Responding to Demo Feedback + News
Hello everyone, this is my first proper post on Steam. Apologies for the lack of a communication on here, in case you didn't know I'm a one man team apart from my friend, Jake, who handles sound & music for the game. Sometimes my management duties get ahead of me but I plan to make up for it as we approach launch, so look out for more posts!
In this post I wanted to respond to feedback for the demo and talk about the road to launch.
I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who tested the demo, so far 6000+ people have played the demo on Steam. A lot of you also took the time to share feedback on the demo, which I will be addressing major points here, so let's dive in!
Scroll to the end if you want a summary of the game updates.
Responding to Demo Feedback
Rebinding Keyboard Controls
First off, a lot of people mentioned not being able to rebind keyboard controls, you can rebind controls, but unfortunately it wasn't clearly communicated how to do so. You can rebind controls by pressing the "enter" key, then choosing the key you wish to rebind to. It also features smart rebinding so it will automatically swap binds if a key has already been bound to something else. I will make sure it tells you this in the menu to alleviate the confusion.
Game Balance (Health, Ammo, and Combat)
Next on the list of feedback is balance in terms of health, ammo, and combat.
A common issue people brought up was that the game is unforgiving and in certain situations impossible because of lack of health. I had always envisioned a game where people who were struggling to progress could farm easier enemies to level up and gain max health. But I've come to realize the current risk vs reward of farming enemies is just not worth it. So to address this issue, at launch the game will have health perks you unlock as you level up to make progression easier and more rewarding. In the future I may also add perks that affect other parts of gameplay, but for now I want to keep perk scope small leading up to launch.
Another issue players faced was lack of ammo, since basic enemies respawn every time you re-enter a section of the world, ammo quickly becomes scarce when exploring. To fix this issue, enemies will now have a chance to drop ammo on death, the harder the enemy, the higher the chance of ammo. This will allow less experienced players to kill easier enemies in order to gear up for boss fights and exploration.
Lastly when it comes to balance is combat, most notably enemy attack animations and health. Players have mentioned that some of the enemies in the game are unbalanced and hard to fight, the worst offender being the Gravekeeper. To address this issue, I will be updating certain enemies attack animations with more windup frames to better telegraph attacks, and in contrast these attacks will do more damage. Making dodging easier but more detrimental if you fail. I will also be reevaluating basic stats for all the enemies to make sure the difficulty progression throughout the game is more steady.
Saving
Another problem mentioned by players is that in certain boss rooms, the doors become locked and you cannot progress further because the game saved when you were low on health. All boss rooms will now let you leave them at any time if you are not engaged with the boss. Players also mentioned the items/weapons they equipped and upgraded before fighting bosses would not save, now if there are no enemies present in your current room the game will save after you make changes in the inventory. The game will also clearly communicate that boss rooms are a no save zone, so if you want to make changes in your inventory you must do so outside.
Window Resolutions
Next up, players have had issues when the game launches larger than their monitor resolution and they are unable to change the game to fullscreen. The game will now feature a broad range of support for resolutions and will launch in the smallest windowed mode if the game can't auto detect your resolution.
Summary of Changes
The issues mentioned above were the most common when I read feedback for the demo, I plan to address all of them for the final version. Below is a summary of changes I've made to the game since the demo launched.
- Keys are rebindable but this was not clearly communicated in the menu before.
- Health perks can be unlocked to balance progression and make gameplay more rewarding.
- Enemies will now have a chance to drop ammo on death in order to gear up for boss fights and exploration.
- Certain enemy animations will be updated to make attacks telegraph better.
- All enemy base stats will be rebalanced.
- Boss rooms will now let you leave if you are not engaged with the boss allowing you to escape unfavorable situations.
- Inventory will now save changes anytime if no enemies are present.
- Boss rooms now clearly communicate that saving is not allowed in them until the boss is defeated.
- More resolutions have been added and better resolution support has been implemented.
- Localization for major languages.
- New English font for better legibility.
- Pressing "escape" no longer opens the options menu when inside other menus (inventory, shop, map, console, etc.)
- NPC voice sounds.
- Fixed an issues where item controls were not showing when an item slot was empty.
- And much more to be discovered!
Unfortunately at this time I will not be updating the beta demo of the game before launch, it just isn't feasible with launch around the corner. That being said, I will be looking for playtesters for the full game in the coming months so keep your eyes out for that!
I greatly appreciate all the feedback given from players and I will strive to make this game as good as possible! If you think I missed anything, be sure to leave your feedback in my Discord server.
The Road to Launch
Last week be hit a huge milestone, 20,000 Steam wishlists! I want to thank the amazing community around Return for continuing to support my work for the better half of 2 years. So much has changed in that time and you guys are helping me live my dream of being a game developer. I dropped out of University in April 2021 and to be launching my game 2 years later is unbelievable.
In case you didn't know, I've moved the launch date for Return to the later half of Q2 2023, I'm extremely excited for you to experience the world of Return in it's entirety!
That's it for this post, look forward to more updates + announcements as we reach the launch of Return!
Make sure to follow me on Twitter to see the latest in-game updates!