Hello!
As we said in a previous post, we are hard at work on the finalization of the Early Access release of Panoptic. As we are reaching the end of that task, we find ourselves in dire need of some more preliminary testing and feedback.
To this end, we have prepared a brand new demo version for you all to try.
What's new?
First is the exciting part: there are a lot of new elements in this demo, which comes from an almost complete reworking of the game. We want to give you a few highlights:
- A brand new map (one-third of an actual level from the upcoming release)
- Multiple objectives to reach for the Challenger!
- A refined graphical style.
- A new (optional) locomotion system for the Overseer, for smaller or less mobile players, or if your play area is not big enough.
- For the Challenger, a new ability to mimic the actions performed by NPCs in certain spots, to better blend in with them..
- As the Challenger, be careful of falling from too high, as you will lose your balance and get stunned!
- A new, dynamic music track that changes as the Challenger progresses through the level.
- And a whole lot of other improvements!
And all of this is of course not the full extent of what will be featured in the initial Early Access release.
Why do a beta for a new demo?
The goal here is to make sure that our wide-ranging code rewrites and improvements work on as many configurations as possible. As a three-person studio, it is hard to gather a lot of data regarding different hardware configurations and compatibility. Thus, we thought that reaching out to the community was the best way to help make sure that as much as possible is in order, before moving forward with the actual Early Access release. And in the process, you get an even earlier peek at what is coming, especially after such a long silence from us!
One of the main sticking points for a VR game is performance, and so we are particularly interested in knowing if the game runs smoothly for you, and whether it does or not, what kind of setup you are running the game on.
We have already been extensively testing the game as it is now, and tried our very best to make it as robust as possible. We did end up recently encountering some issues, due to a specific Unity (game engine) bug. While that bug is being worked on by Unity as we speak, we have in the meantime replaced a lot of Panoptic's special effects at the last minute. Which means that, as with everything else in this version, things may be subject to change even before properly entering Early Access.
Even at this early stage, we would like to ask for your help to find what we should tweak. And things are bound to have slipped by, so we do expect game-breaking bugs to rear their ugly heads. Again, the goal of this Demo Beta is to put the game through its paces, and your help will be highly appreciated! Creating a game true to our vision is of course important to us, but an even better achievement would to make the game the closest to what you, the players, would feel is the best version.
We think it will greatly help to have a more direct way for us to interact with the community, especially for this beta demo and the continued development of the game. We invite you to join our brand new Discord server to chat with us and other fans!
This was a long post, but there was a lot to cover. We hope you will enjoy what we have been working on so hard, and the only thing left is to give you the instructions to get your hands on that beta demo!
How to get the beta demo
- Step 1 : In your Steam Library, right-click on the Panoptic Demo entry, and in the menu, select Properties.
- Step 2 : In the window that opened, navigate to the BETAS tab, and from the "Select the beta you would like to opt into:" dropdown, select Early Access Demo Beta. You do not need any password to access this branch.
- Step 3 : The build should update automatically, and you can see that in your library, the Panoptic Demo entry now has
[earlyaccessbeta]behind it. - Step 4 : Enjoy the new version of the demo, and hop over to [link to thread] to give us feedback or anything goes awry!
Thanks in advance for your help!
-Team Panoptes