Hello, Insane Escape players and aspiring players alike. As promised, we want to keep you updated on the game’s development progress, just to avoid any concerns that the game has been abandoned, given the radio silence over the past week.
After taking a short break to rest following the release and putting out a few hotfixes to address the most important issues we were encountering with the game, we’ve officially begun working on the first somewhat more substantial update. While this won’t be an update that completely changes the gameplay experience, we hope it will improve the experience for anyone wanting to play Insane Escape.
So, let’s take a look at what’s actually in the works.
What we’ve worked on
So Far With the next version of the game, 0.2, we’ve decided to focus first on improving the direct gameplay experience. The known issues we’ve listed in the Discussions section here on Steam should hopefully be fully resolved, with a few potential extras added if we discover more bugs during development.
This means that not only should you no longer need to restart the game multiple times just to get started, but as of version 0.2, controller support should be fully functional, including map navigation and flashlight rotation.
In the gif below, you can see how the character now smoothly rotates the flashlight in all directions using the controller. And—though you might not be able to tell just from a gif—we’ve also improved and refined this feature. Previously, tilting the right stick would let you rotate the flashlight in one direction or another, but now the rotation takes into account the intensity of the tilt, allowing for more precise control, much like what you’d get with mouse and keyboard. Exploring the St. Christina Asylum has never been easier.
(Sorry for the low framerate, unfortunately it's due to an issue with the capture software that we're trying to fix)
In addition, with the next update, we’ve also decided to add official support for controllers other than Microsoft’s, incorporating dynamic command prompts for Sony and Nintendo controllers. As you can see below, the game can now detect which device is connected in real time and update all command prompts accordingly. Of course, you could already play with those controllers, but now you’ll know exactly which buttons to press during gameplay. If you connect a controller not listed above, the game will simply default to Xbox prompts. If you have suggestions for improving controller support or specific layout requests, let us know, and we’ll consider implementing them in the game.
What’s "cooking"
Since this is a full-fledged update and not just a simple patch, we didn’t want to leave you with just a few fixes. Behind the scenes, we’re also working on new gameplay features, such as some improvements to the current enemies in the game. We’re also planning to add new puzzles and potentially new rooms to the map generation pool, to increase and improve the gameplay variety between runs and minimize the chances of freezing during map generation.
And who knows? We might even add a few more features while we’re at it.
So, if you feared that the recent radio silence was due to the project being abandoned, we hope this has reassured you. The reason you haven’t seen new patches is simply that we’ve been "cooking," as they say. Just give us a few more days to implement everything: we’ll likely release version 0.2 this week, or at the latest, next week.
Of course, version 0.2 will not be backward compatible. This means you won’t be able to load any saves made in version 0.1 due to the changes we’re making to map generation. So, if you’ve got a run in progress, now’s the time to finish it so you’re ready for the new update!
See you soon with the next devlog—or perhaps directly with the next update!
- The Development Team