First of all, thank you so much to everyone who has played the demo so far and taken the time to share feedback with us. Seeing people jump into Staged, play together, and tell us what worked and what could be better has been incredibly helpful for us and genuinely very motivating.A lot of the changes in this update come directly from that feedback, and we are really excited to finally share them with you.
One of the biggest additions in this update is Miri, who is now available as the sixth playable character and can be selected directly in the lobby.We wanted to expand the cast a bit more and give players another fun option when jumping into the chaos with friends.
Another major addition is the new difficulty system. Based on your feedback, we wanted to give players more control over how challenging the demo feels, so the game now includes three difficulty settings.Easy removes the time limit entirely, Normal keeps the experience as it was before, and Challenging reduces the available time by 20 percent. On top of that, placing wrong objects on the stage now also has a negative impact on your final rating across all difficulty settings.
To give players a small glimpse of how much more there will be in the full version, the demo now starts with a short overworld intro sequence.It is a small addition, but it helps set the tone and gives a better sense of the world of Staged before jumping into the levels.
Alongside these bigger additions, this update also includes a range of improvements and fixes across gameplay, UI, audio, and overall stability.We have continued refining interactions, smoothing out rough edges, and addressing issues that came up while people were playing the demo.
Miri as the sixth playable character, selectable in the lobby
New difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, and Challenging
Easy mode removes the time limit
Challenging mode reduces the timer by 20 percent
Wrong objects on stage now negatively affect the level rating
New overworld intro sequence
Initial achievement system with the first set of unlockable achievements
Star count display in the overworld
New picture interaction
New particle effect for destroying scale game objects
Key hint buttons can now be pressed in the lobby
Reworked level lighting
Smoother object pickup and carry interactions
Improved ragdoll behavior to prevent excessive physics reactions
Shorter preround time for faster round starts
FOV slider now applies and saves correctly
Improved main menu audio and music playback
Visually reworked difficulty UI
Improved snapping system
Various UI improvements
Improved overworld visuals
Fixed a demo level issue
Fixed act rating not displaying correctly on the client
Fixed level popups not loading correctly
Fixed cable game light issues
Fixed a crash on standalone game launch
Fixed a pause menu error when no pawn is possessed
Fixed crane controller jitter and sync issues
Fixed score syncing from client to server
Many more small fixes and stability improvements