What’s Next for Macabre After Steam Next Fest?
It’s been just 24 hours since Next Fest ended, and it's only now starting to sink in what a massive milestone this has been for our tiny indie team.
Against all odds, Macabre placed in the top 50 most-played demos of the entire Steam Next Fest, standing shoulder to shoulder with industry giants and massive teams. We even made it into Trending on the main store page.
That’s an achievement we’re incredibly proud of, especially considering the scale and resources of many of the other games featured.
The Rift Was Busy
Here’s what happened during the week:
73,572 matches played
55,237 deaths
58,319 fragments collected
44,066 items purchased from Banjo
33,106 objectives completed
Seeing so many people jump into the Rift has been surreal and humbling. But as with all good horror stories… there were a few bumps along the way.
What We Learned
Firstly, thank you. Every bit of feedback and every review, good or bad, has helped shape what comes next. Here's what we’re focusing on:
🎚️ Difficulty Scaling
Right now, we throw players straight into the deep end. Dying before you get a chance to understand the basics is understandably frustrating. We’re adjusting the curve to ease players into the action with more breathing room at the start.
📋 Onboarding
While we do have tooltips and a task list from Banjo designed to teach the basics, it’s tough to learn the ropes when you’re being stalked by a relentless little freak. We’re working on clearer onboarding and more obvious signposting of core mechanics to improve the first-time experience.
⚙️ Performance and Stability
This was the first time the floodgates were fully open, and yes, it showed. Early on we uncovered some major performance drops and hardware-specific crashes. Thankfully, these are the easiest fixes now that we have crash logs and data. We’ve already pushed two patches that have significantly improved stability.
🎙️ VOIP Improvements
We’ve seen a lot of players run into issues with microphone connectivity during matches, and we hear you... loud and unclear. For many, just getting VOIP to work smoothly was a struggle.
We’re working on making the voice system far more accessible. Upcoming improvements include microphone input selection and individual volume controls for each player.
Our goal is to make voice chat feel effortless and reliable, especially in a game where communication can be the difference between escape and a very messy death.
🐛 Bugs
Macabre is still in Alpha, so bugs are to be expected. That said, we’ve been blown away by how many of you took the time to report issues. Your feedback has been incredibly helpful, allowing us to quickly identify and prioritise the most common problems.
We’ve already begun addressing several of these. We’re also adding a new “Unstuck” button to the in-game menu. This will help players get back into the action quickly and assist us in tracking down persistent issues within the procedural map.
🌍 Localisation
Many of the most critical reviews came from non-English-speaking players, which makes sense. We’ve only localised the game into Simplified Chinese so far. Without localisation, all the above issues become more confusing. We're working to expand localisation as soon as possible.
The Good News
All of the above issues are relatively easy to fix. More importantly, we’ve seen that the core game loop and mechanics are resonating with players. As we’ve continued to patch and improve the game, our review score has already started to rise.
Crawler Sensing and Player Feedback
Right now, Macabre's sensing abilities are a bit too sharp. This often leads to players getting caught off guard without a clear sense of how much danger they're actually in. It can feel like you're doing everything right, only to be hunted down without warning.
As it stands, the monster does not know your exact location at all times. Instead, it detects disturbances within the Rift. While it can track you down, it ultimately relies on sight and sound to find you.
It’s also important to note that sight is not binary. Standing still does not make you invisible, especially if you are only partially hidden. These systems are designed to create tension, but we know it can currently feel unfair. We’re continuing to adjust the values and will be introducing more cues to help players understand when they are safe and when it’s time to move.
We’re going to keep fine-tuning the underlying values and start exploring better feedback systems. This includes adding clearer visual, audio, or environmental cues to help you understand when you're truly hidden and when it might be time to move.
The goal is to maintain tension without making things feel unfair, giving you just enough information to outsmart the monster. As you can imagine, there’s a fine line between making the monster feel clever or clueless.
So... What’s Next?
We were originally planning to take the demo down. But after making it into the top 50, and being encouraged by Steam and the community, we’ve decided to keep it up for now. This will allow more players to check out the demo and we’ll continue improving the experience based on your feedback.
📣 If you're enjoying Macabre, please keep sending your crash reports and feedback and leave a review if you haven’t already. It really does help us make the game better.
Early Access Release?
Yes, we do have a release window in mind. But based on everything we’ve learned, it’s clear there is still more work to do.
We’re a small but deeply committed team that genuinely cares about what we’re making. We want Macabre to become your new favourite horror game. Something with endless possibilities, unexpected depth, and moments you will never forget.
But first, we need to get the basics right. That means heading back into the kitchen to cook up something even better.
There will be more playtests in the near future. Once we feel the game is in a strong place, we’ll move into Early Access with even more content, polish, and surprises.
Thank you again to every single one of you.
We’ll see you soon!
