- [ver.0.2.5-demo] - Stability update and difficulty balance. - 26 March 2025
– 26/03/2025Comment: Hello everyone! Adding the automatic crash reporter in the last patch seems to have already paid off! A user triggered a crash last weekend, and I managed to find a second one yesterday. Getting an automatic detailed report of crashes helped a ton with finding and fixing these issues rapidly! Below is the list of small quality of life and difficulty improvements and crash fixes! New Features: Adjustments: Added an inner monologue text prompt to help players know what to do on the second part of the first level. Added a tutorial for the first time the player fails to pick up an item due to having a full inventory. The default notification icon for when this occurs was not clear enough on its own. Normal combat difficulty rebalance: Removed Flere’s ability to accelerate over time while aware of the player (Flere’s acceleration received a slight reduction on all other…
- [ver.0.1.2.4b-demo] - hotfix update. - 13 March 2025
– 11/03/2025Comment: Hey! :D New Features: Integrated a crash reporter intended to catch any issues players could potentially have while playing the game. Adjustments: Added an inner monologue text prompt at the beginning of the game to let players know what the level objective is. Improved visual signaling on where the player should be heading towards in the introductory section of the game (special thanks to players that suggested this in their feedback!) Added dirt and reduced the quantity of grass patches on the intended path. Elevated the slopes of the landscape to block out the view of non playable areas. Added more grass and shrubs on non playable areas. Bug Fixes: Crash Fixes: Known Issues:
- [ver.0.2.4-demo] - Normal difficulty rebalance and more! - 2 March 2025
– 01/03/2025Comment: Hello everyone! :D I hope you been having a blast playing my demo during NextFest, here’s a list of changes that I’ve been working on during this week to address issues that I noticed players were having with the game, most notably the game’s combat difficulty. New Features: 3 extra tutorials added to the game. Tutorials now stay extra time on screen based on their relative size (amount of information), and if the player is active in combat or not. Adjustments: Improved the conditions for the “gun reload” tutorial to appear on screen. The player’s “quick turn” action speed has been increased by 50% It was just marginally better to use “quick turn” rather than manually turning 180 degrees, considering the necessity of having to press an extra input, its use was hardly ever warranted. Now the action should feel much better to use in combat. Normal combat difficulty re…
- [ver.0.2.1-demo] - NextFest patch, Day/Night cycle and more! - 22 February 2025
– 21/02/2025Comment: Hello everyone! To celebrate the game’s participation on the NextFest: February 2025 edition, I’ve been working on putting together a new update that brings to the demo many of the improvements that I’m working on for the game’s next major update. Below are the patch notes! :D New Features: Dynamic day/night cycle: Added moon and stars. The starting time of day will vary based on the combat difficulty the player chooses, the higher the difficulty the closer to night time. The time cycle stops once night time arrives, the sun will never rise (this is a horror game after all.) New sky atmosphere and volumetric clouds system added to the game, the sky clouds are no longer just a texture on a sphere that surrounds the scene, they now exist physically in the 3d space. The sky atmosphere now changes its color based on the current position of the sun and the moon. The clou…
- [ver.0.1.3c-demo] - Normal puzzle difficulty improvements. - 14 October 2024
– 14/10/2024Comment: Hello everyone! This new update is mostly aimed to improve the experience of new players with the game, I took in all of the feedback regarding the “normal” puzzle difficulty and came up with a list of improvements that should make the game less overwhelming for newcomer players! New Features: Added 2 new HUD notifications: A blue “diskette” icon will now appear whenever the player is saving the game, this will also occur if the player dies. Whenever the player attempts to pick up a item whilst his inventory is full a red icon will appear to warn the player. Adjustments: Normal puzzle difficulty adjustments: The locked safe puzzle is now a requirement to be solved before moving into the second stage of the level. This will encourage players to better explore the level, previously, the key items needed to progress through the level were getting mixed up with the ones…
- [ver.0.1.2-demo] - New rogue-lite subsystem + QoL improvements! - 25 September 2024
– 24/09/2023Comment: Hello everyone! I’ve been looking at how players have been enjoying the game so far and I came up with a list of improvements that could help with most of the common issues I’ve noticed players have been experiencing. The most notable issue being the game struggling to convey to the user how it is supposed to be played and the fact the player only has a limited amount of lives at their disposal. I also got to add a gameplay feature that I’ve been wanting to implement into the game for a long while now! I hope you will enjoy the changes to the game! New Features: A new “Rogue-lite” subsystem called “carryover items” has been added to the game. The player can now preserve up to 5 items from their previous play-through into the next one so long they were stored inside the inventory storage box, the first 5 valid transferable items will be selected (this items will be m…
- [ver.0.1-demo] - New puzzle difficulty, melee combat & more! - 2 May 2024
–01/05/2023Comment: Hello everyone! This is the largest update so far since the game has been made public and it also converts the demo into what can be considered a feature complete build of the first level of the game. It took a while but I can now start mainly focusing on the development of the second level and the likely commercial release upon it’s completion. Alongside the new gameplay features, this update also includes tons of code-refactoring improvements to ensure the production of future content moving forward becomes more efficient, since this is a solo-project, workflow enhancements will always take top priority. Below are the list of changes this patch brings! New Features: The entire saving and loading of data has been overhauled: The loading of sub-areas inside the main level is now multi-threaded which highly reduces the chance of stuttering issues occurring when new ar…
- [ver.0.0.65c-demo] - general bug fixes - 25 October 2023
– 24/10/2023Comment: Extra round of polishing for the demo! New Features: URL Launch buttons have been added to the main menu for accessing the game’s steam store, joining the game’s discord server or opening the X/Twitter game’s profile. Adjustments: Bug Fixes: Fixed an issue with the loading screen not having proper text scaling below 1080p. Fixed an issue with items getting visually stretched when examined outside of 16:9 screen ratios. Fixed a bug where the wrong sfx would play when picking up stackable items with a full inventory. Improved the player character’s texture maps. Crash Fixes: Known Issues:
- [ver.0.0.65b-demo] - UE5 Migration + stability fixes + QoL - 17 October 2023
– 17/10/2023Comment: This patch is focused on improving the stability of the game & adding quality of life improvements rather than introducing new features. The project has been migrated from Unreal Engine 4 to UE5 (version 5.2.1 to be specific), this caused tons of bugs that needed to be fixed but I believe I managed to hunt all of them. New Features: Graphic Presets have been added to the settings menu. All the configuration settings are now exposed inside a .ini file instead of a binary that the user cannot customize if needed. Adjustments: Improved the rotation animations when items are being examined. Bug Fixes: Fixed an issue where the inventory drop down menu would linger after pressing the ‘Save Game’ button. Fixed a visual animation glitch caused by releasing the ‘aim’ button while performing weapon related actions. Fixed a bug on switching the auto exposure setting on & off m…
- [ver.0.0.65-demo] - Full animations rework + Quick turn + Stamina System - 29 September 2023
– 28/09/2023 Comment: - This patch is almost all about animations!: . The entire animations system for the main character has been reworked from the ground-up, until now everything relied on raw animation data, that meant that I had to manually create all the variations for every set of animation state. . For example: For ‘sprinting’ I needed to have 6 total different animations, 3 for each health state (healthy, injured, critical) plus another 3 almost identical ones when the player was holding a handgun. . You can imagine that this system would scale terribly bad over time as more systems, weapons and actions get added to the game. . For that reason the entire animation workflow has been reworked from 0 into a new system that relies on layering animations on top of one-another with control over every section of the character’s body. . Going back to the previous example: now I only nee…
- Version [v.0.0.6-demo] out now! - 31 August 2023
– 30/08/2023 Comment: - This new patch is focused on difficulty balancing and UI ease of use: . I’ve been experimenting with improving the game interfaces for Steam Deck users and any players looking to play the game with smaller screen resolutions, this patch includes scaling improvements for all the UI interfaces, font changes and other general enhancements like background blur effects on the pause menu, etc. New Features: - Added an interaction visual effect to improve player feedback when examining items, the item will now display a blue glow when it is being inspected from the right angle. Crash Fixes: - Bug Fixes: - Fixed a bug that allowed players to save the game in unintended locations (previous patch bug) - Placed angle limits on some cameras to stop them from going out of focus. - Improved the LOD distance configuration to some assets that were switching to their optimized sh…
- Version [v.0.0.5-demo] out now! - 20 August 2023
– 18/08/2023 Comment: - I hope you’ve enjoyed what the demo brings thus far! I’ve been working on a patch to solve some of the minor grievances I’ve seen players have with the game so far, below you will find the patch notes organized based on category. - All new demo related versions moving forward will end with ‘-demo’ at the end of the version number. New Features: Crash Fixes: Bug Fixes: - Fixed an issue where UI sounds would not execute when navigating the difficulty selection screen. - Fixed an issue that caused navigation UI sounds to overlap with other UI sounds sometimes. - Removed the ‘combine’ button from the ammo inventory slots as it currently serves no purpose since the ammo automatically stacks with each other and it led to some players thinking they could reload weapons with using this method. - For consistency between all ‘key items’, the ‘discard’ button has been remov…
- The demo for "THE KING IN THE SHADES" is now available for everyone to play! - 12 August 2023
The first release of the demo for "THE KING IN THE SHADES" is now available for everyone to play! Once I am satisfied with the state of the demo and ready to move on to the next level and the comercial release of the game, the demo will likely be removed after a period of 1 week to a month. Until then I will keep updating it with new content, any feedback I can receive will be more than welcomed! Be sure to play it while it's available and have fun! Signing: sp1r1t_d1tch
