What Is The Ghost · published
Yes, you read that right. The development of What Is The Ghost is entering the final phase with a view to the Early Access release. After that, development will of course continue until the full release. In any case, a big event is ahead of us, a great chance to make the game known. Namely the Steam Next Fest, which runs from February 23 to March 2. For this event, I am currently working very hard and giving my all to offer current and new players a well-functioning and fun demo. Here, I’m giving you an insight into the development. What has been new lately and what am I working on until the Steam Next Fest?
There have been many updates since I last wrote a dev log. Among them:
Multiplayer Mode: You can now go ghost hunting together with your friends. While there is still a long way to go before the multiplayer mode is 100% stable, I would say we have reached a solid 75% of the final state. It plays smoothly without any major issues and is a lot of fun! Definitely give it a try.
Flashlight Rework: The flashlight now casts a cone and can be controlled with the mouse. This makes the gameplay more dynamic. Purchasing better flashlights is now highly rewarding.
Quest System: Receive daily and weekly tasks.
Skilltree: The Mastery Hub is now well-filled with abilities and even features multiple pages. Complete the first page to enhance your skills even further.
Tutorial Rework: The tutorial is now integrated into the gameplay, explaining the game contextually and more deeply than was previously possible.
Test the full version within the demo: There is a cheat code for January that you can use in-game to unlock the full version. This is to gather feedback and push development forward. A huge advantage for you: Your progress will carry over directly into Early Access, so you won't have to start from scratch! (Cheat code: playtest_january).
I am working on several things until the Next Fest, but there is no guarantee that all of them will be ready by then. Some of these features will only become available during Early Access or via the cheat code anyway.
Bug fixes and polishing: A continuous task that keeps me busy every day.
Balancing: There are many things, such as quests and rewards, that I need to adjust to create a good sense of progression.
Keybinds: I want you to be able to customize your key assignments.
Localization: A few translations are still missing, and I want to complete them.
Multiplayer: Also a continuous task. Since I have never made a multiplayer game before and this game started as a single-player experience, providing a high-quality multiplayer mode is a major challenge. I have already received a lot of feedback and have synced and fixed all the major issues, but there are still less obvious areas to address or bugs that will inevitably pop up. I am working on those.
Assets: I want to fill the houses with furniture and things like that. I hope to get some of this into the game by the time Next Fest starts.
Prestige System: You should be able to reset to level 1 upon reaching the maximum level, in exchange for better rewards and more powerful abilities in the skill tree.
Global Leaderboard: Compare yourself with players worldwide.
♥️ A huge thank you to everyone who is testing and supporting the project in any way. I never thought this game would ever get close to being finished, let alone be this much fun.