Hello again! Can you believe 2 weeks have flown by already? And WOW what an amazing 2 weeks it’s been. We’re absolutely thrilled with the community’s reception of Eastward and delighted that so many of you have already embarked on this weird and wonderful adventure with Sam and John. Thanks to each and every one of you who have supported the team at Pixpil and picked up a copy of Eastward - it means the world. Alright, gooey bit over.
Patches on the Horizon
We wanted to quickly address the current known bugs that the team is working on fixing. We appreciate those who took the time to send us reports, feedback and information on the Steam Forums, Discord, Reddit and everywhere else. Pixpil are currently working on a larger patch which will address a number of the bigger issues:
- Launching & black screen issues
- General data-leak crashes
- Cursor getting stuck
- Earthborn menu locks
- Offline mode support
- Rendering / fps issues with Xbox controllers
- John & Sam entering ‘out-of-bounds’ areas
- + other reported higher priority bugs
Switch-specific Bug:
- Friendly Spendie & King Krab shop softlocks
We’ve noticed a few players commenting about features which are already in the game, such as text speed options, so please check the in-game menu settings posting change requests! Several bugs and feature changes have already been resolved in post-launch patches, full Version History and patch notes can be found on the Official Eastward Wiki.
As we’re a small team we can’t always reply to every post, but we do read them all! If you’re a Nintendo Switch player, you may see patches release a few days later than on Steam due to the longer submission process, but rest assured they are in the works and on their way!
QoL Updates
Following some important bug fixes, we will be moving on to QoL (quality of life) updates. So far we’re looking at adding the following features based on your community feedback:
- Higher resolution menu UI
- Sharper resolution for enlarged scaling output
- Fast-travelling in town areas (via the Map). Please note this will take some time to test to ensure players don’t miss important story triggers.
- Chapter Select for New Game+ for players who want to get all optional elements!
- Earthborn to be playable from the menu once player has completed the Main Story
- PlayStation controller UI
- Other minor tweaks such as more Salt drops
We can’t give an estimation of how long each of these features will take, as all will need thorough testing and localisation, but we will let you know how they’re coming along. If you have any other suggestions, please post them on the Steam Forums or the Eastward subreddit which we check regularly.
Another hotly requested update from the community is of course more localisation support for Eastward! Now that the game is out we will be reviewing the demand before we confirm which additional languages will be added. As Eastward is a story-based game, there’s a lot of text to be translated (approx 143,000 words) so please be patient as adding further language support may take some time to ensure high quality!
Finally, we wanted to briefly address the comments around the game’s resolution. While Eastward is a pixel art game, it’s not actually 2D at all, but in fact 3D with a 2D perspective! It’s how the Pixpil dev team has been able to achieve such a unique atmosphere, with the addition of shader textures and lighting systems in their custom engine. You might notice when you play layers of fog, or brilliant sunbeams casting down on the landscape at various points throughout the game day. Each pixel and bespoke lighting detail was handcrafted and took a lot of time to create, but we think our players appreciate the small things!
While Eastward is natively a 720p output, a baseline the dev team decided on early in the process, because of the intricate lighting techniques it can’t be simply ‘scaled up’ easily in a standard ratio like other pixel games. As mentioned we are also currently working on a patch to add a higher-res UI and a sharper resolution for larger outputs, which we hope will please the PC player community!
Glimmer - OST Track
We know many of you have been enjoying bopping along to Joel Corelitz’s awesome soundtrack as you discover more of the wide world of Eastward, so here’s another music video for you - Glimmer!
https://youtu.be/e0DhUYABgn0
You can pick up the whole soundtrack here on Steam, or over on Joel’s Bandcamp.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586600/Eastward_Soundtrack/
More Lovely Fan Art!
We’ve loved seeing how much wonderful fanart has been shared in the past few days - here’s some more of our favourites~
By Ksoja
By DEL('-'*)
By Onion_Shuji
That’s all for now. If you haven’t already come and join the community discussion over on our Discord or Reddit, and follow us on Twitter for more Chucklefish gaming news.
Until next time!