Hey, Wonderers!

Today we start the last playtest before the public demo release. There are many things we have changed and improved, thanks for your feedback, and now we need a little help to test the technical stability of the game.

Major points in this playtest:

New voice chat system empowered by Dissonance Voice Chat

• You may expect better voice quality and better volume control

• Some enemies better at listening for player voices and now also listen for walkie-talkie sound

• Better voice transition between rooms

• New: Voice chat for deceased employees

New and reworked enemies

• Some enemies learned new attacks including (but not limited to) throwing, dashing, kicking

• New enemy: Messenger (Cherub) - we'll leave details out, go and find them yourselves. You'll find them primarily in bunker for now

• New enemy: Sandsoul (Alien tribesman) - could be found in dunes

• Reworked enemy: Reaper

• Reworked enemy: Soldier -> Scientist

New and reworked locations

• New location: Thrift store - we doubt you can miss it

• Reworked location: Dunes - you may need to visit this location multiple times across different expeditions, to uncover its secrets

• Reworked location: Offices - complete overhaul

• Minor rework: City with zombies - nothing too fancy, some retopology, some cleanup

• Minor rework: Rooftops - slight visual rework

New and improved quests

• New quest: Thrift store shift - no details, go figure it out yourselves

• Reworked quest: Rooftops antennas - antennas now a proper functional quest

Anomalies preview

• New anomaly mechanic: Tutorial anomaly

• New anomaly mechanic: Wendigo head

• New anomaly mechanic: Mystery box - for now as placeholder

• Minor anomaly changes: Rusted heart

• In future you may expect more anomalies mechanics replacing current placeholder anomalies

Minor points:

Optimizations

• Numerous networking optimizations - if you experience prolonged network disruptions during expedition, you should more reliably catch up with actual game state

• Numerous rendering optimizations - you may expect general FPS improvements. Still the most performance impacting feature is seamless doors. You may disable them in settings menu.

Localization

• New: Proper language system in main menu

• English localization pass (mainly regarding lore texts and different notes)

• Those who is not afraid of spoilers may find localization tables in 'ProjectDoors_Data\\StreamingAssets\\Tables\\' if you wish to rewrite some texts

• You may expect in few days support for languages: German, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean

Progression and tutorial rework

• Instead of enabling tutorial artifact to play tutorial - tutorial now starts if you have no major artifacts enabled

• Less quests spam during tutorial, all instruction are displayed on boards

• Bunker now enabled via artifact from tutorial instead of always enabled

Item reworks

• New bugged item: Turbine

• Reworked bugged item: Blue crystal - visual rework

• Reworked bugged item: Super dense cube - added functionality

• Reworked bugged item: Bouncing crowbar - added funny interaction

• Reworked common loot items: Rosary and Cross - we saw numerous people trying to use those items against particular enemies, so why not, why not add this particular interaction

• New shop item: Quota item detector - go and try it

Artifact reworks

• Added new artifact effects focused on changing gameplay

• (i.e. shuffling door connections, shuffling enemies locations, revealing map or changing movement)

• Toned down % effects of existing effects (It's still possible to get summ -99% to enemy damage, but you'll need to grind more artifacts)

Out of bounds gameplay limitations (OOB)

• We still dont know how to gracefully limit you all guys to a playable space, but, atleast for now, instead of outright killing you in some places we summon entity to catch you for us

And many many bug fixes, too numerous to remember, too numerous to count

If you didn’t get into this playtest – don’t worry, our next step after this one is to release a public demo, in which everyone can participate!

Don’t hesitate to join our Discord community and share your thoughts there.

And as always…

Don’t count your chickens doors before Grungler hatches.