3's tracks.
As for the audioscape though, Markie has been having a darned tooting heck of a time up until recently. Without getting into the nitty gritty details, he'd gotten a home that, for, uh... stupid reasons... he wasn't able to move into for quite a while, which, as you can imagine, slowed us down a tad. But now! He's finally been able to move in! He's been in the process of re-establishing his workspace, and once he does, the work should start getting done fairly quickly.
As a final note on the sound and music side of things, several songs that were previously not on YouTube (notably "Signal to Slaughter" and "Minutes to Midnight") are now on our channel along with the rest of the OST! So, if you care to jam, you can check out our YouTube playlist with fancy little visualizers here!
There are a lot of little systems in Viscerafest that the average player probably doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about, but they are there, and just like the big boys, they need some polish too. We've made a cavalcade of fixes to our oneliners system: voice overrides, respawn mechanics, Players starting position and aim, gibs, jump pads, weapon auto swapping, push puzzles, occlusion culling, ladders, explosive barrels, cutscene skipping, powerups, save system, switches, UI, etc...
Enemy Polish
Lot's of little tasks in this category that we've been plugging away at, more than I will likely be able to easily recall. A couple that stand out in my mind though...
The parasite enemy type has been a particular nuisance. Parasites don't navigate via navmeshes or nodes like most of our other enemies, they jump around kind of like the spawns out of Quake, and this can make them a real pain from a technical perspective. We've had lots of issues where parasites have clipped through walls or floors, and we have had to fix them. We've dealt with some problems that resulted in them skipping their windups and immediately flinging themselves toward the player when they are not supposed to. We've fixed a bug where they would just infinitely glide through the air, never actually landing from a jump. Another issue we fixed is sometimes the parasites would just deal double damage to the player, because why not? But it's not all been bug-fixing with them! Because they're one of Viscerafest's smaller and faster enemies, they can occasionally be difficult to track visually. To help with this, we've given them a trail that they leave behind, which makes it easier to keep an eye on their movements. There are also some technical issues related to how we balance them across difficulties, and so we've altered what aspects of their behaviors change from difficulty to difficulty.
There are a couple of enemies that can come back from the dead in Viscerafest, and one particularly annoying and hard-to-replicate issue tied to this mechanic is a bug where the enemy's invisible and invincible corpse will continue to pursue and attack you. Related to this, these kinds of enemies don't always play nicely with scripted sequences, so we've been working to resolve that as well.
There's a flying enemy that gets introduced in chapter 3 who was moving when he wasn't supposed to, that's been fixed. That same enemy occasionally stopped attacking the player for no reason; that's been fixed. Melee enemies had an issue where their movement speed would multiply exponentially, which we fixed. Some of the tankier enemies/bosses have had their stun mechanics reworked a pinch to make sure they are not pushovers. And finally, of course... Enemies have received a vast multiplicity of balancing and behavioral tweaks.
Chapter 1 Polish
Being the oldest levels in Viscerafest's campaign, chapter 1's maps, while polished(ish) mechanically, were pretty rough around the edges in virtually every other regard. Because of this, we decided to remake them and spruce them up a fair while ago, something we've been slowly plinking away at in the background whilst tackling more important tasks. Now! Chapter 1's rework is almost completely done! And it should be wrapped up before the year ends.
The Prelude up through C1L5 is all done and dusted, with only a pinch of audio work remaining for them to be 100% completed. The same will be the case with C1L6 by the time this devlog is reviewed by our publisher and sees the light of day. Otherwise, we've been plinking away at general polish work on all the levels of the game's first chapter. This includes difficulty balancing with the enemy and item placement, setting up the ambient audio volumes that dictate things like the scale of a room and how sound resonates through it. Minor bug fixes, some of which related to how saving works, etc...
Chapter 2 Polish
While Chapter 2's levels are indeed more recent than chapter 1's, they are very much still in need of some intensive touch-ups. Whilst not nearly to the same extent as Chapter 1's levels, we've been going through and giving Chapter 2's maps a solid facelift, as well as completely reworking and improving their encounter setups. C2L1, C2L2, and C2L3 are all virtually finished in this regard, C2L6 is close behind, and C2L7 is midway done.
Once work on C1L7 finishes up, we'll be continuing our work on Chapter 2's general polishing labor. Otherwise, though to a lesser extent, a lot of what I said for chapter 1's polishing work carries over to chapter 2, just a bit more WIP.
Chapter 3 Polish
Save for the boss fights, missing audio, difficulty balancing, and some save issues, Chapter 3 doesn't have a whole lot more work left for us to tackle. Given we spent so much time already cleaning it up, it's almost at the finish line - so our primary focus has been bringing the earlier chapters up to speed. With that said, we recently had a milestone to meet with our publisher that involved us sending a content complete build to them so they could look everything over. This highlighted some technical issues for us internally that we spent a fair bit of time working on. Amid that, I also found a method to help optimize one of Viscerafest's less performance-friendly levels, C3L3 - Virile Vanity.
In essence, the vast majority of the work we've done on chapter 3 as of late has been bug-fixing, most of which was tied to some of the new enemies we introduced, and I highlighted a few of those issues above.
The Thing You Can't Escape
In the section above, I mentioned a little milestone that we were working on that we recently had to send to our publisher. Working on this milestone dredged up some memories, some truly horrifying memories, and because of that, I feel talking about this milestone would be an appropriate way to end this update.
Game development is a rough time, and nothing quite highlights the pain it induces more than playtesting. Don't get me wrong; I love playing Viscerafest; it is a game I have made for myself, first and foremost, after all. The problem is that... when you go to make a build for testing, or perhaps a build that will get released publicly, you must ensure that the build works fairly flawlessly. I mean, obviously, there will be bugs and whatnot, but generally speaking, most players/testers should be able to get through the experience without any significant hiccups. This means before the testers test a build, we, the developers, have to test the build, and doing so calls to mind that belovedly memed scene from the film entitled "A Clockwork Orange."
There are a host of stupid, nonsensical, ridiculous bugs and issues that crop up during game development, and my favorites are the kind that only show up when you export a build or are in the midst of a long play session. Nothing quite ruins a day like a soft lock that only occurs when you play a level smack dab in the middle of the campaign after having sequentially walked through the entire experience to get there. In isolation, the level might play fine, but in the context of the greater whole? And only when you've exported a standalone build? Nah...
When we were pushing early access updates or releases, it was not uncommon for me and Elijah to have to stay up all night testing builds, doing 100% playthroughs of the entire campaign's content, only to find a last-minute issue that required us to stay up another 4-5 hours to both address it, and then export and test the build again.
Those lucid memories of craving rest as I stared at my monitor, waiting for Elijah to send me the newest build so we could hopefully finally go to sleep in a few hours and meet our deadline, have re-awakened once again. You see... that milestone involved us sending them a build... So, the pains of that process have returned! They're just worse now because... well... the game is *at least* double the length of the early access version... About two weeks ago now, I had to play through the game a good 8-15 times back to back as we attempted to address any last-minute issues with the build before we sent it off to our publisher. A fair few of those times, I'd gotten almost all the way through an entire playthrough before we found a significant problem we needed to address.
The fun part is... this is just the tip of the iceberg! Soon we'll be in the beta-testing stage, where this process will get much, much, much worse... And I am not going to lie... I am moderately dreading the coming months. We'll get through it, but the closer we get to release, the lower the threshold for error is going to get. I simply don't have the energy to stay up all night testing builds anymore, and I probably took a good few years off my life doing that already. So basically, we're going to be having a fun time, I'm sure...
A Not So Quick Side Tangent
In our early access days, the process of finally getting a build test ready for our publisher could potentially take... well... days. This is, of course, not to mention the fact that the builds we sent to them would often still have bugs that needed to be resolved before said builds could be pushed to the public. Hence why they were testing them to begin with; two developers playing a game are simply not going to find the full suite of issues teams of testers can.
In case you were wondering, this is, in part, why we were so quiet on the content update front. We could have probably released more early access updates between now and our last update, which was published quite a while ago. But doing so would have meant...
1 - We likely would have ended up adding another couple of months to the game's development.
And...
2 - We would have ended up killing what energy and sanity we had left doing so.
I had some reason for bringing this up... I think at a certain point, my schpeel about the milestone just turned into frothing rambling... But it does allow me to... in no uncertain terms, comment on something.
I’m very much of the opinion that the choice to use an Early Access model for Viscerafest was a mistake. Don't get me wrong - there are certainly good things that have come from it. I don't think the final product would be nearly as polished and refined as it will be were it not for the feedback and help our community has given us throughout the development; and I am incredibly grateful for all of you who’ve had dialogues with us and attempted to help us to work out some of the kinks in our vision.
But as a part of the Early Access model, we were required to constantly shoot for frequent and significant content updates throughout it’s lifetime - and while we initially thought that was achievable, we underestimated the strain that goes along with it. Doing one big release is more than enough trouble for a tiny development team like ours, without having to drag the headache it induces throughout an entire game's development cycle - especially whilst we were often making significant changes and, in some ways, still forming the substantive core of the gameplay experience.
In tandem with the above I would like to apologize to those let down by the lack of content updates post 2023. It was certainly not our intention to leave everyone high and dry, hence why I chose to go the devlog route. Truth be told, through a combination of hubris, inexperience and outside incentive, we chose this route when we could have put our foot down and said no to our publisher, asserting that we thought this was the wrong decision, and it's on us that we didn’t.
Granted, it was not a decision we bumbled into completely by accident, our publisher has a consistent business model by which they abide, and given prior success they felt this was the best route for us to take. At the time, we didn't know what we were doing, and rather than choosing what we felt was right, we wanted to play suck up. But needless to say, it was the wrong choice for Viscerafest, and should I continue to work in gamedev, it's certainly not a business model I intend to adopt again.
But That's All Folks!
Admittedly, this last chunk of the update has been slightly more pessimistic than I would like it to be. But these thoughts have been brewing in the background for a while now. Overall, I'm very happy with how Viscerafest is shaking out, but I'm less happy with the road we've driven to get to this point. Praise the Lord God; It seems we'll make it out the other side in one piece with a game to be proud of, but boy... what a rocky journey it's been.
With all that said, I do think one final question to answer would be... "Will we make another devlog?" I mean, we already did go back on our word and make one extra, so to be safe... I'm not going to shoot down the possibility. I doubt it because, as you might have parsed above, the vast majority of the game's remaining work will mostly just be grinding. But I'll leave the door open!
For the rest of development, we'll probably be down in the trenches. Maybe just giving you some sneak peeks of the content coming in the next 4-5 months!
But until next time, or perhaps the time before next time! :> We ask God bless you, keep you, make his face to shine upon you! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, pray you have an even better Christmas! And perhaps even a spectacular new year! So, ladies and gents, thank you for reading, and have a great day! Adios!
Forgive Me Father 2 is Out of Early Access Now!
Greetings, everyone!
Allow us to inform you, loyal players of Viscerafest, that another first-person-shooter from Fulqrum Publishing has just left Early Access and is available now - the game is none other than Forgive Me Father 2!
Drawing inspiration from various FPS subgenres, including classic boomer shooters like Quake and Doom, combined with modern mechanics, unique visual style, and Unreal Engine 5 technology, Forgive Me Father 2 offers an action-packed retro-meets-cutting-edge love letter to all FPS fans.
Building upon the original with a darker story, players are now entrenched deeper into the mythos, with equipable Dark Tome pages to upgrade their madness skills. Be that healing wounds with Lifesteal, becoming more powerful with Might, boosting fire rate and reload speed with Haste, or reducing incoming damage with Resistance, players can give their mind to the eldritch apparitions to improve their chances of survival.
While Forgive Me Father 2 has seen multiple major updates over its Early Access period, today’s 1.0 launch introduces tons of new content including vast new levels, new weapons, eldritch monstrosities to battle, and much, much more!
Starting from today, players will be able to explore the suitably-named Nightmare Land, a low-gravity Hellscape filled with gigantic mushrooms, and of course, hordes of Lovecraftian monstrosities ready to devour their flesh and soul. If mushrooms aren’t your thing, why not face the chilly horrors of the new Arctic level, which also launches as part of today’s 1.0 release?
Players will also be able to get their hands on new tools of destruction, such as the melee weapon known as ‘The Suspicious Box’, which clears theirs personal space when surrounded by hideous monstrosities. Or if you’d prefer, why not kill enemies through sight alone? Then you’ll love the latest addition to the Dark Tome system, which wounds enemies within your sight at unbelievable frequency. No one is safe as long as you have a clear line of sight to your target.
Get Forgive Me Father 2 for a discounted price and if you think playing the second installment without even trying the first one, be informed that there is a bundle that includes both of these games and that offers a bundle discount (this discount applies even if you already own one of the included games).
So, you've likely noticed that it's been a hot minute since our last dev log, and that was no accident. We're very much in the final stretch of Viscerafest's development, and because of that, there's been progressively less exciting things going on. More time and effort has been put toward just cleaning up what exists rather than doing anything fancy or new.
Truthfully, it's stuff that's not particularly exciting to talk about, and thus, I wanted to wait until enough interesting things had accrued to make a brand new post. Well just the other day we dropped a new trailer with a big announcement in it, so surely that means we've got more than enough to warrant a new post, and with that, this will probably be our final Devlog post. That's not to say we won't be posting anything; maybe as we get closer, we might give you guys sneak peeks and whatnot or talk about some fun craziness that's happened, but the posts like this one that we've been doing for the last year or so, are indeed coming to an end.
But before we get into the dev log part of this developer log, we should tackle some more big-picture stuff first.
That New Trailer...
As I said above, we released a brand new trailer and, in case you missed it, announced that the game would be released in April 2025 (aiming for early April).
Now, obviously, that is not the 2024 window we stated in the Realms deep trailer we dropped about a year ago, so what happened?
Well, truth be told, we were actually somewhat adjacent to on track for a 2024 release. When we dropped that Realms Deep Trailer, we assumed we would see the game released in late 2024, probably sometime in October-November. With our current rate of progress (ignoring the OST), a December release would've been tight but feasible.
But in August, our publisher approached us and asked us to change our plans, and there are a couple of reasons why.
Our publisher has a lot going on during the end of this year, and their marketing, QA, and Translation teams are currently and will remain busy through to the new year with the projects they have in the works. Adding another project to the fray means ours or another project would suffer as a consequence.
There are a host of releases stealing the limelight right now, and that's likely only going to get worse toward the end of the year. The ideal timeframe to release would have been during September, but because that was not possible, business-wise it would be smarter to wait til the new year.
They want to ensure the game is done by the time the release date rolls around. Initially, we proposed February, but for business reasons, they felt April would be a better time to drop the game, as well as give us more time to tidy things up.
Console Ports
Being so close to the end of development has gotten our lead programmer, Elijah, thinking about one big thing we've been neglecting up until now: console ports! We proposed such to our publisher about a month or so ago, and we can now confirm that, yes, sometime post-launch, Viscerafest will be getting console ports.
Theoretically, development-wise, a simultaneous release could've been possible. However, as we have now been made aware, there is a host of fun, time-consuming legal nonsense involved in porting our game to consoles. Currently, we're mainly focused on the Xbox and Switch, but we'll likely be looking to tackle PlayStation as the other two to pick up momentum.
A Baby Boy
So, a few days after the last major development update post went live, our lead programmer's bride gave birth to another healthy baby boy! Which is pretty cool, but pray my guy gets some sleep.
A New Composer Enters the Ring...
So our boy Geoffplaysguitar was initially slated to do the OST for Viscerafest chapter 3. However, his schedule was booked until about June-July, so we were left having to wait to start working on it until he was available again. Well... in reconvening with him, unfortunately, he was still working on said projects, which were supposed to be done by now. (Funny how that works :P) Unfortunately, there's not really a solid estimate as to when said projects will be wrapped up. (Funny how that works :P)
Thus (in what will inevitably be misinterpreted as an ingenious creative decision) each of Viscerafest's chapters will now feature the works of their own standalone composers, with Viscerafest chapter 3's OST being composed by Primeval (Aka John S. Weekley) whose body of work you may be familiar with if you've played the stellar DOOM mods composing the Ashes 2063 saga! (also, hi Vosty :>)
For the last month or two, we've been working with John on nailing the sound of Viscerafest Chapter 3's OST, and I'm very comfortable saying he will be more than capable of finishing us out on a strong note.
Onto the Devlog
With all that preamble out of the way, it's time to talk about what we've been working on the last few months. To kick things off...
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 is done, or well... it's close to being done. Last we talked about chapter 3; we were working on taking the "Rough Draft" versions of the chapter 3 maps and cleaning them up to get them to a place we were more comfortable with.
That cleanup is mostly done, and the levels are in a far better place than they were when we left them. However, there's still more work to be done before they're ready for release. For example, the only playable difficulty in chapter 3 right now is Nightmare (the other difficulties don't have enemy or item spawns set up).
The chapter is missing some story dialogue along with its entire soundscape; there are several progression-blocking bugs, along with some performance issues in a couple of locations present in a few maps; the boss fights need some tweaking, some enemies have buggy behaviors, etc, etc, etc...
Mostly, a lot of minor maintenance work with a few big remaining things to tackle. But the chapter is playable from start to finish and is in pretty good shape heading into the final polish phase.
Chapter 1/2 cleanup
With the bulk of chapter 3's work done, the focus has shifted to cleaning up the rest of the game, which is what we're focusing on right now. While we've done a bit of work on Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 on the side, most of the game's levels that you can now play in early access haven't been touched since our last major patch, which was over a year ago.
In working on chapter 3 (and some other stuff I'll talk about soon), a lot of stuff got updated, changed, improved, and optimized in such a manner that it inevitably rippled throughout the rest of the game. For example, we made changes to how explosions work and are triggered, as well as to how explosive walls work and are triggered. This resulted in several of chapter 1 and 2's levels having cracked wall secrets or progression points that no longer work because they used the old systems for these things. Thus, we have to go back through them and tidy them up.
In addition, we want to make changes to address some feedback we received during the early access period. For example, there's an elevator in C2L4 whose switch absolutely baffles and befuddles new players, some areas where players get easily turned around, and that one level in chapter 2 with lots of platforming that was remade mid-development and rushed out the door due to time constraints that has a tendency to really piss people off... You know, that kind of stuff.
But even beyond that, we had always planned to do a major balancing pass in the lead-up to the game's release. With the final chapter playable, we can establish a better throughline with the game's difficulty curve and by extension, implement the planned changes to the game's pacing to improve the overall experience.
My primary focus for the moment is stuff like this, along with making these old levels a little bit prettier. But a bit more work has been done than just what's been mentioned with the chapter's stuff, so let's get to that.
The Hub
Welcome to Heuristic Halls! Viscerafest's hub!
The hub that you guys experienced in the early access period was effectively a placeholder; there was a bunch of stuff that we had yet to add, and the overall visual presentation of the hub effectively used Chapter 1 textures due to time constraints. We've been planning on making these additions and changes for AGES, and it is so awesome that we finally have been able to make them.
This was teased in the game's tutorial screen when you guys reached the hub after the Prelude, but Bestiary and the Lorebrary are finally accounted for. As you progress through the campaign in the Bestiary, you'll unlock little statuettes of the enemies you face. These statuettes feature placards with more details regarding the enemy's species, faction info, etc...
In the Lorebrary, you'll unlock more general info about the world's history, characters, and locations, accompanied by a little companion named VIX, an A.I. character who was actually cut from early drafts of Chapter 2.
Obviously, as implied above, the game's hub has been given a massive visual overhaul to separate it visually from the rest of the campaign, and it's even got a funny little name now. Hooray! There's even more stuff in the new hub I've not mentioned, mostly for spoiler reasons, but to close the hub stuff out...
There's also the shop! With our own little shopkeep! So you'll finally be able to spend all those Skullies you've been collecting! Speaking of which...
The Gameplay Modifiers
As mentioned in one of the prior updates, the content you can unlock in the shop includes gameplay modifiers and cheat codes. This is another big thing we've been working on for the last while.
28 of the 30 gameplay modifiers are now implemented, with most of them being finalized. The last two remaining ones that have yet to be implemented are an enemy randomizer and a pickups randomizer. Also worth noting... Some of the gameplay modifiers (the randomizer included) will feature enemies you will not see in your standard playthrough of the campaign. These are enemies we will be primarily featuring in an NG+ Mode we intend to add post-launch, but we thought we would sprinkle them in for you here.
In tandem with this, the game's save system had to be entirely rewritten to account for how a modifier playthrough deviates from a standard playthrough, and with that, improvements have been made to the game's save system in general.
Stackable Powerups
So, because I hate myself, I decided to add mugshot sprites for every variation of the different combinations of powerups (Even across the OG Caroline and Dopefish skins) that you can pick up at any one time, and with that, you can now stack powerups. There are not too many times in the campaign where you will see this happen (though powerups appear much more frequently than they did in the early access version). Still, a couple of the cheat code unlockables use powerup functions as their base, invincibility, for example, and thus, with being able to mix and match those, you'll be able to see the effects reflected on the hud.
Plague Rifle Tweaks
For a variety of reasons, a number of semi-significant changes have been made to the game's weapon, "The Plague Rifle." Without getting into it too much, the two big ones are that the Plague Rifle now has the second fastest player-side projectile in the game, as well as an arching path through the air.
Lots of Writing... So Much Writing...
I mentioned the Lorebrary and Bestiary above, and a big thing we've been up to lately, in addition to all that we've mentioned prior, is writing up their contents. With about 30 critters to write up Bestiary entries for and about the same amount of Lore entries, there's been a lot of writing to do.
Chapter 3's Ending Cutscene
The art for Chapter 3's final cutscene is done! And it has also now been fully animated! The only thing left to do for it is a sound pass!
And Finally, the Usual...
Art updates! So... So many art updates... This obviously, in part, is due to us revisiting those old levels from chapters 1 and 2. There were lots of old, ugly textures that needed fixing, but beyond that, there were still 1 or 2 enemies (such as the Watchers) that hadn't gotten an art update yet. Also! A good chunk of props needed a good brand-new lick of paint.
But that is all for now...
As I said, somewhere overhead? This will likely be the final developer log before release. It certainly won't be the last time you hear from us before then, especially not if you're following us on Twitter or hanging out in our Discord Server. Viscerafest's release is rapidly approaching, and I cannot tell you how excited and terrified I am to say that.
But thank you for taking time out of your day to read this! May the Lord of Glory multiply and bless your days. And I pray you have a wonderful morning, evening, night, or whatever frame of time you currently dwell within. Adios!
Viscerafest Release Month Announced!
Hello everyone!
The day has finally come! As Viscerafest is a part of the BOOMSTOCK event, we can announce that the game will leave Early Access in April 2025!
We can't describe how happy we are to finally share what we've been working on during the past years. Of course, it would not be possible without your support throughout the Early Access period, we are lucky to have such an awesome community!
We are not there yet though, so, please, keep those thoughts and feedback coming, whether it's here on Steam or on the Viscerafest Discord server where you'll most welcome!
The exact release date will be specified once we get closer, so keep your eyes peeled.
And if you don't have enough, check out the rest of the BOOMSTOCK event participants, as there are many great games showing new trailers, adding new content or even launching!
Viscerafest - What's Changed?
Viscerafest has been in early access for a little over 3 years now, and its last patch was over a year ago...
Now when I say that out loud boy howdy am I slapped in the face with just how much time has flown us by. But beyond that, it certainly raises the question "What have we been doing during all that time?" Today we aim to answer that question for the folks who have not been obsessively stalking our every move.
If you've not been religiously following our every update, then this one will catch you up to speed.
So... Why So Long?
Well for starters, Viscerafest is primarily only worked on by 2 individuals, Me (Noah or Acid Man Games) and Elijah (or Fireplant Games). We certainly have other folks working with us to make the music, sounds, cutscenes, and Voice acting, but the "game" part of the game, the content that most everything else is scheduled around is only being handled by Elijah and I.
Viscerafest is a big game for only 2 (formerly full-time but now part-time) developers, which has certainly contributed to the slow progress. But more importantly, life has been pretty rocky during the game's development, and very little has seemed to go our way.
To give a small sampling of what has taken place since we dropped into EA, I've dealt with sickness, major technical issues that left me unable to work for weeks, unplanned game updates and patches that interrupted our development schedule, I got engaged, had my fiance break up with me, my grandma passed away, my family moved, etc, etc...
Now more could indeed be said on this front. However, I'm primarily aiming to give you a sampling of why things have been slow, not a comprehensive breakdown, which would take much... much longer.
But Why a Year Since the Last Patch/Update?
There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that after the last major patch we released, we had a host of changes and improvements we wanted to make to the game. But before publicly releasing these changes, we would have to completely rebalance the entire campaign's enemy and item placement. This is because said changes would alter various aspects of how the game played, and would not mesh well with how the game was balanced at the time.
The big issue here is that once the game is done, we are going to need to completely rebalance the campaign's placements anyways. So if we were to push said changes in an update, it would have meant that we would need to have rebalanced the game not once but twice, which is a waste of time.
The second reason is chapter 3. Our primary focus has been working on the game's final chapter, and whilst yes, in our spare time we have gotten lots of other stuff done (as you will soon see). The time spent getting a patch ready is fairly significant. It can take a good 2-3 weeks just to get an update approved for a public release, and thats time we could instead spend on more important tasks.
Now there are indeed other factors that have contributed to the following choice... But as a consequence of the above, we chose to refrain from updating the game until its full release. This is also why we've been frequently posting development logs to keep you all somewhat in the loop. We didn't want it to seem like the game had died, or we'd fallen off the face of the earth.
But Enough Preamble...
I'm making this post because far more has been tweaked, changed, and added to the game beyond just the new chapter 3 content. So that of course inevitably leads us into the question...
What's Changed Since the Early Access Version?
The answer is a lot... A lot has changed... So much so that I'm going to structure this as if I were writing up a semi-detailed list of patch notes to keep things simple... ish.
Viscerafest is a much... much better game now. It almost hurts to watch people play the early-access version, and hopefully, as I lay out what's changed below you can get a sense of why...
The Player:
Updated Spritework for fists and Legs.
Coyote Time has been added to the player's move set. Now for a brief duration after falling the player can jump in the air.
Hold To Bunnyhop is now by default set to on, many players did not know the option existed, and having it on will make the game more approachable for those with poor muscle memory.
Various tweaks have been made to the player's movement physics, speed, air speed, ground friction, acceleration, etc... both to make tasks such as platforming more approachable and add a further layer of polish to the player's movement.
The speed and duration of the player's dash has been tweaked and refined.
The player's Health and Armor caps have been buffed from 200 to 500.
The Arsenal:
Most weapons have received major sprite improvements and revisions.
The visual effects of every weapon have been substantially improved with major art improvements and revisions as well as new art drawn up for some of the effects.
Every weapon in the arsenal has received a substantial balancing pass. Weapons that were formerly not very useful are much more so now.
The pacing and revealing of certain weapon types has been altered to help improve early-game combat.
The Player's starting pistol (The Skull-Piercer) has had its damage buffed from 35 to 150 damage. It now costs 10 ammo per shot to fire, and is now a glorified mini-railgun that can instagib several low-tier enemies.
The Shredders now have a small AOE stunning effect that can easily stun-lock most enemies.
The Bunker Buster now does double damage to enemies if you risk receiving splash damage by point-blank shooting an enemy.
The Pung Cannons explosion now does double the damage of hitting direct shots, making it more useful when aiming at the feet of enemies rather than directly at them.
The Deus Mortis now has a new mechanic where you can call the pellets you've fired back to your current location. This new mechanic allows you to hit the same enemies twice with the same pellets.
The Plague Rifle and Deus Mortis have swapped weapon slots with the Plague Rifle being in Slot 5 and the Deus Mortis being in slot 6.
The BBQ Belter and Warhound have swapped weapon slots with the BBQ Belter being in Slot 7 and the Warhound being in slot 8.
The Warhound now uses Pung Canisters as ammo, with the Plasma Grenade ammo type being cut from the game.
The Warhound, rather than releasing a flurry of cluster bombs upon exploding, now detonates in a cross pattern similar to the Firebomb from "Rise of the Triad".
The Enemies:
Most enemies have received major sprite improvements and revisions.
The Visual effects of enemies firing and or otherwise attacking the player have been substantially improved with major art improvements and revisions as well as new art drawn up for the effects.
The game's Gore system has been entirely reworked with major art improvements and revisions as well as new art drawn up for the effects.
All enemies have received a substantial balancing pass.
Several enemy types have received new attacks and behaviors.
3 New enemy types have been added to chapters 1 and 2.
The pacing and revealing of certain enemy types has been altered to help improve early-game combat.
Melee-resistant enemies now have purple armor or purple skin to help the player visually identify whether or not an enemy is melee-resistant. Enemies that were formerly purple but not melee-resistant have had their color scheme changed.
Melee-resistant enemies have new visual and audio effects that play when the player punches them to help the player understand they are doing less damage.
Melee-resistant enemies are no longer stunned by melee attacks.
Drones, which were formerly melee resistant are now weak to melee attacks. (But they still have their melee counterattack.)
There are now 2 types of shielded enemies. Enemies with "Red" shields can deflect all attacks with the exception of explosive and fire-based attacks. Enemies with "Yellow" Shields can deflect all attacks with the exception of explosive, fire-based, and melee attacks.
The physics of enemy grenades have been tweaked and refined to make them feel less chaotic in combat.
The Pickups:
Most Weapon and Ammo pickups have received major sprite improvements and revisions.
Ammo and Weapon Pickups now have rings around their base that make them easier to spot mid-combat.
The Collisions for most pickups have been improved which has also helped to resolve various bugs.
The Prelude:
The opening Cutscene has received updated artwork and minor editing tweaks.
The game's opening tutorial level has been completely remade. It has mostly retained its original layout, but now features various minor improvements including, better texture work, improved visual clarity for elements important to progression, better combat spaces, as well as additional areas for tutorialization.
Brand new Secrets along with a few revised old ones.
Tutorials are now triggered by question mark pickups rather than invisible walls to make their appearance feel less abrupt and annoying.
Accompanying Tutorials the text explaining what you need to do are videos that showcase the mechanics discussed in action. Furthermore, Tutorials such as the melee tutorial are broken up into multi-part sections, in order to better introduce players to the nuances of the mechanics. Finally, the mechanics are often put in a context that will see you actually being forced to use them, such as with using the dashes I-Frames.
Chapter 1:
The Chapter 1 levels are being completely remade. They have mostly retained their original layout, but now feature various minor improvements including, better texture work, better flow, improved visual clarity for elements important to progression, and better combat spaces.
Brand new Secrets along with a few revised old ones.
New scripted sequences, some of which help to contextualize the jump from level to level.
Brand new as well as revised old dialogue some of which has been tweaked or added to better set up events that take place later in the game's story.
General pacing changes.
Some super special stuff I don't want to spoil :>
Chapter 2:
Various visual/aesthetic improvements such as better texture work, and improved visual clarity for elements important to progression.
Performance fixes to levels such as C2L6 which originally did not run very well.
Brand new sprites for the boss variant of the Interdimensional Shambler
New/tweaked dialogue.
The Menu's/HUD:
Menu's/The player's HUD has received major sprite improvements and revisions.
Added new art for level title cards as opposed to using the in-game font.
An option to disable the difficulty warning that plays upon booting up the game has been added.
An option to adjust the frequency of Caroline's one-liners has been added.
An option to disable the camera bob that occurs when you land from a fall has been added.
An option to disable the death counter has been added.
The Layout for the controls menu has been tweaked for ease of use on a gamepad.
Menu's are navigatable keyboard only.
Misc:
Too many bug fixes to count.
Various backend tweaks to help the game run better.
A bunch of new Combat one-liners for Caroline (A few of the older/more cringy ones were cut, but even still we now have over 100).
Even more sets of difficulty names! (there are now 30)
New death messages.
Reworked the Sacrifices A.I.
Completely redid controller support, should now be plug-and-play.
And more...
I'm not going to lie... this actually ended up being even longer than I was expecting it to be when I started writing it. But as you can see, when I said a lot, I was not joking. Truth be told, there's honestly probably even more I just forgot to include, and it's worth noting more work will be done before the game's full release, so the above list will get longer... Probably not too much longer... But still longer.
But What's New?
Now as shocking as this may indeed sound, all of the above... that's just stuff we did on the side. About 80-90% of our time was spent focusing on the brand-new content, though there is a lot less to say about it because well... we don't want to spoil it.
First chapter 3... Chapter 3 features 11 brand-new enemy types, 7 brand-new levels, all of which are notably longer than the former chapters' levels. A small bevy of brand-new mechanics, and a couple of uh... neat little boss fights ;> Chapter 3 is where we've been spending most of our time. It's been a bit more ambitious than the former chapters, and let me tell ya it's a blast... but it's still not quite done yet. Soon though... (TM)
Secondly the ending. Yeah I uh... I won't say much about it, but make no mistake, the ending has been just as much of a time sync as the bulk of chapter 3's maps.
Thirdly... Dem Skullies... As you parade your way through Viscerafest you will collect a host of fun little grabbems that go by the name of Skullies, and with these in the game's hub you will be able to buy cheats, and gameplay modifiers that you can use when replaying a map. Some of them we have in already, others we're still working on. But I think in total the final game will have about 30... Also one of them lets you play as dopefish.
Fourthly! LOOOOOOOORE!!! So if you did not know, Viscerafest has an obnoxious amount of Lore, and I entirely blame Elijah for recommending we include it in the game. As you play through the campaign you'll be able to unlock chunks of the game's lore that you can read up on in the Hub. Shockingly writing up said lore can take a little bit, but I'm not joking when I say at one point shot Elijah a message telling him that "I am hiding a political thriller in Viscerafest" Which let me tell you was not on my to-do list when I started working on this game.
And I Think That's It?
I was hoping to make this a short and relatively accessible post but that's very hard to do when I'm also trying to catalogue all the progress we've made over the course of an entire year. Trust me there were some things I wanted to go into far more detail about, however... we do have the old developer logs you can back and look at if you want more information as to why we made certain decisions.
Heck... you can also always just ask us a question! I frequently check the comments on all the posts we make, so rest assured if you have something you'd like to know about the game, I will likely be there to respond ASAP.
I think the only major thing left to address is at last year's Realms Deep we announced a 2024 release date. If that happens it will likely be toward the end of the year just so you all know. I really want the game to come out this year, and I know Elijah does too. Things keep happening that make that seem harder and harder to pull off, which has not left any of us happy on the development side trust me. I have been working on this game for 12 years of my life, and I don't want to make it 13, but I also want you all to receive a finished game, and I'm sure my publisher feels similarly... ;P
But That is All For Now...
Thank you all for your support, seeing the encouraging comments, fanart, and general support always brings a smile to our faces. I don't thank the Lord for the blessing you have all been to us nearly enough, and I want you all to know that you've routinely lifted our spirits through frustrating and difficult times. We pray the Lord bless ya, keep ya, and make his face to shine up ya. And we hope you have a wonderful day.
