Updates have been more sporadic as I am taking a summer break, however they will resume their regular cadence soon.
Office Redesign
The Arque office has had an interior redesign by Lyall, with new rooms added and more elements to explore. There’s more work to do as will all levels, but these changes make the level feel a lot more immersive, and convey the scale of Arque’s operations.
The range section has also been removed, because although this section was fun, it didn’t fit well with the overall pacing of the game, and provided the weapon a little earlier than it was really needed.
The range is still available from the Extras menu, if you would like to practise your shooting skills.
Weapon Changes
We got a lot of feedback about how the weapon ammunition system should work – namely that reloading the weapon should not remove the bullets you currently have, it should instead take the ammo from your inventory and fill up the current clip.
That change has now been made, making the implementation closer to Act I’s. The HUD’s secondary ammo account now displays the total bullets in your inventory, much closer to how this works in other games.
Flashlight Changes
The flashlight is now a lot brighter, using a different attenuation method and the battery lasts for 2x as long.
A lot of feedback has focussed on how much of a chore it is to collect batteries and retain the flashlight charge, so this change should strike a better balance between the survival mechanic and play difficulty.
Feedback
I would like to thank everyone for contributing their feedback, either via email, the forums, or in-game.
We also appreciate those who have reviewed Estranged on the Steam store – to those that haven’t, if you like Estranged, help others discover it by leaving us a review.
The Early Access feedback process is an incredibly valuable tool for a hoteam the size of ours (3 people!), and getting as many people playing as possible is a great help for us.
Thank you all for playing,
Alan