This DevNotes, Syd, Chris, E Man and Jeff are wishing you a Happy New Year, a Happy Lunar New Year, and letting you in on all the exciting things coming in 2023. We're talking Valentine's, monster gameplay changes, and new limited movies!
Happy New Year!
Huge congratulations to you for completing our first ever community challenge! The Video Horror Society put over 450k ornaments on the Communitree, beating our 3 tier goals with days to spare! How’s that for Holiday spirit?!
We know some players who participated in the challenge after the final goal was met weren’t able to collect the rewards. If that sounds like you, please reach out at [email protected] and we will do our best to get you those rewards!
Overall our Video Holiday Special was a huge success and we learned a lot so stay tuned for future community challenges.
Happy Lunar New Year!
We also celebrated Lunar New Year last weekend! Hope you had a chance to check out our Lucky Lunar Collection:
- Lunar Lady Set
- Year of the Rabbit costume
- Men’s Crimson Changshan
- WART Fortune Dragon
Gameplay Updates
At the studio, our current focus is on making Video Horror Society more accessible and creating a more engaging onboarding experience for new players. Here’s what we’re working on:
Dynamic Bounties coming in February!
Get ready for even better bounties! Our current fixed bounty system awards a flux bonus to monster players to help speed up queue times and encourage more players to try the role.
- The new Dynamic Bounty system will use live matchmaking data plus individual player skill ratings to award the highest flux to roles that will result in the fastest queue time.
- That means bounties will change dynamically to get you the maximum bonus flux AND faster queues. Score!
Quick Matchmaking game mode
Want to skip the line with the fastest possible queue time? Try the new Quick Matchmaking game mode! Quick Matchmaking uses our new Dynamic Bounty system to automatically select the monster or teen in highest demand to get you in a game as fast as possible. Plus, you'll get the maximum flux bonus for playing the role our community needs most. Fast forward your queue now!
Also coming in February: Hints & Tips!
Want to take your play to the next level? Try tips! Whether you're a teen player or monster main, our new tip system is designed to give you situation-specific tips right when you need them.
- This will be our first iteration of tips and we are looking forward to getting your feedback on how it works and where to improve.
Danger Sense in testing!
We’ve had lots of questions about how we’re combatting monster ambushes and we are currently testing a promising new solution: Danger Sense!
- After experimenting with audio cues like ambient weapon noise, we found that adding more to the soundscape felt overwhelming, cluttered and inaccessible for impaired players.
- Danger Sense is a visual cue similar to the coloured vignette Dollmaster sees when his body is threatened. When an armed teen is within 15 meters of the monster, their targeting reticle will visibly change, warning them of a potential ambush.
- It’s a big change but we’ve found in our internal playtests that it works really well in balancing the teen and monster experience: it doesn't indicate the direction of danger and feels a lot like the tension loop teens hear when the monster is near!
- We are excited to hear your feedback as soon as Danger Sense is added to the game!
Performance Optimization
We’re always listening to your feedback on game performance and are already in the testing phase of some optimization changes to make things run more smoothly. Look forward to better framerates soon.
Valentine's Day!
Love is almost in the air. Get ready for our Valentine’s event on Feb 10th!
- Lovely login rewards
- An all new store rotation of cosmetics de cœur
- FREE limited Valentine’s movie straight from Faith’s diary! Be sure to read the lore and reap the exclusive rewards when My Furever Love is sucked into The Beyond next month!
New Limited Movies
Video Video Video is now offering a FREE limited edition movie rental every second Tuesday! That’s right, a brand new movie, or returning fan favorite, will be available to play every 2 weeks.
Rental about to expire and you’re not done with your movie? Soon you’ll be able to buy a copy of your own! Purchase the collectors edition and get unlimited time to complete the movie at your leisure PLUS get an exclusive cosmetic that auto unlocks on Day 1. Of course you’ll always have time to play through movies for free first!
Coming spoon to a limited movie near you: Team Wolf, Enter the Eviscerator, Cyberwulf, and WART X!
Best of 2022
We asked you what cosmetics you missed in 2022 and we listened! Get ready for all your favs to return in 2023. Keep an eye on the daily rotation for fan favorites as soon as this week all the way into March! Look forward to seeing Best of Bundles in the near future.
Some Final Community Questions
- Anomaly when? We’re aiming to have The Anomaly playable in the main game for March!
- Did Kenzo get better at fire bombs? No. But he’s better than Tech.
- Is a roadmap coming soon? Lots of changes are in the works for Early Access but we would like to have a roadmap ready for you soon.
- Is VHS coming to console? We would love to come to console and have plans to do so long term. Just need a bigger team with more resources!
- More Rewinders soon? We have a shortlist of creators that we are in the process of vetting right now! Expect a new wave of Rewinders spoon!
Thanks everyone for your support moving into 2023! See you next DevNotes :)