Hi everyone! This is the first development roadmap update, where I’ll go over what’s next on the list and what you can expect in the coming months.
I plan to post updates like this regularly so you can stay informed about what’s being worked on. There’s always a lot to tackle, so I’ll focus on explaining why certain areas are being prioritized, whether due to importance, player impact, or quick wins that improve the experience right away.
Thank you to everyone who joined the Early Access so far! I’ve already received a ton of valuable feedback, and some design issues have come to light that I want to address before moving forward with new content and levels.
Current Issues
After watching many playthroughs, I noticed a consistent problem: players often don’t understand the non-linear structure of the levels. A lot of people leave the game thinking they’ve seen everything, even when several levels were still undiscovered, usually because they unknowingly took an alternate path and skipped a core level.
I thought the Journal would be enough to show players when they were missing content and where to look for extra exits, but most players were overlooking it.
I got the idea of making the game this way after seeing how the Backrooms wikis are laid out, and how the setting is explained with the prevalent feature of levels having many entrances and exits, and how other games dont use this fact, powered also by procedurally generated levels to leverage replayability of levels.
Seems like my assumption was wrong about how much this is a known fact, and seems like only hardcode backrooms fans appreciated this mechanic, but most people completely missed it and the result is a negative experience.
I'm still debating if this is still an interesting idea or if the normal linear level progression is what players expect and want, so I would love to hear more feedback on this!
I have ideas to improve this with better onboarding, more in game hints and a new objective to look for so you have a reason to try to explore at least most levels, or at least not end up closing the game thinking that was everything.
Also general game mechanics onboarding and accessibility can be improved a lot.
These issues are on me, I didn’t gather enough early feedback from a broader audience. Most of the early players were already familiar with Backrooms lore, so I wasn’t able to catch this problem early.
I have plans to address this, and it’s my top priority moving forward. I’m still listening closely to feedback, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
Planned Improvements
Here’s the list of changes and improvements you can expect in the coming months. I won’t begin working on new levels until these issues are addressed and the overall experience is more polished. I also want to add a few features that didn’t make it into the initial release, so once I move on to the next level, the core game is in a solid state to build on.
Top priority:
Improved Onboarding on Level Navigation
More in game hints
In game navigation map
New game start cinematic to explain the setting
New soft ending objective
Improved level navigation to avoid accidental dead ends
Improved general First Time User Experience
Improve Level 0 Puzzle
Also some Level 0 Enviroment enhancements are planned
Accesibility features (Disable motion blur, camera shake, adjustable fov, and other settings)
Also planned:
Inventory rework
Drop items feature
Lobby Browser
Later on: New Levels plan
Hopefully I can work through the points above quickly so I can move on to new levels, something the game is currently a bit short on.
The original plan for the 0.6 Update was to include three new levels: Level 3, Level 4, and Level 1.01. But instead of delaying the update until all of them are finished, I’ll work on them one at a time and release each level as soon as it’s ready, starting with Level 3. You will know more about this once I start its development.
Thanks for reading and for joining the Early Access phase of the game. Let me know what you think about these plans, and I hope you stick around for the upcoming updates!
As you know, most of these topics can be tracked on the Development Roadmap Trello, I will keep it updated.
- Augusto