Greetings, esteemed Steam community! We hope you're off to a terrific 2019! As promised, we come bearing a series of exciting news from the sinister corridors of ASYLUM (and of course eye candy, because we know you love it).
Here we go!
STATUS UPDATE... AND POSSIBLE RELEASE!
Things are progressing speedy and smoothly, so we feel comfortable to disclose our plans. To recap, since December hundreds of Kickstarter backers have been playing a good chunk of the game with overwhelmingly positive reactions. We can confirm ASYLUM is performing great and no major issues have shown their ugly face. Even better, we seem to have hit a stride, meeting milestone after milestone: we're wrapping up an even larger segment of the game now, and expecting to hit beta around May.
A beta in May means our goal to release the game later this year is doable. We're not officially confirming this yet, but you'll be the first to know. So this is really happening after all this time, and we couldn't thank you enough for your understanding and support! ASYLUM is exactly the kind of game we wanted to make, and the follow-up we just know fans of Scratches will love 👌
WISHLIST LOVE
And speaking of support, wow... We're now at a whooping 23K wishlists milestone, and it feels 30K may be just around the corner.
This is all very, very exciting! For reference, only the top and most highly anticipated games in all Steam reach 50K and beyond. It's an ambitious goal, but what if we can make it? What if?! 🤞
CREEPINESS
We're thrilled (so to speak) to have wrapped up work in one of the scariest environments of the game, the High Risk corridor where the most dangerous inmates are kept, fondly referred to as the "Tunnel of the Damned". And yet, it's not even one of the top 5 scariest locations you'll find 😮
For now we'll keep working on this lovely basement concealing dark secrets. Yes, of course there was going to be basement in the game!
We've also prepared some charming night scenes for you. There's people who swear they see hidden scary faces in this gloomy sky, but we did nothing of the sort (at least not yet):
And since we can't get enough GIFs, let us show you the kind of visual trickery we're doing to maintain that old school adventure tone and feel in ASYLUM:
Yes, that's cute... but what if we told you the record, arm and knob are the only 3D elements in this scene? Just think about it: the whole background and turntable are FLAT 😮
A MOCAP INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT
Finally, we got access to a fairly pro MOCAP installation in Buenos Aires yesterday and did some tests for the game. If this works out, the amount of work for remaining animations we need to do will be dramatically reduced!
It would be quite exciting if we can include this technology in the game. Not that our handmade animations are bad, mind you, but this would certainly make our lives much easier. It's pretty fun, too!
THE END... OR IS IT?
Of course not, there's lots more coming, but we're concluding this update for now. We hope you enjoyed it, and let us know in the comments if you have any questions. We're thrilled that things are progressing so well, and we honestly can't wait to see you finally playing ASYLUM!
Have a spooky weekend 👻