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.
Sincerely,
Noah
Viscerafest - Dev Update: Post March Madness
Howdy one and all and welcome back to another Viscerafest Development update! We hope you had a wonderful season remembering our Lord's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Now you may have noticed that despite our expectant comments from last time, we did not post an update in the throws of March and there is a good reason for that...
March sucked.
In the opening weeks of March, yours truly was not only job hunting for part-time work but got sick and was bedridden for a good two days. Following this I did get back to working on the game, however, progress was demoralizingly slow as I felt like garbage for about a week. In addition to feeling like freeze-dried filth, the absolute halt to progress left me feeling very burnt out which meant that by the time we finally started moving again, I was feeling positively out of it.
In essence, development felt like a process of wading through deep mud, a fact that would not be rectified in the latter half of the month. On the 19th, I received a call from my mother letting me know that the 8-year-old daughter of my would-have-been In-Laws had passed away under rather harrowing circumstances, following which that Thursday I attended the funeral. It was a distressing and emotionally draining few days not helped by everything going on before it, and everything happening in the midst of it, as yes, more indeed happened that I will not mention here.
So that is in short why you have been left bereft of a development update until this day, progress has been slow, as unfortunately, life keeps happening. But with that said, I'm not posting this to inform you that no progress has been made, as in Marches wake, quite the opposite is true.
So after that just... real downer of an opening remark, let's get to the more fun part of this update.
Nuts.Blend
So amid March's madness, I had hit a brick wall of burnout and I needed something I could quickly pump out to get my spirits up and just... feel like I had accomplished something of tangible substance. I had some Icarusliv3s videos playing in the background as I cobbled together a lunch for myself and as the autoplay cycled videos one in particular popped into my cue. The video "Dukes Nuts" popped into the video player and it got me thinking... You know... making a Viscerafest Nuts map would be pretty easy... and I wonder what it would play like...
Thus between working on things that I actually needed to try to get done, I pumped out "Nuts.Blend" over the course of about 2 days... and it was magical. I still have some work I want to do on this map to visually polish it up a bit, but I'm planning to stick this map into the full game as a secret for all of you who wish to torture yourselves and your PCs.
Aggregious framerates have never been so colorful.
C3L3 - Virile Vanity
The third map of Viscerafest's third chapter still needs a bit of visual cleanup, on the whole, the map is a bit more visually rough right now than I'd like and as a consequence, I won't be showing you too much of it. Gameplay-wise though, the map is pretty much done! So let's talk about it a little.
C3L3 - Virile Vanity picks up where C3L2 left off with Caroline arriving at a massive elevated plateau in the midst of a hedge maze. The level primarily sees you diving below and above ground to navigate this maze before finding your way to the level's finale amidst a courtyard that features a massive pit.
The level also introduces a new fun little puzzle mechanic, one that gets a fair bit more use toward the end of the chapter, and one that will be quite familiar to those who have a bit of Quake under their belt. The level also builds upon the new Chapter 3 roster of enemies with a good 3 or so new enemy types added to the fray, two of which you'll be familiar with if you've been following our updates for any significant period of time.
C3L4 - Nihilistic Necromancy
Now C3L4 and onward is where I'll be getting more tight-lipped about a level's given contents. Obviously, I don't want to give you guys a thorough rundown of every little thing that happens in every chapter 3 level but C3L4 is where we begin to breach into territory I would consider downright spoiler-ish.
As a matter of fact whilst I will tell you about C3L5 likely in the next update I probably won't show you anything past its opening room as that level is... particularly special...
But that doesn't mean I have nothing to say about C3L4 as there are a few things I can let you in on. C3L4 introduces the last of the chapter 3 enemy roster, and by this point in the campaign, it's quite a star-studded cast of foes.
This is when the combat in chapter 3 really starts to take off in my opinion and the level features some of the most fun and also most intense combat encounters in the game's campaign. Viscerafest becomes basically borderline bullet-hell at this point and it is downright glorious.
Fan Requested Options
We frequently get requests to tweak, add, or adjust certain things within the game, and every once in a while, (should we deem them good suggestions) we finally get around to adding some of those requested features or making some of those requested tweaks. Now is indeed one of those times!
Many players have requested an option to disable the difficulty warning that pops up when you boot up the game. Now you can already skip this by holding the escape key, but yes we have indeed added an option to turn it off completely.
A fair few folks have requested the option to adjust the frequency of Caroline's One-Liners, some because they want to hear them more frequently, some because they want to hear them less frequently, and worry not! We've got you covered on both fronts as we now have a slider that allows you to adjust said frequency.
A small few have asked for the option to disable the little camera bob that occurs when you fall and land on the ground, a toggle button has been added for your convenience.
And then finally we know some folks don't like being told they've died 300 times, so there is now an option to disable the game's death counter as well.
Tutorials
So in the developer update "Known Issues and Stuff" we went through and talked about some of the content in Viscerafest that we felt was lacking. Since then, most of the issues we brought up have been, or are being addressed, but there was one issue we have had in the cards to deal with for a while now that we just hadn't gotten around to yet, and that was the game's tutorials.
For those of you not in the know in the current version of the game Viscerafest's tutorials are little more than walls of text that abruptly pop up on screen when you bump into an invisible wall. They're kind of annoying, feel designed in a way that encourages players to skip them, and more importantly, because it's an uncontextualized wall of text they do a poor job of giving players a solid idea of how to really make use of the mechanics they are trying to teach the player about. The old tutorial level itself didn't really help with this either to be honest, it was rather lackluster and didn't really do a good job of providing scenarios that would allow the player to adequately learn.
The consequences of this were that despite how skilled someone might've been at FPS games in general they were often given a poor idea of how to play Viscerafest. I've seen people who suck at shooters do wonderfully at Viscerafest just because they stumbled into the right way to play, and conversely, I've seen decent players bang their heads against a wall just because they didn't really grasp what they were supposed to be doing. Now some of the latter was admittedly self-inflicted in certain circumstances, but I can't help but feel that the poor tutorialization contributed to it.
So a while ago we completely remade the game's tutorial level. Shortly after we decided to make the tutorials triggered by pickups to avoid the annoyance spawned by invisible walls initiating them. But now we have added the final ingredients.
The tutorial popups now contain video footage of yours' truly doing the action described in the tutorial contents in an effort to better contextualize what's being said, giving you a visual example of the action being asked of you. But this way you're being shown what to do, not just told. Certain mechanics that were formerly never tutorialized (Such as Melee Resistant enemies) now feature their own tutorial sections. Tutorials are also broken up more now with several being multi-part to avoid vomiting an abrasive wall of text onto your screen.
With all of this, we're hoping to do a better job of equipping you all as players to enjoy our game. As a developer, it's never fun to watch new players bang their heads against a wall and find themselves bouncing off our game because of *our* failure to teach them. It's one thing if players just don't enjoy the game we're making, or another if players ruin the experience for themselves, that's fine, I don't like those scenarios but I can stomach them. It's a whole other issue when they might have genuinely enjoyed what we made, but we just did a poor job of equipping them too.
Art Updates
As with almost every update now there have been a host of updates to the game's sprite and texture work, however, there are a couple I would like to address this time more specifically. For starters the armor pickup sprites. Whilst editing C3L4 I noticed the scaling for said pickups was a complete mess, and in fixing the object scaling in the editor I realized that 3 of our armor pickups were too high resolution, and one of them was too low resolution. So I quickly went through and redrew the sprites, and since our protagonist is female I figured I would aim for a more feminine look with the pickups than I had originally gone for.
As is per usual now several Chapter 3 textures have been updated and polished up, as well as the sprites for a few props. Some pre-existing props have received tweaks to better situate them within the context of outdoor environments. Several of the game's older liquid textures such as blood, Milk, and the various Liquid "falls" have finally been updated and given the proper pixel scaling. One special little enemy I can't talk about has received a great deal of artistic love put into his fun little hives.And now finally, the Sacrifices have received some sprite sprucing up! Speaking of which...
Set Yoth - The Sacrifices
So when we were in the midst of readying Viscerafest for its early access release back yonder in 2021 we were, to be frank... rushed. A lot of hardcore crunching and all-nighters were pulled to hit our release date, which... we didn't... the early access was delayed by a month but... that's beside the point.
Being rushed there were several areas of the game where for the sake of simplicity we said "we'll work on it later" and we slapdashed a quick and easy solution for the time being until we had the time to do the job right. The sacrifices are by far the most notable example of this. The A.I. of the Sacrifices is basically just the A.I. of the game's enemies tweaked and repurposed for your little NPC pal, and this creates some problems...
Enemies utilize a navmesh to do things such as avoid obstacles, navigate around hazards, etc... Because of this enemies don't really have physics... enemies can't fall, jump, or really do all that much vertically, and the one enemy in the game that does have physics works completely differently from the rest. Not only are the... shall we call them benefits? Of using a navmesh not things we wanted the Sacrifice to be able to do, but the lack of physics poses a problem for some of the puzzles we planned to design with them.
The Sacrifice puzzles were meant to have your A.I. partner just track the player. As a consequence, it would be up to said player to keep their little buddy out of lava pits, out of the way of blade traps, and away from the fire of unfriendly foes. Upon falling prey to a trap or acid pit, your little buddy would respawn back where he started, and you could try again. Now this mechanic is not used very often in the game, it's used most in chapter 3, but only once in each of the chapters before it. We were able to effectively cheat the puzzles somewhat in chapters 1 and 2, but for 3... we needed to finally implement their A.I. proper.
This is something we've actually had on the docket of tasks for ages... It's just that more important tasks have frequently gotten in the way, but with chapter 3 being the primary task at hand, it finally found itself at the top of the tasks pile.
Achievements
Ok so this is not actually something we've worked on yet but it's something I thought I would address it because it keeps coming up. Yes, Viscerafest will have achievements and they will be coming with the game's full release. Currently, we have about 80-90 achievements planned some will likely be cut from that list, and others added, but I suspect that's roundabout the number we'll be sticking with.
So here's a quick sampling to give you an idea of the achievements we have planned.
Participation Ribbon (Beat Viscerafest on any difficulty)
Back in My Day... (Conquer an entire chapter of Viscerafest never once using a save beacon)
Shawn's got the Shotgun (Find the Bunker Buster early)
You Can't Evade Me Forever (Find 20 secrets)
Maximum Overdrive (Overstack your health pool to a value of 400)
Non-Copyright Infringing Band Name (Find the MIM ammo pickup in Wayward Watchers)
AAAAAAH SHADDAP!!! (Interrupt Mortice's Monologue in Evanescant Evacuation)
I Love Sweet Baby Rays (Kill 8 Maledicts with the BBQ Belter)
Just had to make sure... (Toggle the does nothing button)
Feeling Lucky? (Waste ammo by shooting a scientist)
Somebody Beat you with the Ugly Stick (Conquer - REDACTED- on Brutal Difficulty or higher)
You're Going to Hell (You know what you've done...)
Now in copying and pasting this list from my notes there is one change we made a while ago that I never mentioned in any of the dev updates, at least I have not to my recollection... So let's talk about that change real quick too!
Health and Armor Pools
So in the current Steam version of Viscerafest, you're able to overstack your health and armor. As is typical in retro shooters your health and armor caps out at about 200. However, in our current dev builds, you can overstack your health and armor to a value of 500.
Now you may be wondering... why did we make this change? And that is a wonderful question that I wish I could remember the answer too. I do recall there being some generally well-informed design reasoning that went into this decision, but I never wrote it down... and this was a decision made ages ago that we didn't pull the trigger on until a good few weeks after the decision to make this change was made. Silly me.
Regardless, I can tell you that being able to frequently surpass the 200 HP cap that used to exist feels very fun for some reason and comes in rather handy for chapter 3.
But!...
Tis Goodbye For Now
As always thank you for all of you who take the time to actually read this stuff, and by extension thank you to all the wonderful folks who have been supporting us throughout the game's development. You are all a wonderful blessing, and we couldn't do this without you! But as the day doth end so must my rantings about the game's development. But before we close I thought you might want to know...
We've added randomized sprites of Caroline crying to our Quit to Desktop prompt so you can feel like the monster you truly are...
We love ya'll, and we pray you have a wonderful day!
Need More Enemies to Shoot At? Try WRATH: Aeon of Ruin!
Hello everyone!
Work on Viscerafest is in full swing and we can't wait to show you more of Caroline's story! For now, if you've already killed all the enemies and discovered all the secrets in the current content of Viscerafest, maybe you have a hankering for a different boomer shooter experience?
If that is the case, it might interest you that WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, a brutal hardcore FPS inspired by Quake, is leaving Early Access today. It offers an epic experience full of lethal weapons, blood-thirsty enemies and a unique "90s" look that will take you back to a time when the FPS genre shone the brightest; while maintaining a modern approach, including original gameplay elements.
And if you want to get yourselves a really sweet deal, check out these bundles where an additional 10% discount applies - this is especially handy if you already own some of the games, since you will only pay for those you don't have yet!
Shalom Ladies and Gents! We hope you've had a wonderful opening to the new year, it's certainly been a productive one on our end. Thus, in the wake of February now being in full swing, Valentines day being right around the corner, and the birthday of yours truly being the 12th, (which by the time this update was released may have already passed...) I thought it was high time we gifted you with another Viscerafest Developer update!
So without any further ado...
The Finale
The rough draft version of Viscerafest's final level is complete! A lot of the loose ends have been addressed, and the level is now playable (though in a very rough state) from start to finish. There's still a lot of work to do on the Finale to get it ready for release, but as was mentioned last time, I'd begun the work of finishing and polishing up the rough draft version of chapter 3. Now that the Finale's first pass is done, we're full steam ahead on the cleanup work.
C3L2 - Blighted Babylon
Speaking of cleanup... there's a pinch more work I need to do in wrapping up Chapter 3's second map, but with that said, it is very much on the verge of completion. So let's talk about it!
C3L2 - Blighted Babylon is the player's first venture into the world of Rhanak Zethir, and with that, there's a host of new foes awaiting you therein. There are roughly 4-5 new enemies introduced with your foray into this new world, and a few of them bring some nasty new tricks to the table.
The level itself is very free-form in its overall structure, and with the exception of a few bottlenecks that act as funnels between the major sections, you have a fair amount of freedom to roam around and putts about.
But hey what about those enemies I mentioned? Surely there must be something interesting to talk about there...
A fair few of the new faces introduced in C3L2 are enemies that I've given you all a peak at in prior updates. However, there are 2 introduced in the map that I've not revealed to you as of yet. One of which I'll be leaving for the game's full release, but the other... We can talk about him...
The Adopted Mage
You may have spotted this little blight in the promotional art for Viscerafest's final chapter. There's a couple of them floating yonder in the background being silly little goobers. But make no mistake these lads are mean.
The Adopted Mage is a flying enemy that fires a full auto barrage of slow-moving projectiles which they lead their aim with, but the fun does not stop there! Adopted Mages have yellow shields! Yellow shields, as opposed to red ones, can deflect projectile attacks, but only moderately reduce melee damage. And on that note! These little stinkers are weak to melee attacks. Similar to the drones these lads drop their shields when going to attack you, but unlike the drones, they don't have any defense mechanisms against melee attacks. So if they get low enough to the ground for you to throw hands with them, it's worth doing!
Art Updates
As always we're constantly refining the game's art, updating refining, and polishing up old stuff to make it look as nice and purty as all the new stuff.
Audio Stuff
With Markie back on the team the first big thing we've been cracking down on is getting a fair chunk of the game's story content ready for implementation. Whilst we've had the dialogue recorded for months, a lot of that voice work needed to be cleaned up and given its fair share of sound design before it could be added to the game proper.
Most of the VA work is done with but a few exceptions, and because of that both C3L1 and 2 have most of their story dialogue and narrative events implemented already. There's only one more character whose content we're working on dealing with right now, and... Well... Speaking of which...
Cinematic 6 - Relent
Cinematic 6 is finally getting its sound pass! Wew!!! Not much more to say about it other than that, don't want to spoil anything...
But you know what I do want to spoil?
SO WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO WITH ALL THOSE SKULLIES???
Well my dear sweet summer child I am so glad you've asked...
This last month we have been finalizing our plans for the purchaseables present within the hub's shop. Whilst we've known the *kinds* of things Viscerafest's shop would contain for you to purchase, what *specifically* has been slightly more up in the air, as we've been throwing ideas back and forth for quite some time.
The short answer as to what exactly the shop will contain is... Cheat codes.
Well... Cheat Codes and Gameplay Modifiers. Basically... Lots of ways to spice up repeat playthroughs of Viscerafest's campaign. Now if that doesn't sound appetizing to you... Just wait... With the 30+ we've got planned there's bound to be something you'll like. Heck let's talk about a few shall we!!!
- The Basics -
As I said, Cheat codes are on the docket of purchaseables, and with that comes the fairly vanilla stuff you'd expect. There's Invincibility, infinite ammo, Regenerating Health and or Armor, Berzerker mode, all your fairly standard fair to mess around with.
- Viscerahot -
Oh, but this... This is the premium stuff right here... Ya'll know what superhot is? Time slows down when you're not moving? It's fun stuff! But with Viscerahot time slows down the faster you move! So as you enjoy bunnyhopping through the air blasting foes left and right you get to enjoy the sweet songs of slow motion along the way!
- Blitzkrieg -
Is Viscerafest just not fast enough for you? Why... Just try Blitzkrieg! And increases the overall game speed of Viscerafest!
- Instagib -
Your arsenal gets replaced with a railgun that one-shots enemies... Also, all the ammo pickups are replaced with ammo pickups for said railgun.
- NC-17 -
So in older versions of Viscerafest, the names for the game's difficulty settings were effectively based on the Motion Picture Association's film rating system, easy was "G" medium "PG" and "NC-17" was the hardest difficulty. On NC-17 every enemy in the game could one-shot you. So you could probably guess what this modifier does.
- Oops, All cultists -
All the enemies in the given level you're playing? They're cultists now.
- The Minus Touch -
If an enemy touches you, it dies.
- Dope Mode -
Ok, but kids we've had our fun... There are genuinely many more I've not mentioned here but we just... We just can't leave today until we've talked about Dope Mode...
In Dope Mode... You get to play as Dopefish... Instead of punching enemies, you slap them with your big tongue...And you're Dopefish... And you make farting sounds when you dash because Markie is pissed I wouldn't give Caroline Dash boots so he could make an interesting dash sound and threatened to blackmail me by sneaking fart sounds into the full release with a 1/1000 chance that a fart sound would play instead of the generic dash woosh sounds so I offered to let him add the fart dash sounds to dope mode instead... And you're dopefish...
- And Many More -
As I said we currently have more than 30 planned for the game's full release. Some of them may or may not make the cut depending on where we're at, but there'll a lot of fun stuff tucked away in the shop for you to experiment with. And hey who knows! We may even add more after launch...
More Technical Odds and Ends
Some of the tasks that I have been far less intimately involved with, but nonetheless have very much been getting done is some more technical cleanup work. My lead programmer Elijah has been applying some hefty elbow grease to optimize our backend in the name of improving performance, collision detection, culling some tech debt, fixing minor bugs, etc...
Basically, he's been tackling a lot of the less flatteringly interesting stuff that often gets taken for granted but should amount to the game running better and smoother for you all in the end.
And That's All Folks
As I said it's been a rather productive month give or take, and as I write these final sentences I'm about halfway done with the cleanup work on C3L3. I don't have anything quite ready for public display on that front, but I most definitely will come March, and heck... I may even have some C3L4 stuff to show come that time.
But as with all our updates, they must eventually come to an end... That way I can get back to work. For all those who bothered to read through my goofy ramblings, I appreciate it! And I hope you enjoyed it. We hope and pray you have a wonderful day, and that God might bless you!
Adios!
Viscerafest - Dev Update: A Post Holiday Peek
Happy New Year, Everyone!!! We hope you've had a wonderful holiday season! You may have noticed there has been a gross dearth of updates from us as of recently. That is because whilst we have indeed been working this whole time, there's not really been much to show or update you on... The last few months have been spent working on the game's finale and polishing up its third chapter. These are time-consuming tasks that involve either heavy spoilers, or stuff that's just not really interesting to showcase until the work is actually done...
As it stands currently, we are still knee-deep in the midst of both these tasks. Thing is now we actually have something to show for them. There have also been a number of other important changes and tweaks that we can talk about along the way. So without any further ado...
C3L1 - Theopathic Thoroughfare
The opening level of Viscerafest's third chapter is almost completely done! There's some sound work it needs yet, its OST and several small bug fixes. But otherwise, the level is playable front to back! So let's talk about it a lil' bit.
In the wake of Viscerafest Chapter 2's ending Caroline once again steps through an archegate into the Great Divide, the primary difference now being the route this takes her through has a formerly well-established U.S.C. presence.
Various U.S.C. Checkpoints bridge the gap from this entrance into the Great Divide through to its exit into Rhanak Zethir, which resides in the realm of the Elder World. This will be Caroline's final goodbye to the U.S.C. before she steps into territory they have lost.
Unknown forces have removed the conglomerate's presence from Rhanak Zethir, and this will mean that soon Caroline will be fighting more than mere flesh and blood.
C3L1 in a similar vein to C1L6 and C2L5 is one of Chapter 3's more story-heavy maps. But unlike the prior Great Divide levels, it is also more elaborate, and combat-heavy. Honestly... as of writing this, it's easily one of my favorite levels, and I can't wait for you guys to play it!
Bombs away!!!
On a much less significant note, I've effectively completely reworked the physics and behavior of the Grenadiers'... well... grenades.
In my humble opinion, they were a bit too chaotic in the midst of combat, often flying around and ricocheting off the environment at borderline untrackable speeds, thus I felt the need to reel them in a bit. They no longer fall as quickly and generally have a slightly slower, more floaty presence to make their movements easier to visually track and deal with. It's a relatively minor change all things considered but one that I feel makes this enemy a bit nicer to go up against.
Nomad Priest - Rework
Viscerafest's first flying enemy has just received some rather notable changes and updates. The Nomad Priest was one of Viscerafest's final enemies that needed a sprite update, so I gave the kind lad a pretty new paint job. In addition to this though I felt like amongst the Chapter 3 enemy roster his old set of attacks meant he didn't have as firm a footing in that part of the game. Other enemies did his job better and were more interesting, thus I felt the need to spice him up a bit in order to set him apart from the crowd.
I won't say what these changes are, I'll let you find out with time, but I feel he has a stronger place on the roster now as it stands.
U.I. Updates
This isn't necessarily entirely new but slowly more and more work has been being done to refine the look of our menus further. Not anything too exciting, but ya know... it's stuff we've been working on... So I thought I would mention it.
Art Updates
As I mentioned in the intro my big focus of late has been polishing up Viscerafest's third chapter, and a big part of this is refining the look of all these maps. You may have noticed I've been... stingy... about showcasing Viscerafest's third chapter until now, and there's a good reason for that.
The levels for a long while now have been in a... "Rough Draft" stage, and as a consequence, they're quite ugly and rough around the edges. Not only were/are there missing props and gameplay elements that have yet to be added, but the lighting is... *oof* and the texture work is especially rough and sloppy.
This "Rough Draft" stage is something we've done with all of Viscerafest's levels in the past. Prior to release, most of Viscerafest's levels were pretty rough, but the rough drafted-ness of chapter 3 has been particularly egregious until now, and that's why I've been very picky and hesitant to show ya'll any of it. If I was going to show you guys a glimpse of the chapter, I wanted it to leave at least a somewhat positive impression upon you all, and I just knew that most of the third chapter was not ready for primetime.
Being able to finally go through and "clean house" so to speak, is immensely satisfying, and I can't wait to show you all more and more as the rest of these maps hit their final stages!
The Return of Markie
For those of you not aware toward the beginning of this year we lost our Composer Michael Markie. In the wake of life's craziness, he was effectively forced to step away from the project as he no longer had the time to work with us.
Into his place stepped Geoffplaysguitar who you may know did the OST for Viscerafest's second chapter. But whilst I am eternally grateful for Geoff, Markie did far more than make the game's music. Markie was our sound designer, he mixed audio, polished up VA recordings, made the entire game's audioscape, did the music and sound for the cutscenes, and then some. This was by far the more damning aspect of losing him, which is why I am happy to say that HE IS BACK BOIS!!!
In the wake of recent events, Markie has been able to hop back on board the project to help us finish up the game's audioscape. As you may have surmised I am overwhelmingly overjoyed regarding this fact, and I'm very excited to finally be able to start making progress on that side of things once again.
In Closing
With Chapter 3 in its cleanup stage, it's safe to say that you'll be seeing much more of it here in the coming months. With that, we may even start showing some gameplay soon here to give you a taste of what the chapter will be like. It's also worth noting in addition to the above a whole host of balancing changes, optimization tweaks, and other more minor stuff has indeed been accomplished as well, but it's all stuff not really worth explaining here.
But that is all for now. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to catch up with us! It's always a pleasure. As always we hope you have a wonderful day and a very happy new year!
Viscerafest - Dev Update: Spooky Tidings
Shalom one and all! It has been about a month since Realms Deep and thus as promised we are back with yet another Development Update! First things first though, we dropped a new trailer at Realms Deep! Which you've probably already seen, but in the case you've been living under a rock you can check it out right here!
In addition to the new trailer we also showcased the updated opening cutscene we mentioned in our "Birthday Cruisin" Devlog. That of course you can check out right here!
And as if that were not enough I've also started doing a series of YouTube shorts in which I'll be breaking down some of the game's mechanics, enemies, weapons, etc... and you can find those in this playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJg0WI2Gczzm-UAa_AhETu7BVErHGkT0l
But let's not waste any more time, and jump right into what we have been working on these last few months!!!
Gameplay Updates
The Warhound
A few updates ago we made mention of a whole suite of changes and tweaks being made to Viscerafest's arsenal and the accompanying reasons as to why said weapons were getting a facelift. But there was one more weapon I wanted to make changes/adjustments to, and that would of course be the game's grenade launcher, The Warhound. The Warhound was a weapon that originally took a great deal of inspiration from one of my favorite weapons of all time, the Grenade Launcher from 1997's original Shadow Warrior. It was an absolute beast of an explosive weapon, with splash damage so stupid you were just as likely to kill yourself with it as you were your foes. And our little spin on it with The Warhound was... underwhelming.
Admittedly... I personally feel that in both function and presentation, our rendition of the beast was rather forgettable and often fell to the wayside in the wake of more immediately useful weapons. Because of this, I knew the gun needed an update, but what that update would be was something I hadn't solidified yet.
During the process of Chapter 3's development, I also stumbled across another little problem that I had with our arsenal. Viscerafest has 9 weapons, and whilst functionally they all contribute and play an important role within the game's combat suite, juggling 8 different ammo types in the game's last 3rd honestly felt like slightly too much, I really felt as if we needed to cull one of our ammo types in the name of streamlining the resource management a bit.
Thus the first major change I decided The Warhound would need is that it would share ammo with The Pung Cannon, and accompanying that would be a design change to both reflect the new ammo type and to hopefully make for something more visually memorable.
But accompanying this change, I had a truly wonderful and stupid idea... What if I made the Warhound's Clusterbombs functionally behave more closely to sequenced explosions of Rise of the Triads Firebomb?
So functionally the Warhound is now one of Viscerafest's most powerful weapons, firing a bundle of 3 pung canisters that detonate into a massive cross-shaped sequence of explosions. It's also been bumped up from the 7th to the 8th weapon slot, meaning you'll be getting it after the BBQ Belter in the main campaign now.
Player Movement
Movement is something that I kind of obsess over when it comes to Viscerafest. It's something I'm always trying to improve and fine-tune. This is because, in First Person Shooters, the one thing you do more than shoot is move. Thus if your movement is bad/mediocre, I would personally consider that to be a really big problem.
Lots of little tweaks and refinements have been made to things like player speed, the ease-in/ease-out of the player's motion, the player's friction against the ground, and basically just... all of the important stuff to take note of when finessing your player's movement. But in making these changes there was one major complaint I was also taking aim to address, and that my friends, is the platforming. Personally, I've always considered platforming in Viscerafest to be rather easy, but a lot of folks do not share this sentiment, and there are a number of factors that I think contribute to this.
- The Jump Arch - The Arch of a jump is effectively the curve the action follows as you leave and eventually head back toward the ground. It's dictated by a number of factors, the force with which you leave the ground, movement speed, the force of gravity, player mass, air friction, etc...
Viscerafest's jump arch didn't quite get the level of attention that I think it necessarily needed in order to be fine-tuned for platforming. Thus more time has been spent trying to find the right balance of all the above.
- Bunnyhopping - In Viscerafest repetitive jumps made in sequence whilst moving in a given direction cause you to build up speed very quickly, a little too quickly in some cases. As a consequence of this, if you were a little too trigger-happy with your bunnyhopping you could very easily see yourself gaining enough speed to grossly overshoot a given jump. And whilst you have the air control necessary to correct a mistake like this, most players aren't particularly movement literate when it comes to fps games, thus they lack the muscle memory to do so consistently.
This is an issue somewhat exasperated by how the platforming sections in Viscerafest are designed. Platforms are often small surfaces tightly bunched together in clusters, and because of this, it's very easy to jump straight from one to another in an effortless chain. This effectively causes players to inadvertently bunnyhop and subsequently gain enough speed that a single jump overshoots the platform they were aiming for.
- No Forgiveness - Many games that prominently feature platforming as a core part of their loop typically have mechanics set in place that act as buffers should the player make a mistake. Air control is a great example of this, being able to make minor adjustments to, if not completely change your trajectory mid-jump greatly relieves the burden of faulty decision-making beforehand, and it's one of the reasons why Viscerafest has always had it. But there's one mechanic most games with platforming have that I've only recently been made aware of, and I think it may have helped ease the platforming burden a bit had I both known about and seen it implemented sooner. That mechanic, of course, is coyote time.
Coyote time effectively gives a brief window of forgiveness. If say you fall or slip off an edge whether because of negligence or attempting to jump too late, rather than being doomed to your fall you can still jump if you attempt to do so soon enough.
All of the above are factors we've put under consideration when attempting to address and refine the game's movement. Thus all of the above have been tweaked in order to find that sweet je ne sais quoi between movement for combat and movement for platforming. And with all these changes I think it's an issue we can confidently say has been addressed.
Art Stuff
Hud Faces
Throughout the course of Viscerafest's second and third chapters, various narrative events take place that somewhat alter Caroline's demeanor, as a result, though Caroline's signature grin is always a welcome sight, new expressions have been drawn up to allow Caroline to more adequately express what she's feeling when these moments roll around.
Blood Updates
So for starters, I recently discovered that the sprites we were using for our blood effects were scaled incorrectly. They were way too small, and thus I had to go in across the board and tweak the arts scaling. This realization and its accompanying tweaks also allowed me to cut back on the amount of effects needed to adequately convey a big bloodsplosion when gibbing enemies without having to cut back on the overall feeling of its volume, so that's cool.
But more importantly, there were a few enemies in chapter 3 whose blood effects created visibility problems and this called for the creation of a new smaller blood sprite set along with adjustments to the blood visuals in general.
There are also new sounds for blood, little sploshing sounds as the blood trails and puddles hit the ground, along with some improved effects and visuals for when that happens.
Sprite Updates
As with literally every development update, I have to inform you that more improvements have been made to old sprites, textures, and assets to further improve and refine the look of the game.
The Rest
I don't know how to categorize the rest of this stuff so... :P
Voice Acting
With the Script finalized I've been making the rounds with our voice actors, directing and recording the bulk of the remaining dialogue we'll need to round out the game's story. We're not quite finished as of yet, there are a few remaining things we have yet to record, but the end is very much nigh...
Cinematic 6 - Relent
In the wake of us rounding up the VA stuff Viscerafest's 6th Cinematic has finally been fully animated, it still needs a big sound pass (something we are not able to accomplish at the moment) but progress is progress dagnabit, and seeing what in my opinion is both one of the most important and exciting cutscenes of the game finally come to life is a real treat.
C1l4 - Remake
Currently, I spend the bulk of my weekdays working on the game's ending and Finale, but I've decided to allocate my weekends to more unimportant side tasks. Because of this, I've been able to pick up progress on the remake of Viscerafest's first chapter once again. Thus I thought I might share some screenshots of the old version of C1L4 compared to its WIP update. The newer shots are not in engine yet, so they do not feature any fun colorful lighting, but I do feel the improvement to the geometry and texture work speak for themselves.
Old - 1 New -1
Old -2 New - 2
The Finale
Well, this has been a pain... As with prior updates very little I can actually say about this one. But the bulk of my time on this front has been consumed by mapping. Currently, as of writing this, I'm working on the final boss arena, and as with the rest of the map it's been a bit of a time sink. Whilst the game's ending level is not particularly elaborate in layout it definitely has some of the largest setpiece areas in the game, and as a consequence yeah... It's been a bit of work...
But in other news, progress has also been made on the game's final boss, again not something I can say too much about... other than I think you all will like it. :>
In Closing
That however is all from me for now!!! There have been other things I've been working on as well but it's either stuff I can't talk about or stuff not worth bringing up here. For example, I don't think you guys need to read 30 paragraphs of me explaining why I lowered the Blitzer's health pool from 800 to 750, or buffed the shredders' damage from 20 to 22. I'm sure just mentioning those changes makes you feel as if you are being robbed of some truly riveting reading, but trust me it's not worth your time.
Once again though if you read all the way through, or just stopped by to check out the funny pictures I appreciate it! And as always we thank God and you for the wonderful support and encouragement ya'll have lent us throughout the course of the game's development. As much as we enjoy it, development has been a real grind at times, but seeing all the fanart, playthroughs, streams, and kind comments you all have lent us throughout the game's life cycle never ceases to make us smile.
As always we hope you have a wonderful day, and as of writing this, I hope you have had a very spooky Halloween!!!
Forgive Me Father 2 Launches Into Early Access!
Greetings, cultists,
The time has finally come, madness is taking over and Forgive Me Father 2 is available in Early Access! Ten levels await you and the first installment's main character, the Priest, in this lovecraftian comic-like retro-FPS, more will come in Early Access Content Updates!
Throughout the Early Access period, regular updates are planned to greatly increase the amount of levels, weapons and content, alongside bug fixes and updates from community-based feedback, while the full game will launch in late 2024.
If you buy the game during the first week since launch, you will get a special 15% launch discount! And if you want to save even more money, Forgive Me Father 2 is a part of the Franchise Bundle along with its older brother. Whether you own the first game and just want to complete your set with an extra discount, or get both games at the same time - this is the way!
Realms Deep 2023 Is Here, and a 20% Discount on Viscerafest with it!
Hello everyone,
Realms Deep 2023 Steam event has arrived and that means a lot is happening! You, fans of Viscerafest, will want to know that the game is now discounted by 20%! So if you have not done so already, now is the perfect time to get yourself a copy! If you're not ready yet to help Caroline pursue her one true love, we understand. We're not judging you. But if you are considering doing it in the future, don't forget to wishlist the game so you don't miss any new info and updates!
Speaking of news, Viscerafest will be a part of the Realms Deep 2023 streaming show with a new trailer, as is tradition! So tune in to the 3D Realms Twitch Channel this Saturday, September 30, at 11am PT / 8pm CEST - the livestream will have plenty of interesting content for fans of the genre!
Besides that, Viscerafest is still a part of the THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK bundle. By getting it, you make additional savings, because there is another 15% bundle discount applied to games you don't own yet - a great opportunity to expand your collection even if you already have Dread Templar in your library!
And that's not all! We have prepared six different giveaways for you, one for each day of Realms Deep, starting Thursday, September 28. You can participate in every single one of them, all you have to do is follow Fulqrum Publishing on their Twitter (known to some now as "X") and on their Discord. Each of these platforms will host its own giveaway every single day for the duration of Realms Deep, and nobody is stopping you from participating in both!
Viscerafest - Dev Update: Levels, Lore, and More!!!
Hello everyone!!!
So I actually started working on writing this update for you guys a few weeks ago, but life's been a bit crazy, more important tasks distracted me, and ultimately the work on this dev update got sidelined in the name of getting actual work done.
But alas! I am here now! Here to update you on all the crazy shenanigans we've been up to these last two months!!!
C1L3 - Fragmented Folly
Last time we talked C1L3 was getting ready to hit the big time and I'm happy to report that the dandy fellow is in fact playable and done!
While still retaining its original overall layout, the map has a great deal more going on now. In addition to the aesthetic facelift, a lot of areas have been substantially fleshed out. A great example of this being the route you take to get the green key, which now features some fun new obstacles, secrets, a lil bit of platforming, and a fair bit more verticality.
But yes, this was indeed a level I wanted to give a lot of love, and a lot of love it has indeed received.
Pacing Changes
The rate at which enemies and weapons are introduced is getting tweaked a bit. There are a variety of reasons for this which range from difficulty related, to ammo economy adjacent, but to summarize this as quickly as possible...
The changes being made on the enemy side of things are primarily done to push enemies the player would want to shoot closer to the early game, as in the current public balance, the first 3 levels of Viscerafest are filled to the brim with enemies you can easily slaughter melee only, and the levels following that are slow to pick up the slack. We want to give the player both more things to shoot, and more reasons to shoot, and the changes to pacing on this front will help with that.
In addition to this, a great deal of the early-game fights tend to be over before they even get started. The changes to pacing in terms of enemy reveals will definitely help with this, but we are also increasing the scale of fights and encounters to make them feel more substantial and meaty.
On the front of weapons, the game's arsenal has received a fair few updates that have substantially changed the utility of various guns. The Shredders for example (Assault Rifles) aren't particularly useful against enemies with low health, but they're great against tankier/more dangerous foes, as they can knock enemies into a pain state even whilst said enemy is in the middle of attacking you. However, because of this, the Shredders are actually kind of useless until C1L3, as both the Skull-Piercer and the Bunker-Buster, are better equipped to deal with the enemies you're facing before that point. This in combination with several other factors meant it felt necessary to moderately rearrange, where and how you get certain weapons.
Arsenal Tweaks
As stated above the Shredders have received various tweaks. The Shredders now have a momentary stunning effect upon impacting with enemies making them a lot more effective at stun-locking opponents, and because of that, they have a much more substantial role in the combat dance than they've had prior. They are still more ammo efficient than their Pistol counterpart as was mentioned in a prior update. However, they now have a slower time to kill, along with slower projectiles that see them being rather ineffective at medium to long range.
Speaking of the Skull-Piercer pistol, I realized quite recently that it had a much lower-resolution sprite than the game's other weapons, and thus, I thought I would update the lil guy. The max capacities regarding the ammo pools of various weapons have been adjusted, and whilst we are still aiming to maintain Viscerafest's resource management, the increased scale of encounters, and therefore the greater likelihood of missed shots, wasted ammo, etc... means we've found it necessary to make the doling out of ammo *slightly* more forgiving.
Projectile Impact Effects have received some more love and thus shooting things is a much more flashy affair!
Speaking of effects...
Gibs
You can never have enough gibs! We very recently updated our gibs system and in the time since then, I've been further touching up and refining the physics, quantity, but more importantly... the Variety of gibs!
Rib cages and wiggly intestines have joined the party! One might even be inclined to say the game is now much more of a Viscerafest than it ever was before!
Pickup Rings
A very small aesthetic change that we made, some pickups have little rings around them now. This was done for 2 reasons
To help visually ground them a little bit more in the 3D space,
To make them even easier to spot in the heat of combat.
Enemies
There have been yet more updates and changes made on the enemy front. So we should talk about that!
Spawnlings
First... I have some bad news for all you spawn lovers... the lil guy is being cut from the game's enemy roster...
I know I know... I can hear you all sobbing over the fact that you will longer be able to feel the warm embrace of a lil blue slime exploding in your face, but the reason why they're being cut is quite simple. C2L5 is being altered as has been mentioned in the past, and the segment spawnlings prominently featured in will no longer contain them. Outside of a cameo in C2l1 and C2L7, they don't appear anywhere else in the game. Truth be told for narrative reasons there are not a whole lot of places in the game where they can be used, and the few places where they could make an appearance wouldn't see them adding much to the game.
With that said, if you are indeed a lover of the bouncy boys, fear not! Because whilst the spawnlings are indeed vacating the premises, a close friend of theirs will be stepping up to the plate...
Lore accurate Grenadiers
So in Viscerafest, there is an enemy known as the grenadiers, and as you may be aware they wield grenade launchers, riveting stuff. But what you may not know is that the grenadier is actually host to a parasite.
That's right! That green dome isn't just for looks, it's a completely separate creature from the rest of the grenadiers body! That lil glob is known as a Ratakthul, and despite being parasites they are quite a sophisticated race.
I've really wanted to include the Ratakthuls in game for quite some time but could never really figure out how I wanted to go about doing it. My original idea was that they would function similarly to Duke Nukem's protozoid slimes, but there are several problems related to how grenadiers work that would see that not being a viable option.
But with decommissioning of the spawnlings, I saw an opportunity to repurpose their A.I. and thus Viscerafest finally features lore-accurate grenadiers! Upon killing the Scylla host body the Ratakthul parasite will detach itself and attempt to kill you on its own. They are, however, quite weak without a host, featuring a health pool low enough to allow you to pop them out of the air with a single punch. They're more of a minor nuisance type, but certainly, a nuisance to be wary of.
C1L4 - Disposable Danger
The Remake of C1L4 is on hold as more important tasks take center stage. But a decent amount of work has been done in starting the rework, and I have a generally solid idea of what we'll be adding/changing, so I thought I might give you all an overview of what our plans are for the Lil guy.
The level's opening is pretty much being entirely redone. The original level opened with the player in a small closet that immediately leads into a massive arena, and whilst that's... fine... it has inevitably led to a lot of newer players door-fighting the level's opening arena.
With the new ending of C1l3, the player finds themselves jumping down a massive garbage shoot, and will now spit them out into C1L4's new opening which features a trash compactor section.
Early WIP of opening Trash Compactor After escaping the compactor the player will be led out to a balcony that hangs over the levels opening arena. Starting the level's opening fight will now see the player jumping down into the arena from above, effectively preventing the player from using the entrance to the arena itself as abusable cover.
The route to the green key used to escape the levels opening fight is being changed up a bit, but from here on out the levels flow and progress will be pretty similar to the originals with some key differences.
The pink key routes platforming section in the original was absolutely pathetic. Featuring such heights as the only major obstacle not working properly! And being ever so slightly too claustrophobic, a feature it shares with the storage area, which wouldn't you know it... is also in the pink key section!
This entire pink key route flows awkwardly in general and if may be honest it's one of the reasons C1L4 is my least favorite map of Chapter 1. Whilst conceptually this area will be pretty similar to its current version, I very much plan to address all the above, making the entire section a lot less clunky and sloppy. But finally... we need to talk about the ending...
C1L4's ending has always felt grossly anti-climactic to me. If you think about the map like a song, the bulk of the level has always felt like its first 2 verses, with the lava escape section feeling like a bridge that's supposed to build up to its final epic chorus... a chorus that never comes... because that's where the map stops.
I won't spoil what specifically we've got in the works for the new C1L4 finale. But I will say there are some rather fun narrative additions to its ending, and I think you guys will really like what's being added.
The Finale
Viscerafest's Finale has pretty much taken up center stage when it comes to my priorities as of late. And as much as I'd love to talk about and show you guys some of what I've been working on that front, I honestly don't know if there's a corner of the map I could show you that doesn't contain spoilers for the game's ending.
But rest assured, it contains easily some of the screenshot-worthy sections in the whole game, and if all goes well it will be a suitably epic climax to Viscerafest's story... OH YEAH, THE STORY!!!
I HAVE A BRAIN INJURY... MY BRAIN IS INJURED... OW...
SO!!! On top of the finale, I have been combing through the game's script this last month. Doing things like checking for potentially contradictory information, stuff that may just be generally incoherent, proofreading... you know... all the stuff you do when you're writing a story. But truth be told, when it comes to writing for Viscerafest I have grown an antagonistic relationship with my own mind where I feel I can no longer trust my judgment. Viscerafest is just so filled with lore that the game's plot is just... stories within stories within stories...
Because of this, I felt it necessary to drag in some outside feedback from our community to help make sure that the game's plot is even remotely comprehensible. Thankfully it was, meaning I may not in fact be losing my mind. But some adjustments were made in response to some of the suggestions and feedback given by these fine folks, which I am eternally grateful for.
With all that said... I thought I might give you guys a... small peek into the madness. As you may know, we plan to add a lorebrary to Viscerafest. A place where you can pour through the lush world of the game in gruesome detail... So I thought I might give you guys a small excerpt from one of the unlockable bits of lore you guys will get to see in the full game. Keep in mind this is also WIP and will likely be tightened up and further refined, but without further ado!!!
The Tome of Ra-dal The Tome of Ra-dal is a Lithelekian religious work penned in the early 500's. The book claims to have been authored by the Lithelek Ra-dal, an infamous heretic who led a weeks-long revolt against the priesthood of the Orellio Church of Nodens, in 538, before being decapitated on the step of the church by an unseen assailant.
Preface The book opens with an introductory preface that recounts a bizarre meeting Ra-dal had with a stranger late one evening during a personal ceremonial cleansing. The Stranger is described as "An obsidian quadrupedal invertebrate, with a fragmented and distorted torso, robed in tattered black rags, and bearing a face like that of marble or glass."
The figure confronts Ra-dal in his residence and asks if "He would like to know that which binds the cosmos and what it hides therein." Ra-dal obliges, and the Stranger demands that the Lithelek write down everything he is told. -
In Closing
Truth be told... there's probably a host of things that have slipped my mind or that I have intentionally left out for the sake of not wasting your time. But regardless! I hope you enjoyed the read! Lots of craziness going on as of late both in life and with development, but it's probably worth noting it will likely be a good few months before you hear from us in a dev log again, but don't worry! That's we'll be at Realms Deep 2023 next month with a brand-new trailer!!!
But until then! We thank you all for your support, praying all is going well for you wonderful folks, and as always... We hope you have a wonderful day! Adios!!!
