Hello Citizens!
With our last devlog of the year, we want to wish you happy holidays and tell you briefly what 2022 meant for Strelka and Hell is Others.
Although we published the game at the end of October, as you probably know, proper game development starts way sooner: it is a process that evolves in years and years of conceptualization, experiments, tests, and hypotheses on how the game will develop, how to communicate it, how to design it, and how to make it possible. With Hell is Others, we embarked on an incredibly complex project, both for the size of our team and the ambition of the game.
One of our favorite moments this year was our ravenous reading of your reviews, both in the form of community posts and as feedback from content creators: comments were generally positive, and this gave us courage and confidence for the future. Of course, we also had some criticism, but they were constructive and allowed us to improve.
It has made us proud to read the beautiful words you have dedicated to Hell is Others, whether they were about its artistic direction or the originality of its inspirations.
But all this is in the past. The future of Hell is Others still holds many surprises, and we want to use this space to offer you a small window into some of these novelties. Some are already in the works, others are in discussion, and others are more desires or ambitions than concrete future steps of the game. But all of them have one point in common: continuing to improve Century City with you.
We are working on a series of improvements that can raise the quality of life of all citizens of Century City. First, we know it’s a long-demanded change from the community, so we will tell you right away that we’re dividing solo and duo matchmaking!
Also, the user interface will receive some minor changes, with modifications in durability, ATM, character credit, and more. We will also make the house editor more dynamic, with the ability to replace the sofa and change objects faster.
We are working on an even more complex and rich PVE: we are thinking of “winged enemies” deadlier than ever, Things that actively hunt you throughout the city.
Our goal is to make it increasingly difficult for you to distinguish one Thing from an Other.
There are other ideas that we are working on, such as new types of fertilizers and mushrooms that guarantee new perks, but right now they are not our immediate focus.
We would also like to place Hell is Others on a public platform where the community can help crowd-source the translations: we will moderate it, to ensure it is correct and without any alteration of the lore. Our goal is to add as many languages as possible, and we would like to welcome those wishing to participate in the expansion of Century City!
There are some ideas that are still very far from the concrete, but we have created this space (the devlog) to share with you some of the processes of Hell is Other's development.
We will mention just a few concepts, just to make your imagination fly and to test our ambitions: calibers of weapons, keys to access special zones and crates, and critical shots based on skills. We'll leave it at that for the moment.
We have a lot of news planned for Hell is Others, and we want to share it with you as soon as possible. In the meantime, remember to take advantage of the current discount on the Steam store (until January 5th!) to invite your friends to play through the referral program, and to check the official discord to attend community events!
Happy New Year, citizens!