1.0.3 Patch Notes

Hello!

The game has received another patch, so please take a look at all the changes.
We will be continuing to work on things throughout the month!

Bugs

-Fixed an issue where you could collect a second Shrinkshroom in Ludwig's Lab
-Fixed an issue where viewing the secret ending would mute voice SFX temporarily
-Fixed an issue where the incorrect requirements were listed for the Quest "To Be Stronger"
-Fixed an issue where the Slimy Salesman will appear endlessly in Act 3 (You may need to buy another Thing from him to make him go away permanently in existing saves)
-Made the game credits less taxing on the game's memory
-Fixed a horrible typo in Dracula Manor
-Fixed an issue where character portraits were misasligned in an Act 3 segment
-Fixed an issue where the Quest "Friends Like These" could be started before it's supposed to be unlocked and mess with the Diary

Balancing

-Spirit and Willpower rings have had their effectiveness lowered
-Nerfed Phantasmic Wind Slash
-Nerfed Million Candy
-Lowered the effectiveness of "Calming Cavort" from 40% of DP to 30%

Misc Changes

-Lowered the amount of turns required to progress in the scripted fight at the end of "Slimy Business"
-Jackie and Mask Guy will now translate Pumplin dialogue for you
-Added more dialogue for Mr. Y via the Walkie Talkie, including one in act 4
-Painkiller will now sell Bean & Leaf drinks in Layla's Lane

Bugs To Be Fixed (In Progress)

-Changing the SFX Slider completely ignores character voices
-Using Jackie's ultimate will knock the BGM volume back to 100 regardless of where you set it
-Extended play periods can cause the game to crash during the ending sequence due to a memory leak. Until this is fixed, simply taking breaks and closing the game and re-opening it will refresh the cache and avoid the issue

Features To Be Added (In Progress)

-Additional Optional Party Member Dialogue during main story events
-Optional Dialogue for specific Party Members during fights in the Optional Dungeon
-Transformation aspect for Transmog Tongue and Gumball Gun

Features That May Be Added Later

-Some way to keep track of what States do
-Enemy Bestiary
-Dream Colosseum allowing you to refight bosses with endgame stats

Developer Blog

Now, we also wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about The Future as well, since people are starting to make progress through the game with many actually beating it as well.
So let's go over some of the things we have lined up next, many of which are happening thanks to us reaching various Wishlist goals prior to launch!

Webs Prequel Comic (Act W)

Originally, we wanted to get this comic together and out BEFORE the game's launch to help hype it up, but unfortunately there was a lot more polishing necessary for launch, so it got put on the backburner. We still want to put it together, and I would even expect it before the end of the year, but don't expect a huge amount of "New Lore", this was just to hype up the game after all.

Digital Artbook

Another Wishlist Goal we reached was a Digital Artbook! It will take some time to put this together, so I would expect it to come out AFTER the Prequel Comic, but BEFORE the next thing we're going to talk about. We're excited to share all of our little doodles and concept art that resulted in the game you can play today. Most of them are not very good. I am sorry.

Now for the big thing everyone is probably wondering around.

Act M

First of all, what IS Act M?
Act M is going to be a short side story featuring none other than THE Mothman. We keep calling it DLC, but it's more like a small standalone game.
It will detail the story of HorrorVale from Mothman's perspective, not just the present but also before the events of HorrorVale AND directly after.
You'll be able to recruit a small gang of Cryptids to join you on your Mothy journey as Mothman is forced to face moral issues as well as his own demons.
This is a much shorter game with a much smaller scope than HorrorVale. At max, you can expect an 8 hour playthrough if you do everything. (Current Estimate)

As you can see from the patch notes, we're still currently working on polishing up HorrorVale, but once that's done, Development on Act M can begin. It's impossible to truly determine a time frame right now, because one factor affecting this is how "HorrorVale" itself does. Obviously, if I could work on Game Development full time, Act M will come out sooner rather than later. Sales for HorrorVale are somewhat promising currently, but we'll have to see how it's done at the end of the Year to really get a good scope of the game's performance. If things can pick up, perhaps Act M can come out mid next year! (That would be really cool.)

Oh yeah, about Launch...

HorrorVale Launch

We also wanted to talk a little bit about Launch, because it was very crazy!
We didn't entirely know what to expect given this was our first game, but launch was overwhelming to say the least. I was reading comments and Discord messages for what felt like a week straight.

One thing I certainly did not expect were the amount of Bugs and Issues found in Launch Week. I expected some for sure, but not to the extent there was, and not of the outright soft locking variety.
I deeply apologize for this, and the patience that people had was extremely re-assuring. I was working to get patches out as soon as I possible could. These issues were especially frustrating because many of them were the direct result of things I added or fixed about the game the WEEK right before launch.
I just want to clarify that our Team of Testers is a handful of dedicated Volunteers, who have helped us out on this long journey for no reason other than the goodness of their heart and passion for the project. Because their work was entirely volunteer work, I specifically never set deadlines or strong instructions on how to test, what to test, etc. I told them to just play the game whenever they want and report stuff they find. I'm just explaining this because I don't want anyone to think these launch issues were the result of poor testing on their part.

Personally, finding out about these issues was deeply upsetting for me.
I care very deeply about the experience of playing HorrorVale...
That is to say, I don't really mind if someone has a bad experience because they don't like the combat or the puzzles or the story, but what DOES bother me is if somebody has a bad experience because the game doesn't work as it should. So once again I am deeply grateful for everybody's patience that first week. I'm very happy to see that for the most part everybody had a great time anyway!

Truthfully, there were more things I wanted to include at Launch, and I would've liked it if I had time to play the game more myself, but it wasn't to be, and it felt very silly to delay the launch over things I could easily add launch week.
...Little did I know.

Summary

We will continue working on getting all the issues in the game fixed (including the big ones mentioned earlier!). We want to more or less be finished with patches by the end of October or early November (Outside of future smaller patches if more bugs are found) so we can move onto other things (Such as Act M...).

We hope everybody is enjoying their time in HorrorVale, and stay tuned for more!

-Dustin
Batworks Software