Hello everyone!
We're sorry for the month of silence, but we really wanted to take stock, reflect, and carefully consider how to move forward and what specifically to address. We mostly have good news for the patch, but want to give some bad news first. Without getting too into the issue, despite our best efforts we were left with no choice but to part ways with our coder, this unfortunately means that the only fixes and additions we could make over all were visual, lore, or minor adjustments or iterations to what we have. Adding combat, new features, drastically changing enemy behavior, is simply not possible. The good news is we aren't quitters and we pretty immediately made moves to find a new coder so that we can rebuild a much better, more versatile, and better optimized way to continue making games going forward. We are very excited to get back to work, and are hopeful on our current prospects!
All that out of the way, we spent a few weeks planning out what to add and how given our limitations, and the rest of the time working our butts off to add it all in. I believe, though small, the new content brings the game to a much better and more "complete" feel. We are very excited to see the feedback and hope that anyone disappointed gives the game another chance! We are presently working on some final new elements we will outline below while we wait for the localization files. We are still on track for a release of this patch just in time for Halloween! We are calling this patch 2.0, and are heavily and carefully testing for bugs and errors, that said if any missed bugs arise from this new patch we will work to address them as soon as we can! We expect to push the update by next Friday Oct 21!
Side note - The new content of the game adds roughly 30 minutes of additional gameplay!
FIXES
- Various minor bug improvements throughout the game
- visual improvements to several cutscenes, including elements that were broken or not rendering properly.
- Fixed a bug causing several shinrei shashin to be triggerable in the wrong place, but not capturable. These will no longer trigger unless in the "hot zone".
- Fixed an issue where several cutscenes would cue improperly causing camera jumps, assets appearing before fade in/out.
- adjusted several interactions that could be started/ended at odd times, which caused odd behaviors on rare occasions.
- improvements and fixes to several meshes, textures and visuals.
COMPLETED AND IMPLEMENTED ADDITIONS
- A New area has been added to the game, not only requiring an item puzzle to access, but adds lore, interactions, a cutscene and it's own puzzle within.
- A second shortcut has been added which also requires a new item to use, but adds additional lore, interactions, a cutscene, and enables a new enemy.
- The new enemy type is unique, uses pre-established lore, and adds to that story.
- Added a new jibakurei type - "Crimson Jibakurei", these are 3x faster than standard jibakurei and can see the player from further away.
- Kaho now has a drone called "Teru Teru Robo", acting as another indicator for shinrei shashin zones, and adding some clearer visual logic to the lore/storytelling.
- We've added a few elements to the park to add more "SOUL". Many of these items were concepted out a long time ago and were dropped for a number of reasons, but we decided that the unique visual identity of the game needed to be pushed a bit more.
- Added more dialogue throughout the game for better characterization of Kaho's friends.
- The New Game + ending cutscene is now the "Good ending", and can be accessed in your first playthrough by completing the newly added sections of the game before escaping the park. .
- Several new scares!
- Changed the logic for several interactions and shinrei shashin in order to facilitate the new additions.
IN PROGRESS ADDITIONS (may not be able to implement, but are trying to get in before next weekend!)
- Okiku will have a "second form" accessed at a certain part of the game. Though the visual changes are minor, she will be faster, more aggressive and her attack hurt box will be wider. Dodging this form will be more difficult, so holding on to your magatama will be more important.
- Okiku will also be force spawned close to the player in several more interactions, adding to the tension and moment to moment gameplay.
- Signs of centipede infestation will be more obvious and apparent for lore.
- If time permits we are working on re-animating parts of the ending cutscene, though this is the most unlikely addition.
- Additional visual improvements and mesh reworks.
We can't express how thankful we are for the support we've received so far, and are doing everything we can to bring Midnight up to a better level. Though we are pretty upset that we won't be able to do much more than polish the elements we have, we are putting every bit of juice we have left into Midnight ver2.0 and are keeping ALL of the feedback we've received but cannot address for our next title.