Today we’re diving into how we’ve completely overhauled the save system for the new game. After the release of Static Dread: The Lighthouse, the very first technical issue we wanted to revisit for our new game was the save system.
In The Lighthouse, saving only happened at the beginning of the night. There were too many dynamic systems in the game, and it was too difficult to save and load them all in the right order so that one thing didn't break another. As a result, each shift was a challenge for the player, which had to be completed in one go without the right to make mistakes.
The Submarine is much more focused on the story and dialogue, so we made the save system more flexible to respect the player's time and avoid having to go through the same dialogue several times or interrupting at the right moment:
You can now save your progress yourself. Special consoles are installed in different parts of the submarine – by reporting to the captain, you can save your progress. This allows you to avoid going through the same dialogues several times and to interrupt at any convenient moment.
We have switched to a new binary data recording format. Thanks to this, save files are now much smaller, and loading speed has increased significantly.
The main menu now clearly separates manual and auto saves so you always know what progress you are loading.
As before, the game fully supports Steam Cloud – you can start playing on your computer and continue on Steam Deck or Steam Machine.
In addition, we are currently working on making your saves compatible between different versions of the game. Our goal is to ensure that after the full version is released, you can continue playing from exactly where you left off in the demo or playtest.
For us, the save system is not just a technical detail, but the foundation of your immersion in the story. It must be fast, reliable, and unobtrusive. See you on the submarine!