Total Rendition is envisioned as a First-Person RPG drawing on the immersive sim classics from around the year 2000. One with a very engaging and relevant subtext at that. Think of Deus Ex meets Millennium Trilogy in the Netherlands. By bringing the early prototype of Total Rendition to Steam, we had hoped players would get excited in anticipation of the final result, being necessary for the investment needed to recruit a large team necessary to help Total Rendition attain gold status. Unfortunately, the opposite happened. Early Access made Total Rendition a sitting duck for (Neo-Nazi) trolls. Over the past year, we have witnessed an endless litany of trolling in the form of smear campaigns, review bombs, refund trolling, sealioning, etc. Investors could even be tempted to think narrative-driven single-player games are dead in general. We are now discussing with Valve the possibility of suspending Total Renditions availability on Steam wholesale, until it has attained Gold Status, as to safeguard its reputation, and our own. I, for one, am quite incensed at this state of affairs. On the other hand, it showcases why Total Rendition premise is relevant. Hopefully, not too relevant as to render work impossible. It does not mean that work on Total Rendition will stop, however. In my most recent Devlog entry, I have outlined my outlook on Total Renditions development and game development more generally. In the meantime, I advise not to buy Total Rendition, awaiting the outcome of our negotiations with Valve. -Mordechai

Midlothian, Scotland You might be wondering where that next update of Total Rendition is, since that major last major update dated from near the end of 2022, which largely went unnoticed (until now, hopefully). SchiZotypy Games wants you to know Total Rendition is absolutely not finished, and is still on track to be completed. Game development is a lot more than sitting behind a computer, writing design documents, code or doing 3D animation, to name a few examples. Game development also involves getting yourself out there. For Total Rendition, 2023 has been all about that. Total Rendition promises to become a game offering 40 hours+ amount of gameplay, huge amount of interactivity and replayability. A monumental undertaking which requires excellent logistics. If you want to gain the deepest insights into the development of Total Rendition, pay a visit to the official SchiZotypy Games Devlog.

We have had a wild ride so far and the open playtest yielded useful feedback as well as gave us an insight in the amount of anticipation for Total Rendition. However, we have come to a realisation: The amount of people who like to play the open playtest yet arent ready to dip their toes in the Early Access is quite small. By early October, we will at least for a limited amount of time deactivate the open playtest. We may thereafter reactivate it to test potentially controversial changes to Total Rendition, or permanently deactivate the open playtest. Right now, we are making preparations towards the long anticipated and overdue update to Total Renditions Early Access, which is intended to see the introduction of plenty of originally made assets and a more visible narrative. For this, we are bringing onboard new people to the Total Rendition Dev Team. We hope to bring the resultantly massive overhaul either later this year or the next. Thank you for checking out Total Rendition, and we hope you are looking forward to see the drastically improved next build of Total Rendition!

Do you think too little amount of immersive sims are being made and that the (relatively) recently released Deathloop and Cyberpunk 2077 arent enough, and hanker for a resurgence of the design-ethos which powered Deus Ex, Thief, Morrowind and System Shock 2? Do you want to play a part in the creation of a spanking new IP? And are you a high net-worth individual who can provide SchiZotypy Games with the development budget necessary to complete Total Rendition? Then SchiZotypy Games wants to hear from YOU! The current prototype of Total Rendition only has a level or two (out of dozens planned) and still uses placeholder assets. This is because SchiZotypy Games currently lacks the funding to onboard additional talent necessary for level design, 3D art, voice-overs etc. We have been looking for investment into this project for years and one thing is certain: The big bois (that is to say, guys like EA, Ubisoft, T2 Games and Activision-Blizzard) have given up on narrative-driven single-player games, so it is up to us to pick up the pieces. One hell of a mission if there ever was any! With your investment, you can take part in a potentially lucrative and in any case rewarding enterprise of building an entirely new IP in the form of AAA narrative-driven single player experience sadly becoming increasingly rare since the turn of the millennium. Give Total Rendition a whirl and get in touch. Together, we can build a truly great game with a socially conscious touch so sorely lacking in recent titles!

We've been receiving inquiries about the availability of Total Rendition's Early Access exclusively through the open playtest, with some players expressing their willingness to prepay for access to the complete package once it's finalised. Well, good news! SchiZotypy Games has decided to bring back regular Early Access sales from 21st of June onward!

For whom is it intended?

A note of warning

Try the open playtest (first)!

Just to let you know, SchiZotypy Games now has its own developer blog. Yes, now the company has one. A first if there ever was any! I will hopefully resume work Total Rendition proper too, hopefully along with some other familiar faces as well as with some fresh meat for the Dev Team, although I believe maintaining the Devlog will also be essential to that end. In it, I will keep you informed on Total Renditions progress. Also, I will showcase my personal opinions pertinent to the craft of game development (i.e. what in techbro-speak is called thought leadership). You dont have to agree with everything I say and as a matter of fact, I hope you are going to enjoy Total Rendition for what it is to become, even as I express opinions you may oppose. Finally, the devlog is also intended to prove to investors that I absolutely know what I am doing (even if Im actually not, but please dont tell that to the venture capitalists or the UKs [contemporary] arts quangos unless you want yet more games with lootboxes). Pay it a visit! -Mordechai

DISCLAIMER: This is an artistic commentary on Total Rendition by its writer and lead designer and is in no way a formal political declaration of Schizotypy Game Development Limited, which is a commercial enterprise and operated accordingly. I will have to be very frank. I have severely compromised my artistic integrity since I started making Total Rendition. As some of you may know, past versions of Total Rendition included Ukrainian Neo-Nazis as enemy NPCs. Indeed, the Odessa Battalion (a fictional organisation though with some real-life inspirations I will not mention,) were to be prominently featured as mooks supporting the main antagonists of Total Rendition. When it was Special Military Operation time for Ukraine, I removed these from future versions of Total Renditions because in the UK (where I live exiled from the Netherlands after harassment from a woke student association), we are supposed to view Ukraine as the good guysTM. I wanted to say that I feel very bad for the aforementioned act of artistic self-sabotage. As the rages on, Im beginning to realise the idea of a Ukrainian Neo-Fascist blowback against their erstwhile benefactor countries (such as the Netherlands, the US, Britain) is not at all far fetched. Indeed, I have had faced a lot of abuse from the very Ukrainian Steam users I have had tried so hard to appease (which is an appropriate choice of words indeed). Even though I always envisioned one supporting (and one time main) character in the plot as an actual female (a.k.a. a ciswoman), I once suggested players could assume she was trans, even when I personally never believed that. I have had pandered to the woke lobby and they rewarded with a flurry of false stalking accusations. Since December I have become bereft of necessary equipment to work on Total Rendition. Yet, as Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn pointed out, Fascism is a Left-Wing ideology. Now, I have finally learned to trust the plan: That is to say, I have found the hope to complete Total Rendition which I have had always envisioned Total Rendition to be a homage to the immersive sims of the 1990s and 2000s, and at the same time, as a depiction of the contemporary political situation of the Netherlands, which is ruled by paedosexual frat boys such as Joris Demmink and a host of gender ideologues. But the morality of this tale is also that self-censorship is utterly pointless. I will now embark on completing assembly of the team so necessary to complete Total Rendition. I will raise the investment necessary to compensate that team. And I am confident that Total Rendition can be made, uncut. So, Gamergaters, after more than five years, your prayers have finally been heard. Total Rendition is going to become the game you have been waiting for! I will succeed, or at least I will die trying. Mordechai

Hi everyone, I have good news: Total Rendition is not yet lost! Since we (that is, the Total Rendition Dev Team) have come this far, in spite of all the obstacles which Total Renditions development has faced, there is hope that Total Rendition will one day be completed. Right now, a mere seed has been planted. Lets hope that it will become the tree - so to speak - which I have imagined! In the last few months, some enormous logistical hurdles have arisen. This has prevented me from working on Total Rendition hands on. In fact, I find it unfortunately easy to imagine why so many people seem to believe that narrative driven single player games are dying off. I speak for the entire Dev Team as a whole, that these challenges are daunting, disheartening even. In the coming months, I will work mostly alone, though with the intention to expand the Total Rendition Dev Team to a size the undertaking needs. Indie developers focus on gimmicks; professionals focus on logistics! So, logistics are what I will be doing. Hopefully, these efforts will help us to deliver you the most exciting update to Total Rendition thus far! Best, Mordechai

2022 was an important year for Total Rendition. Among other things, it marked Total Rendition's Early Access debut on Steam. 2022 also saw Total Rendition hitting a couple of important development milestones, such as version 4.8, the beginning of work on a new in-game location. the addition of a wide array of new features, many bug fixes, further polish and more. In short, it's very hard - if not impossible - to understate the importance of 2022.

Anticipated logistical Milestones for 2023

• Version 0.6 as Milestone
• 4 to 8 hours of gameplay (altogether marking the completion of Act I) which includes;
• 8 unique areas
• At least 10 unique kinds of inventory items
• A multitude of NPCs, including a cast of long-anticipated major characters
• A complete overhaul of the game's look and feel, more closely in tune with the design specs

• A Dev Team which will have grown to at least 10 contributors (let's be frank, that'll be necessary)
• Investment into Schizotypy Games (for most part, to facilitate all of the aforementioned)
• An end to the ongoing vexatious litigation campaigns frustrating progress otherwise attained

• BUG FIX: Fix issue preventing expiry of Attribute boost/drain
• BUG FIX: Fix issue preventing expiry of Skill boost/drain
• BUG FIX: Player inventory refreshes properly
• Smooth crouching on and out motions
• POLISH: Event-triggered lightswitches will not make a sound

• Hardcode for Flashbang and Smoke grenades are present
• Aim Sensitivity Options
• You can move behind Enemy NPCs unnoticed with lvl 3 Stealth
• With lvl 4 Stealth, you can even sprint behind enemy NPCs unnoticed

0.4.6 is a landmark release with a lot of extra polish!

• Draggables now have collision of their own
• Crouch jumping is now possible
• AI is able to not notice the player from behind
• In-game dialogues may be skipped

That it's 0.4.5.1 is not an intentional reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, although it makes for an interesting case of serendipity. 0.4.5.1 introduces some important updates to make the AI of Total Rendition's NPCs more interesting. These are not the last of the tweaks to the game's AIs, but are perhaps among the most consequential thus far. This version will also coincide with a number of changes in the maps which are already here. The starting level's layout (though not its visual design) is close to being finalized. You can also go back and forth from the starting level to Queen Astrid Boulevard, which ought to give you a better impression of Total Rendition's world structure. Once in turn that's done, you will soon start seeing other levels and missions of Total Rendition getting progressively unveiled, as the final version of Total Rendition will have dozens of levels. This update will also be available to those enrolled into the open playtest. Until the next version!

Total Rendition has just advanced to version 0.4.4.4. While this is not a particularly interesting update, it does include new configuration options, namely, X and Y invertation, as well as limited support for dynamic footstep sounds and some bug fixes which may currently be too subtle to be noticable, yet are going to be instrumental for the final result, probably. Depending how development will progress, this - or a later - version will be the very first to be featured in the free open playtest, which we hope to be unveiling soon. For Total Rendition's next version, we will primarily focus on improving the NPC's AI. As always, see you again next time!

We have received a lot of "criticisms" over our development methodology. We have been accused of "asset flipping" for using placeholders and we have gotten at least one negative review premised on the false belief that most of Total Rendition's development lies behind us, instead of ahead of us. However, to be perfectly honest, we have had anticipated all this bile well in advance and we are not deterred at all. Is Fallout: New Vegas a bad game because Van Buren was short and buggy? Of course not. Van Buren was a necessary stepping stone in making New Vegas. However, if Total Rendition's critics' positions were to be taken to their (il)logical final destination, Fallout: New Vegas would be a "scam" because of Van Buren. Thus, Fallout: New Vegas would get a negative review counting each of Van Buren's bugs, you'll get the idea. Of course, some of you may then be thinking: "Why release that early?" Well, what is going to follow will describe our reasons why. Back in the 1990s, publishers could just approach investors with pitches which sounded good and developers in turn could pitch to publishers in the hope these publishers would co-opt them. If the concept sounded good enough and the developers seemed to have a modicum of skills, getting a production budget to raise a development team to build a game was straightforward enough, the reasoning being that if you made a good game, people would come to play it. However, professional game reviewers can be bribed, critically acclaimed games can flop dramatically and Microtransactions are "social proof" ipso facto. And investors are taking note and so are publishers. As a cash-starved, understaffed studio, we are at their mercy and it shows. Yet, we are also taking the potshots for it. When work on Total Rendition began in earnest in 2018, the General Design Document (or GDD) called for a Narrative-driven game of which the main storyline would last about a day or so, like the good old titles from the 1990s and early 2000s. However, to make these plans a reality, we would require a lot of investment from third-party investors and lots of it at that. We have had actually shown Total Rendition's GDD to Rockstar Games in 2018. They were not at all interested in co-opting it at the time. If they did, then Total Rendition probably would be developing at a much faster pace, would be looking much better already and perhaps many of our critics would have greeted Total Rendition with raving anticipation. Indeed, we ourselves had significant reservations of releasing Total Rendition in its current state. Now, to be sure, this investment is not going to be raised directly from the sales from Total Rendition's Steam Early Access. If we were, then Total Rendition would not have appeared on Steam Early Access in the first place, as this is against Valve's policies. In fact, we had to conduct to painstaking negotiations with Valve to ensure any misunderstandings were ironed out. Ironically enough, even Total Rendition's haters are helping us to get closer to our intended end goals, as they leave evidence of having played the game. Investors want evidence that people are playing (and quite frankly, not much more than that), because that suggests to investors at least some will pay for it. Constructive critics will leave notes and feature requests we can use to improve Total Rendition as well. By 2019, when it became apparent that large publishers and developers who could hypothetically have spared the funds we needed for Total Rendition, would hardly co-opt new titles, let alone Total Rendition, we decided to engage in development in-house. Too many Gamers blame developers, publishers and "SJWs" for the decline of narrative-driven gaming. However, if we game developers want to forswear microtransactions for unadulterated narrative experiences and make this feasible, we need to understand the business models of the 1990s are no longer feasible save for a lucky few, even if the period was artistically a golden age. No investor will back video game studios based on how good the latter's ideas are anymore and for now, we don't have the funds to field the development team we ideally would like. Of course, we won't have Total Rendition leave Early Access until Total Rendition is the polished, lengthy and engaging narrative-driven experience we intend it to be, but unlike us, investors don't care if the quality or good or bad, even if it is them we need to convince to provide us with the development budget we need. One may observe that royalty-agreement-driven Indie-cum-AAA titles almost always collapse mid-development, if not sooner, often because these devs don't get the legals right and investors are generally reluctant of sharing. But as a result of us deliberately foregoing this strategy, we are currently very understaffed - especially in terms of 3D artists - until we have received the investment necessary to recruit them, hence all the placeholders. No worries, as we can still get there eventually. In conclusion, if we ever want high net-worth individuals to write Schizotypy Games the cheques it needs to develop Total Rendition into its intended end-result, we really have no other option to do as we do. This, in due course, has gotten us a lot of opprobrium from those did not bother to read the Early Access notes and this (very real risk of) public outpouring is perhaps why most developers do not even bother in the first place. However, this does not change that Total Rendition is really a good faith effort to make the kind of large scale narrative-driven game which most established studios have neglected to make (properly) since 2015 or so. And this is why we won't budge: If we can complete Total Rendition, it can be vindicated by history!

As of the time of publication, Total Rendition has been priced at $5.99 (USD) or 4.79 in the UK. We are planning to change this price in about a week or so. More specifically, we intend to increase the price of Total Rendition to $39.99 (USD) or 33.50, or their regional equivalents elsewhere. So, if you currently own a copy already, congratulations: You will have saved quite a bit! With the upcoming price increase, we hope to make more clear the full version's intended segment, as quite a few players misunderstood our intentions of Total Rendition's Early Access release. On the other hand, many those who did, often have had already claimed the game prior to the Steam Early Access launch or opted to wishlist it instead. Since the Early Access of Total Rendition is served on an at-your-own-risk basis and we understand our development plans and business model are highly unusual compared to the rest of the video games "industry", we plan to roll out a free playtest round in the near future. Furthermore, since the full version of Total Rendition is envisaged as a narrative-driven AAA title, $39.99 is still somewhat of a discount. Thank you for your encouragements, and as usual we'll see you next time!

Development of Total Rendition is currently at version 0.4.3.8, which we had originally planned to release as an update. However, 0.4.3.8's new features and bug fixes are on their own not particularly exciting nor high priority for that matter. For instance, 0.4.3.8 now boasts the technical capacity for dynamic footstep sounds that change depending on the surface you are walking on in-game, although since we are still in the process of figuring out a fitting sound design for it, we do not really have an ability to capitalise on it yet. This is not the only issue, but it is to give you an idea of how we are experiencing things on our end as developers. We really want to make the next update feel like a major leap in terms of development. This means that if we cannot deliver you that much new in-game content, we want to make sure you'll get nice new features instead. We definitely have noted the AI could use a lot of work, so programming-wise, that is likely going to be a top priority in the near future. Of course, a red thread that you may have noticed is that in-game art, environment design and level design do not really seem to be keeping with the programming progress, in that Total Rendition is intended to be significantly more expansive than it currently is, in terms of world-building. To address this issue, we will need to expand our team, as up to this point, our team has yet to include an environment and level design specialist, to name a specific example or two. We'll spare you the gory details, though let's say this involves a lot of a$$-kissing of techbros, because it's NOT the revenue we make on Steam that is going to pay for the production of what Total Rendition is ultimately intended to become... Until next time!

In spite of all difficulties, we have nonetheless succeeded in bringing you version 0.4.3! This is yet another significant milestone marking an additional step toward Total Rendition's eventual completion, as long away as that may be for now. Some new features and bug fixes include: - Save Game now store SAVE Date & Version number - Player skills and attributes are now properly saved - Enemy AI detects hand-to-hand attempt - Retain equipped weapon after changing level - Melee and hand-to-hand animations can now be displayed (the actual animations themselves are still placeholders, have patience!) - Being in the settings menu will pause the game Now, perhaps the most clearly visible additions are not so much apparent in the game's executable as in the content. We have expanded the layout of the intro level to give you an idea of where we want to be heading to. In due course, the entire game will get a visual makeover to fit the intended art style, but for now, the in-game art serves the purpose of showing the core mechanics, with dialogues and in-game books conveying the overall themes and narrative. We hope you will be able to connect the dots from here in getting a picture how the end-result will look like!

Since we recently had reduced the frequency of uploading updates, it may perhaps seem to some as if development died down, but nothing could be further from the truth. Today Total Rendition has reached version 0.4.2.6. We'll plan to release an update on Steam once Total Rendition is at version 0.4.3. Version 0.4.3 is probably going to be the most unabashedly and shamelessly work-in-progress version of Total Rendition so far, with placeholders galore. But that's okay. We may have inadvertently disappointed a few people by presenting Total Rendition as if it had any semblance of being finished, so 0.4.3 will set the record straight and make clear that more is yet to be found ahead of us than lies behind us. Although the Save Game feature is probably not going to be relevant for most players for the time being, we can say 0.4.2.6 fixes a bug which causes player skills and attributes to not be saved and that this fix will appear in 0.4.3. As for the long save game loading times that have been known to us for some time, we hope to look into that post-0.4.3.

We're glad to have at last fixed the issues plaguing 0.4.2.0, while also keeping all of the gains the latter version has made. Unless serious issues become apparent, we still intend to to decrease the update frequency in favour of larger updates adding more playable content, improving the overall quality of the visuals and tweaking gameplay. We are looking forward to show you more of that over the coming months!

After having received reports that fresh installs lock up due to failure of loading settings with the new executable, we have decided to temporarily reverse the release of 0.4.2.0 until we can release a hot-fix to solve the issue whilst keeping the progress made with 0.4.2.0.

Arguably not the most sexy update in terms of new features or content, but hey, it's version 0.4.2.0! What's not to like? Indeed, it is in many ways an important update and here is why: - More resolution options to choose from, including 4K - Audio option choices are retained after closing the game - Default Graphics Option switches to user's computer's native resolution - (Experimental) Option to Select Audio Device Now, in the near future, we may slightly decrease the updating frequency, except perhaps for particularly urgent issues, as we hope to spend some more time on adding content, adding polish (animations still could use some work, for instance) and more. That way, we hope to make each update as exciting as possible!

New content:

• More music
• A scaffolding at Villa Therese (if you have been with us since version 0.0.8.6, it may lead to some familiar situations, in a good way)
• A sneak-preview of our intended plans, including a pre-blockout of the Queen Astrid Boulevard
• Some more things, you'll find out soon enough!

• Player inventory now mostly works as expected and also gives a sound feedback if the player attempts to carry too many items
• Graphics options should now save most settings (though still WIP)
• NPC movements now appear significantly more natural

Total Rendition is now on its first update since its Early Access release on Steam! Although a lot of work remains to be done, we hope this will make your experience more enjoyable and interesting and give you a better picture of our overall goals for Total Rendition. Apart from bug fixes, this update is also accompanied by some ever more slightly extra polish. We recommend you to start a new game and not use your previous save files, if you had any. Since Total Rendition has an anonymous protagonist (nowadays, at least), we felt it was apt to ensure you start with a tabula rasa: New games have the protagonist be granted 2 attribute points and 1 skill point. The idea is that your character really gives you an every(wo)man kind of vibe, at least when you start out. We also configured the in-game assets to give you XP (the code was there already, but it wasn't utilised until now). Now, for the bug fixes: we noted the complaints from frustrated players about the hitboxes concerning dead or knocked-out NPCs, making it very difficult to loot their bodies. To address these criticisms, we have made sure that it now works as you would expect, which will hopefully give you a more smoother experience. Screen resolutions were another things which did not really work well at all, although we now hope to have fixed the most serious issues surrounding the resolution settings. To date, the in-game settings are forgetful. We hope to fix that as well soon, although this is not a particularly high priority issue given Total Rendition's length is currently very short compared to what we have intended. By the next update, we hope to have the player inventory automatically drop excess items, as well as implement the ability to pick individual items when looting containers. Up until this point, this wasn't exactly high priority to be perfectly honest, because the in-game world of Total Rendition currently does not have that many potential items a player could carry, although we hope to change that eventually.