(I tried keeping it short I swear)
Heyho PANICORE enjoyers! 📢
1.4 is live. This is the biggest update we've ever pushed, and most of it went into the two things you've complained about the longest: the entity AI and the voice chat. Both were rewritten from scratch, not patched. With this update, we're preparing things for two more planned major updates.
The highlights:
New entity AI. Rewritten from scratch. The entities behave sharper and far more consistent: better at reading their surroundings, better at staying on you, and each with its own way of perceiving the world. Every difficulty step now hits harder
New voice chat. Teammates sound muffled through walls, carry around corners and pick up reverb in large rooms. This is our take at making the voice chat sound as realistic as it can. Half the bandwidth, and it holds together on a bad connection
Walkie talkies. Transmit every voice around them to anyone on the same channel. Entities hear them too, so a radio in your pocket is a liability and one on the floor is a decoy, but only once. After an entity checks it and finds nobody, that radio never fools it again
The PANIC-meter. Your character's panic is now visible and reacts to what's happening around you, heartbeat included. PANIC is not just a word, it's a feeling now
Full controller support. The entire game, menus and typing included, plus a dance wheel and an item wheel
Results table. Every win now ends on map, difficulty, run time, files found and who got out when. Times are millisecond exact
Dead players get their own voice channel, and anyone alive near your body can hear you
Lobbies up to 10 players if the host unlocks them. The game is built for 1 to 5, so it sits behind a warning
Purchases can't vanish anymore. If you ever lost a map you paid for and got charged again, that's fixed: a purchase now confirms your save was really written before it takes any money, and damaged saves get restored from a backup
Reworked the in-game HUD and menus so the whole game shares one consistent style
Full patch notes are at the bottom, and there are a lot more fixes in there.
We're also changing how we communicate updates.
We've given you time windows in the past and missed them, over and over. That's on us. The reason is simple: we're two people, and we never really know how long testing takes until we're sure that everything works. So from now on we won't give you dates anymore: we'll tell you what state something is in instead. "In beta", "going live once the reports stop coming in", "in development". No more "1-2 weeks" that turns into two months. We'd rather say less than promise something we can't hold.
On top of that, this year has been rough for us privately, which slowed things down more than we would have liked. We won't go into details, but thank you for your patience.
The new map
All this being said, PANICORE's new map is only missing escapes & thorough testing. We will keep you up to date on this in the upcoming days/weeks.
The legacy branch
We know a rewrite this big can break things we didn't catch. So we're keeping the old version available:
Steam Library → right click PANICORE → Properties → Betas → "1.3-legacy"
No password needed
If 1.4 causes problems for you, you can go back instead of being stuck.
⚠️ Important: everyone in your group has to be on the same branch. A player on 1.3-legacy can't join a 1.4 lobby (and the other way around). If you suddenly can't join your friends, check this first!
The next few days
We'll be watching bug reports closely and patching fast. If something's broken, tell us here in the Discussions or on our Discord. The more precise, the better (what happened, which map, how many players, were you the host/client).
Thank you for sticking with us through the wait. The new map is next, and after that there's something bigger coming that we're really excited about.
Have fun and happy horrors! 👻
Your two brothers at ZTEK Studio
Panicore Release Version 1.4
Additions:
Voice & communication
Added realistic voice acoustics: teammates now sound muffled through walls, carry around corners and pick up reverb in large rooms
Added a walkie talkie item that transmits all voices around it to other walkie talkies on the same channel
Entities hear walkie talkies too: a radio going off in your pocket brings them to you, and one dropped on the floor makes a decent decoy — but only once. After an entity checks it and finds nobody, that radio never fools it again
Added a Toggle microphone mode: press your talk key once to open your mic, press it again to mute (Settings > Voice Chat > Microphone Mode)
Added a microphone indicator to the HUD so you can always see whether your mic is closed, open, or actually being heard
Added a talking indicator above players' heads, so you can see who's speaking near you
Dead players get their own voice channel, and anyone alive near your body can hear you
Information & HUD
Added a player status list showing every teammate's state at a glance: alive, hiding, in a chase, grabbed, downed, dead, escaped or disconnected, including who's talking right now and whose walkie talkie is playing. On PAINCORE and above most of it shows as "???" on purpose
Added on-screen messages when a teammate escapes, leaves, or rejoins after a disconnect
Added the PANIC-meter that reacts to monsters and visualizes the panic your character is experiencing
Winning a round now ends on a results table: map, difficulty, run time, files found, and who got out when
The tab overview now shows the round timer
The lobby now shows the selected map on screen
Controller support
Full controller support, the whole game can be played on a pad, menus and typing included
Added a dance wheel, hold X on keyboard or D-Pad Right on a controller to pick an emote or open the chat
Added an item wheel on controller, hold D-Pad Up to pick, tap left or right to switch items quickly
Lobby & gameplay
Hosts can now unlock lobbies of up to 10 players in the host menu. The game is designed for 1 to 5, so larger groups sit behind a warning and can be locked back down at any time
Camping an unreachable ledge is no longer a free safe room. Once an entity gives up on reaching you it starts "screeching" at you from below instead, and every screech leaves you drifting for a few seconds which will sooner or later result in falling to the entity's feet
Changes:
Voice chat
Replaced the proximity voice chat with a new in-house voice system for clearer, lower-latency communication
Voice chat holds together on a bad connection instead of breaking apart
Voice chat uses about half the bandwidth for the same speech
The voice meter now marks your loudest recent moment, so you can see how far a shout just carried
Entity behaviour
Overhauled the entity behaviour for smarter, fairer hunting, searching and reactions across the board
Improved entity memory and searching: entities track your last known position and sweep the area you fled to, including nearby hiding spots, instead of giving up early
Improved how entities react to sound (footsteps, doors, dropped items, breaking glass and nearby voice chat)
Entities now move with real purpose when a noise pulls them in, instead of shuffling toward it and arriving long after you left. Making noise is more dangerous now
Entities now judge muffled sound properly: a desk, a railing or a console between you and them barely dulls a scream, while a real wall still swallows it. Hiding behind furniture is no longer as good as hiding behind a wall
Improved entity target selection so they commit to the most exposed player instead of whoever was noticed first
Balancing
Difficulty now also changes how far entities can hear, not only how well they pick out a faint sound. Each difficulty has a much stronger effect on sight, hearing, persistence, search and movement speed
Hospital entity: chase speed raised on PAINCORE and PAINCORE+ where it now gains on you, still outrunnable on Easy, Medium and Hard. Its seeking speed has been lowered, it used to move faster while investigating a noise than while chasing you
Submarine entity: seeking speed lowered for the same reason
School entity: hearing range reduced and walls muffle a lot more. It no longer starts hunting from a noise alone, it comes to investigate first and only hunts once it finds you
Movement & noise
How loudly you use a door is now up to you: sprint through and you slam it and anything nearby comes to look, walk and it is an ordinary clatter, crouch and it is barely a sound. Hiding spot doors stay silent, so slipping into a locker never gives you away
Interface & quality of life
Rebuilt the lobby computer
Reworked the in-game HUD
Unselected inventory slots are dimmed, so the item you are actually holding is obvious at a glance
The intro video can be skipped now
Dance key now plays the dance you picked in the wheel instead of cycling to the next one
Readying up in the lobby now uses a single tool on the wall instead of one per player, so it never runs out however large the group gets
Recoloured the submarine's code keyboard and its colour hint tables: the keys now glow in bright, clearly distinguishable colours that cut through the submarine's murky filter, and both always match exactly
Your shop save now keeps a backup copy, so your purchases can be recovered if the save is ever damaged
More of the game is translated, the newly written menu and interactable text is now filled in across all 32 languages
Bugfixes:
Purchases & saves
Fixed a bug where a map you had bought could be lost again and charged for a second time, a purchase now confirms your save was really written before it takes any money
Fixed a bug where a skin could be paid for and then be gone on the next launch
Fixed a bug where a damaged save file would permanently show everything you owned as unbought, it is now restored from its backup or rebuilt from scratch
Fixed a bug where maps bought from the in-game pause menu did not cost anything
Voice chat
Fixed broken voice, snapping teammates and lagging animations: matches ran on a fraction of the bandwidth they need
Fixed one player's voice arriving chopped up for everyone else whenever their game stuttered
Fixed a bug where a talking teammate's voice would trail behind them while they moved
Fixed a bug where the voice chat volume slider did not match the actual volume or mute state
Fixed a bug where the voice chat settings showed an unusable input-device option and an incorrect ON/OFF label
Fixed a bug where plugging in or freeing up your microphone mid-match would leave you mute for the rest of the round
Entities
Fixed a bug where entities could see you through closed doors
Fixed a bug where entities would be confused when you stand on a table or anything else that elevates you
Rounds & lobby
Fixed the round ending while somebody was still alive
Fixed a teammate who escaped and quit early taking the win with them
Fixed being offered Restart after a round your group had won
Fixed the round timer running on after the round was over
Fixed the black screen of several seconds at the end of a round
Fixed the map you just lost on loading itself again back in the lobby
Fixed not being able to revive a teammate buried under their own dropped items
Fixed a bug where clients could not leave the game
Fixed a bug where quitting to the lobby from a running game hung on an endless loading screen
Fixed a bug where the lobby could hang forever on a start if level loading never finished
Interface
Fixed a bug where the tab overview screen would break while downed or spectating
Fixed players who joined after you turned nametags off still showing one
Fixed nametags covering chat messages
Fixed a bug where lobby computers and other interactive screens ignored your clicks when you stood too close
Fixed a bug where the server browser's hover highlight turned row text dark red on black and unreadable
Fixed a bug where connection errors and "no sessions found" messages appeared hidden behind the server list instead of in front of it
Fixed Snowbound showing the previously selected map's name in the lobby instead of its own
Some text was too small to read, the build number and the lobby buttons are bigger now
Low oxygen mode is now translated instead of showing in English in every language