Today is another decent update as we push to the end.
Nightmares
One piece of content we've always wanted to put more effort into are the 'nightmares' that occasionally happen as you progressively lose your mind. We've added another 4 (codenamed "someone else", "space", "blocked", and "shrink") to bring our total nightmares up to 12. There's more to come - we want at least 20 for 1.0, as the nightmares are the great scares for the atmosphere we take such care to build. Toward this end, we've also changed how nightmares are rolled; you are now much more likely to see at least one per game, with multiple possible. Much like random events, you will never see the same nightmare twice in the same game, though.
Memories
Memories in the game have been rebalanced, with the intent of making all of them worth taking. This is something we're eager to get feedback from players on, so don't hesitate to hit the Discord or to post on the forums with your thoughts and comments!
Finale progress
The writing for the final arc is also progressing well, for the amount of work that goes into it. Many of the 24 planned endings are written, and there's looking to be over 10,000 words in those endings alone. Further, most of the major mechanics are coded and known to be working. We're trying to push really hard to have this ready by Thanksgiving or so, as we are hoping to submit a fully finished game to LudoNarraCon when they open up again. As always, your support and understanding humbles us. The universe's caprices continue to affect the team in various ways, and trust me when I say that the people most frustrated with the delays are us, the two primary devs. We're eager to be done and eager to give everyone the wonderful payoff they've signed up for. Thank you again, each and every one of you, and if you want to really help us out, don't forget to leave a review. It truly is the ultimate way to voice your support, and we celebrate every time we see another one!
Hello again, Custodians! It's been a lot longer than any of us wanted, getting where we're going. Unfortunately, the terrible luck that plagued the dev team for the first entire half of this year has continued, only mildly abated by the increasing improbability of the run. Unlike in our game, life's dice rolls are not guaranteed to be fair. That has not stopped us from continuing to work on the game as we can, and we are proud to bring you today's update as a token of our determination.
New features
Command Console
First and foremost - the eternally-broken console in your Command cubby now does something. Specifically, it lets you read those Mission Commands that suffuse so much of your life as a Custodian. You no longer need to quickly memorize what an MC is when Robbie psychotically barks one out - you only need the number, and you can look it up. At long last, you can, in fact, refer to MC.419 for clarification! Of... something, anyway. If you read carefully, the MCs are another way to piece together some of the deeper secrets of the vessel. Be careful to consider the source, however... (Also, don't blame us for the interface to the console. One of the Custodians made it. Seriously!)
Numerical tooltips
One thing we have always been sticklers about in our game, versus some other multiple choice games, is that we want to be very, VERY clear about the consequences of clicking on an option. As amazing as games like King of Dragon Pass and World of Horror are, it's undeniable that memorizing the events is part of mastering those games. We have always rejected this in Endless Dark. If you are expected to be responsible for your actions, we must give you information on what your actions will do. With this patch, we take that a step further. We were unsatisfied with the Fatigue, Stress, and Psychosis bars simply flashing their general status after a change. Now, in addition to the bars flashing the change, we tell you, in no uncertain terms, exactly where the numbers will land:
This also takes into account ancillary effects, such as the stress overflow from capping Fatigue:
This just works in general, and requires no extra code on the part of modders. On a related note...
More modding hooks and tools.
The modding framework has been slowly upgraded over the last few months as we work with a few of our volunteer modders in Discord. As a reminder, Endless Dark is on Nexus Mods, and Soulmata's example mod is ready to tutorialize anyone interested in cracking open the game. We'll be publishing more documentation as a Steam guide as we have time to write it all down, and obviously, the Steam Workshop is our ultimate goal. The Discord server remains a great way to talk to other modders, us developers, and other fans of the game.
More art and music
The programmer art for all of the toasts has been removed and replaced with much more attractive tiles. In addition, another 3 songs from our composer have been added, to get everyone even more music variety between turns.
Bug Fixes
The game is rapidly running out of major bugs to fix, but as we keep testing everything, we invariably find more stuff to sort out. - Doors and Thrusters now have a Leave option at the bottom, making them consistent with the other menus. - An issue with the Sentimental perk allowed for infinite stress reduction - this has been fixed, and Sentimental now only works once per turn. - Arc 4 had numerous bugs, plus a potential softlock, owing to older code styles we have since stopped using. They have all been fixed. - Under certain rare conditions, tooltips could crash the game. This has been fixed. - Event options could display irregularly under certain rare conditions. This has been fixed. - The modapi's 'is_system_working' function could return "true" if a system was disabled, but not broken. It now correctly returns "false" if a system is broken, or disabled. - The finale's story tile was causing some unpredictable behavior if a player clicked it, and then tried to start the game. As we are intending to have the finale done pretty soon, we have simply hidden the finale's story tile for the moment. This is a temporary measure.
Next up...
As implied above, the finale of the story remains our top priority. We've had to write a substantial amount of new code for it - the arc kicks off with a big curve ball that is sure to throw many of you for a loop. We also have a number of ongoing streamlines, some fixes to the functionality for Endless Mode, and, of course, the Steam Workshop integration on our plates. Please don't forget to leave a review for us on Steam! It is the best way to help us out - if you like the game, we love hearing it! If you've got issues with the game, we are eager to listen to you! Until next time, Custodians. We hope to see you again very soon!
* Added a new insanity: "REDUCTION IN FORCE", which forces you to make some hard decisions * Attempted to fix a bug in LOVE's GetSaveDirectory function not handling special characters properly * Added a lot of debugging around failing to save or load games If you have difficulty saving or loading the game, please let us know.
Another mod update today. - Number of available hooks increased to 100 - Large-scale reorganization of internal game logic - All functions that are a good idea for modders to call are now in modapi.lua, with documentation on what everything does and any salient semantics. - Strictly internal or one-off game functions are collected in game.lua, with documentation on what everything does and any salient semantics. We can't really keep modders from calling these functions, but in general it's going to be a bad idea to do so. - Lastly, and most importantly: The modding framework has been expanded to allow for fully custom Custodians to be supported in mods. We even added a handy function to quickly assign personality tags to the existing events so you can support personality shifts very easily! In addition, Endless Dark now has it's own section on Nexus Mods, along with a tutorial mod to help modders get started. Everyone can expect more documentation, along with a 'modding bible' that has some more fully fleshed out direction on the modding framework, coming up pretty soon. Keeping up the pace to 1.0! See you soon, Custodians!
Another small update today, continuing to flesh out the modding framework on advice from our awesome community on Discord. - Added 59 hooks for mods to inject code at various points. These hooks include, but are not limited to: onload -- Evaluated only once, after the module has finished loading ontick -- Evaluated every frame, whether or not a game is in progress onactive -- Evaluated every frame, if a game is in progress and is active (there is not a pending event, the user is not stuck in a menu or cutscene, et cetera) onnewgame -- Evaluated when a new game has begun onturnend -- Evaluated when the turn has ended, after all other logic has processed onturnstart -- Evaluated when a new turn has started, after all other logic has processed onnightmaretriggered -- Evaluted when the user WILL have a nightmare this turn (but may not have actually fired yet) onhavingnightmare -- Evaluated when the user is within a room-based nightmare (not a visual-only nightmare), including Airlock, Containment, Maze, and Nowhere onfatiguegain -- Fires when the player gains fatigue onstressgain -- Fires when the player gains stress onpsychosisgain -- Fires when the player gains psychosis onfatigueloss -- Fires when the player loses fatigue onstressloss -- Fires when the player loses stress onpsychosisloss -- Fires when the player loses psychosis (very rare) onpressuregain -- Fires when the player gains pressure onpressureloss -- Fires when the player loses pressure onarcfinished -- Fires when a story arc completes ondeeploregained -- Fires when deep lore is gained from the observation window onmemoryunlocked -- Fires when the player unlocks a memory (even if they already had unlocked it) oninsanitygained -- Evaluated when the player gains a new random insanity (Does not check certain event or task-specific insanities) onrandomdamage -- Fires when the Director damages a random system (Does not fire when certain events/tasks deliberately damage a specific system) onpassengerdied -- Fires when a passenger dies for any reason onpodscontaminated -- Fires when some or all pods become contaminated onpodcondamage -- Fires when a pod is damaged due to being contaminated onairlocktoggled -- Fires when the inner airlock is toggled onbreakersurge -- Fires when a breaker surge occurs onpowersurge -- Fires when a power surge occurs (random lock or overclock of all systems) onshuffleinsanity -- Fires when the player (generally ANNIE) shuffles insanities onconsolesabotage -- Fires when a console is sabotaged onconsolerepair -- Fires when a console is repaired onsystemglitched -- Fires when a system becomes randomly glitched (may not cover all cases) onpermaglitched -- Fires when a system becomes permanently glitched onsystemdisabled -- Fires when a system becomes disabled (may not cover all cases) onsystemlocked -- Fires when a system becomes locked (may not cover all cases) onsystemoverclocked -- Fires when a system becomes overclocked (may not cover all cases) onsystemhardened -- Fires when a system becomes hardened (may not cover all cases) onsystemlosesoverclock -- Fires when a system loses overclocked (may not cover all cases) onsystemsabotaged -- Fires when the player sabotages a system onsystemrepaired -- Fires when a system is repaired (NOT emergency repaired) onsystemrepairfail -- Fires when a repair fails onsystemerepaired -- Fires when a system is emergency repaired onsystemerepairfail -- Fires when an emergency repair fails onpowertoggle -- Fires when power to a system is toggled (on or off) onbreakeropened -- Fires when a breaker opens onbreakerclosed -- Fires when a breaker is closed onbreakerdamaged -- Fires when a breaker is damaged onbreakerrepaired -- Fires when a breaker is repaired onbreakerreplaced -- Fires when a breaker is replaced onthrusterdamage -- Fires when a thruster is damaged onmemoryapply -- Fires when the player gets their memory bonuses assigned at the start of a new game onapplydilemma -- Fires when the player's dilemma reward or penalty is applied at the start of a new game onscaredofdoors -- Fires when the player panics when interacting with a door due to Entamaphobia ondirectorstart -- Fires when the director (RNG function) starts ondirectorend -- Fires when the director (RNG function) ends ongameloss -- Fires when the game ends in a loss, but before endgame flag is set ongamewin -- Fires when the game ends in a win, but before endgame flag is set oncooldownevent -- Fires when the player is going to get a cooldown event due to having a bad time onreactordamaged -- Fires when the reactor takes damage onobservationtoggled -- Fires when the observation window has been toggled to open or close
* Added over 50 new mod system hooks, bringing the current total to 59. More will be added, along with documentation for in-game functions, to make modding easier.
Today is a small update to fix some problems with the Steam integration release. - Fixed a rare crash bug - Fixed a potential softlock during the tutorial. - If you earned a memory prior to the Steam integration release, it should now automatically pop all the associated achievements. See you soon, Custodians.
As we continue to march toward 1.0, we've made the decision to keep releasing bit by bit what we HAD hoped to release all at once - in a continuous effort to prove our commitment to seeing things through, despite the continuing efforts of the Horseman of Pestilence.
First up today is an oft-requested feature: DEM CHEEVOS!
We've long planned to have the Memories in game be achievements that you unlock on Steam. The equivalency practically writes itself. The question was always the integration to Steam, which we've now taken the time to move through and figure out. It's entirely possible that we will add some other hidden achievements as we continue forward, but for today, please enjoy the new 25 achievements that also come with in-game functionality.
Another thing we have long planned is for Steam to help tell the story of what you're up to in the game. We've put a lot of work into Endless Dark putting you into the moment. Now, your friends will be able to see exactly what kind of moment you're having:
This is, again, something we hope to expand as we push toward 1.0. As always, don't hesitate to join the discord or post your thoughts on the forums! We love to hear from our players and frequently respond based on what people are talking about. Heck, big shout out to calebzz for, just a few days before this update, asking us about Steam Achievements! This update's for you, friend.
There's a few other goodies in today's update, too.
Most notably, take another look at the options page:
In addition to the long-overdue organization, it's also got a few new knobs to turn in order to customize your soundscape. SFX deals with the specific sound effects like the dot-matrix printer and the repair ratcheting, creaks are specifically the ship groaning in the distance (this, specifically, had reports of giving certain players the WRONG kind of anxiety), and environmental audio refers to the other far off clanking and clunking you hear in the game. Big thanks to Emily Aster for highlighting the value in a number of these changes. Check her out next time you head to twitch - she and we agree that Big Hats are Praxis!
Finally, as a writing update: Work continues on the finale, but as part of that support, all four hundred and nineteen Mission Commands (MCs) are now in the game. You will continue to see a random assortment of them on many turn activation screens, but an upcoming update will let you look them up specifically at the currently-unused console in the Command antechamber.
In the meantime, you can contemplate why we had specifically 419 MCs. Why not one more? It is a mystery.
Now then, back to work on 1.0. See you soon, Custodians!
So, March has come and gone, and with it, our hopes to release 1.0 around the one year in EA mark. Unfortunately, today's update is not 1.0. And we feel that requires a bit of explanation. As our credits page hopefully makes clear, Endless Dark has a number of lovely contributors and lots of wonderful talent behind it, but the core team is exactly two people: Soulmata, and myself (Coolguy). Soul and I work together very tightly and complement one another in very fundamental ways. It is what has allowed us to keep up with development despite both of us having full-time jobs and heavy family obligations. It's a fantastic cooperative dynamic that I really treasure. This makes it especially painful when one of us gets knocked out. Unfortunately, starting in late January, Soul had: 1) COVID 2) Bronchitis 3) Flu 4) Pneumonia One after another, in that order. I kept trying to push the game's development forward for a while by redoubling my own efforts. However, after it became clear that this was a very serious illness, I came to the conclusion that the only humane and sane thing to do was to was to just STOP and let the process happen. In hindsight, that was the correct thing to do. It has been an absolute nightmare watching my friend of over 20 years struggle with a series of serious infections, any one of which could have easily taken a turn for the worst. I don't pretend to be able to contemplate the nightmare Soul went through actually living it. I was generally unwilling to come out with details of this story until it was behind us for a couple of reasons, but first and foremost was that the matter was very stressful for both Soul and I. Discussing the matter required energy that he was better off spending on healing. And considering we lost almost three months to this battery of infections, I am further convinced that was the correct thing to do. If we were a larger studio, there would have been more considerations, but with the size of the team as it is, I strongly feel it was the correct call to prioritize health over everything else. The good news is that the team is now healthy again, and we intend to prove it by releasing today's patch! This patch is not large, but it does fix a large fistful of bugs that we've seen from various streamer friends showing off the game the last few months, and bugs we have identified from our own playthroughs on Twitch. This version of the game has almost 40 hours played publicly with zero observed bugs, even minor ones. There's definitely still number of balance and design issues we want to work out, but this version of the game is as rock solid stable as it has ever been.
So what now?
Now, we are back to work. The scope and ambition for 1.0 - the completion of the story of the Custodians, the fulfillment of our functional promises for modding and content, and the fleshing out of all the little systems and pieces we have built around the mythos of the ship - all of it remains unchanged. We are fired up and excited to get it to you as soon as we are able. Only the schedule has been pushed back. After the immense run of terrible luck that cost us pretty much the entire first quarter of this year, I have learned my lesson about making commitments on exactly when. For now, I only ask that everyone bear with us just a little longer. The game will be done as soon as it is practical - which is different from the kiss-of-death "when it's done". We know exactly what done looks like, and we are both capable of getting there, and eager to get there fast. The only question that remains is how fast the universe will allow us to get there. Each and every one of you are deeply appreciated for your love and support along this odyssey we've shared together. See you soon, Custodians.
It has been an extremely busy 30 days here. As we are getting to the finish line and finding we know precisely what to do to make Endless Dark the best game it can be, that is spurring a huge burst of creativity that is all going into the game. There's a ton to go over, so let's take it at the heading level. That'll hopefully keep it together better.
Usability
We've gone through a lot of trouble this patch to make the game generally easier to look at and work with. Firstly, there's the task list. In builds past, every leak, every door, every almost-identical task would generate its own entry on the list, which could make for quite a teetering list, very quickly. Now, tasks will be fairly aggressively grouped up, like so:
You can still end up with a staggering list pretty fast, but you will no longer have a list shooting off the bottom of the screen because you slept on some leaks. The weather list has also seen a couple huge upgrades:
In addition to the symbols simply being made larger, we have designed and are now using unicons that distinctly identify each hazard. No longer will you have to remember which color is which; a cloud is always dust, a magnet is always EMP, a rad marker is always a radiation belt, and a black hole is always a grav zone. This also moves the weather markers away from the bottom ribbon. Hey, while we're on the topic, let's talk about that bottom ribbon!
The bottom ribbon is now only for systems, and they are always displayed. Highlighting them still pulls up a summary of their status, even if that status is simply "on". The usual accessibility-tested color palate is in use for various states, be it damaged, glitched, disabled, or more. Also, as you likely already noticed, some of the systems also got their own unicons! The default unicons we've had for a long time have always been a little confusing, so we went back and designed our own for the systems where that was important. Navigation now looks like a compass, shields now looks like a shield, and observation, surprise surprise, appears to be an eye! The UI's fidelity got a giant upgrade from these changes, and we're really happy to have them. Toasts have also gotten a huge upgrade. They were always nice to have, but sometimes, it would give you an alert without a clear idea as to why something happened. Now, toasts will report a reason in close to every case.
This is especially useful when you are seeing you badly-needed overclocks sputter out, and don't understand why. It's helpful to see if it's something you could have avoided with Memories or not. And hey, what's that last thing we have always made a big deal, but never actually shown you? That's right, the power supply.
Snuggled up next to the bot UI is a power bar, showing you exactly how much power you are generating, how it is being used, and how much you have in reserve. You can also select it to get a full report!
But is that all, no wait, there's more! You know those Decaying Ship faults that act as spoilers for your run? Wouldn't it be cool if you could see them coming?
Now you can. You can even cancel them. Though not without cost:
But we'll get into the specifics of that when we start talking about Doability. The final Usability note is one everyone can get behind: Pure, raw, frames. We did a lot of tightening up on the game over the last month, and the collective performance increase has been A full 100% over our last release per our benchmarks, even with the other upgrades we've put in. We have also massively improved the way the game handles garbage collection, so the occasional stutters that sometimes happened when the game was cleaning itself up have been almost completely eliminated. If you were having any trouble at all running the game, please try again. We've worked really hard to get you a lot of extra frames.
Viewability
In addition to everything above, the game has gotten the first wave of the art facelift we promised in our road to 1.0 post. There is the usual outlay of upgraded doodads, floors, and a few walls. Most notably, though, consoles have been redone to fit the rest of the art. They also now incorporate the new sigils to make their screen match up with the system tray:
Oh, and also, they have some particle effects when you smash 'em up:
Consoles also have alternate screens for when they have alternate effects on them, that they will cycle between. So you will now be able to tell, by looking at a console, if it is Glitched, Disabled, Locked, or Hardened. Hardened? Well, we'll get to that with Doability. Speaking of particle effects, we've added a fair number of them to the game. Certain leaks, in particular, will now kick off stanky fumes that obscure the screen and force you to go digging for the source:
The title screen also got a bit of an upgrade - nothing major, but enough to show you that it's doing something when you load. A few people have said that the stillness unnerves them, so now, the title will print itself out and keep a flashing cursor going.
It also persistently answers the question of what we made the game with. :D Much more is scheduled for prettying the game up as we march to 1.0, but you can get a good look at where our plans are with the new update.
Doability
All this is great, but this game is fundamentally about doing things. About interacting and working. What can you actually DO in this new update? Well... a lot, and it mostly works into things you already know. First, everyone's favorite, psychosis tasks. More of the insane tasks that show up in your list can now properly be completed. Swap places with a passenger? Turn a pod into an aquarium? Huff xenon fumes? Sure, why not, we'll do that! Wait, xenon fumes?
The individual thrusters in the engine bay can now both malfunction, and be sabotaged. Each busted thruster reduces your speed by 5% - so a few thrusters are probably ignorable for some turns, but a lot of them on the fritz is crippling. This is a new minor repair that can happen instead of leaks, breaker surges, etc. And also:
It's an opportunity to get high. Or try to. Robots don't actually breathe, silly. Have you checked your neural net recently? Next up, the Custodians' personalities now matter when you are making event choices. The loose descriptors in the bot selection screen have been swapped with functional tags. So while Annie is Implosive and Pragmatic, FRANK is Explosive and Selfish. These actually matter in game:
When doing things your Custodian agrees with, the benefits of the decision are increased, while any penalties are reduced. In addition, you keep a personality score that will get you perks:
Naturally, there are plenty of things your Custodian will DISLIKE, as well. FRANK, as ever, is not really into the whole "extra work" thing:
Doing things your Custodian disagrees with will earn you more fatigue, stress, and psychosis for the choice, or reduce the healing that happens. Also, it's just as easy to get harmful perks if you keep dissociating with your personality! Nextly, let's get around to talking about those ship faults.
For increasing amounts of Fatigue, you can reveal an upcoming Fault. This will tell you what the fault is, when you can expect it to hit, and also OFFER TO LET YOU COUNTER IT.
These costs are randomized, and generally quite harsh, but it now gives you some agency against these chronic, game-altering events. Also, there are also now Dilemmas that occur in the final act of the game.
If you've ever felt yourself struggling in the final act, or cruising, this is where you sell out, or cash in. As you limp toward the finish line, you will be offered a choice to screw over Future You in order to finish what you started, or to make the next Custodian's job easier, for a sacrifice now. It is also the first major adjustment to the score that we've added for quite some time. Tired of seeing negative scores? Now you don't have to. Ah yes, and let's not forget - the Hardened point we mentioned earlier. You have everything set up the way you want, with overclocks just so, and even had good rolls on the duration? Four turns of overclocked engines! Amazing! Finally going to get caught up to the tension wall! Next turn, it is practically guaranteed that damage to the engine, or a power failure elsewhere, will rob you of that, right? Now, there is! You can Harden it!
Hardening takes some Fatigue, and 2 parts. Also, a Hardened system consumes +1 power. But in return, it is immune to most glitches, and is last in line to be shut off due to power shortages for 4-6 turns. As a bonus, a Hardened system, if damaged, will simply become nominal. What does all this mean? It means a Hardened system isn't going to lose Overclocked unless something dire happens, and it'll be even harder to take offline! Finally - a crunchy Lore update. Every time you have started a game, you are greeted with a reference to the infamous MC.419. But what are these MCs? And are there really that many of them? Answer: YES.
This update includes encodings of roughly 300 of the 419 MCs, which will be displayed to you when the ship believes you are in violation of some (rightly or not), or repeated as mantras by your Custodian to hold onto the fraying edges of their sanity. While many seem innocuous, many more give hints to the larger story - the one that came long before you awoke on Contingency. That, at long last, is all for this update. Please review the game, it TRULY helps. We welcome all bug reports and chat on the forums or in Discord, and if you know a content creator who might be interested in showing off what we've got, please reach out. :) Now - back to work on 1.0!
This update is relatively small in terms of lines of change, but it includes two new features that have profoundly impactful changes on the game, so we wanted to put a few more words into this update. The two most chronic antagonists in this game are doors, and the weather. Today's update actually gives you tools to deal with both.
Weather
The weather has been something we have been wrestling with for a while. It is critical to the overall challenge and flavor of the game, but also, there are too many edge cases where it is simply too punishing and frustrating to deal with. After a fistful of design discussions, we came to a deceptively simple solution: Course changes.
Instead of 1 line with guaranteed weather, the ship may now be diverted to one of three allowable courses that you can steer to at Navigation. This lets you pilot around hazards that you don't want to deal with - or steered into the one you hate least. Navigation now also gives you an estimated progress marker when shifting courses. Note it is not ENTIRELY accurate, as the dust weather will slow you down as you enter the area. But it's mostly accurate. Note that: 1) Navigation still needs to be functional to change course 2) You still will lose the forecast if Navigation is nonfunctional 3) You still can NOT see gravitational anomalies (which will disable Navigation) There is a hefty Fatigue cost to adjust course, but this can be negated by taking the Solar Sailor memory - in addition to +2 distance traveled at start.
Doors
Doors. There are so many problems with doors. They get in your way. They get stuck by the breakers. They cause so much insanity. Heck, one of those insanities killed a streamer on camera recently as the afraid-of-doors insanity procced too many times in a row and caused a stress break the streamer couldn't handle. Why can you not take your well-earned vengeance on the hateful things? Well, now you can.
While very expensive in terms of fatigue and stress, sometimes it's not about what's optimal. Sometimes it's about sending a message. "Destroy Door" does exactly what it says on the tin. If you do it, the door you use it on will be permanently removed from that run. Nobody will miss it, most likely. In addition, doors can now be forced open, even if they are locked by a closed or broken breaker. This is, again, quite an expensive procedure, but perhaps less expensive than the looming disaster that this one stupid door is about to let happen. But what happens when you force open a door? Well, that too isn't for certain. Most commonly, it will simply open, to close again about 30 seconds later, when the breaker re-establishes control. However, it can also become wedged open, permanently. Also, obviously, failure is always an option. You can simply jam the door shut. While not worthy of a major release tag, this update nonetheless brings a huge amount of power to the player. We hope you enjoy it.
This update includes a few new insanities, a new nightmare, and a small fistful of bugfixes revealed on a stream. - Added more sound to new game screen - Clarified in tooltips that FRANK loses stress for allowing passengers to die, rather than only when killing them. - Made overclocked systems immune to glitch - certain glitches could rob a system of overclocked, so this should make it easier to keep engines and/or nav OC'd to catch up to the tension wall - Chatty memory now gives extra machine parts if you would already start with the Chatbot - Stopped other modules from showing up on the memory core aug slot - Fixed progress not being erased if you removed the memory core - Tracking Failure will no longer allow you to prematurely escape nightmares - Player robot will now lose coolant when panicking (as per certain insanities) - Added labyrinth nightmare - Added 4 new insanities - Cruise Control, Automysophobia, Sciophobia, and Flipped Bits - Fixed Robbie's emergency repair bonuses not applying to emergency repair on the pods, even though the tooltip claimed they were - Fixed paperdoll scaling - Fixed the game timer not setting itself to 0 when a new game is started - Various tooltip and event fixes Shoutouts to TheLastRoboKy for revealing a lot of the bugs fixed in this patch.
This update includes a ton of customization options and an overhauled new game page, letting you tweak your game in dozens of ways to suit your desired experience. Chief among them is REAL-TIME MODE, which completely changes the dynamic of the game in many ways. This also includes a lot of the meta progression content we want to include, such as ship persistence across games, and more. A lot of these details will be detailed in later updates as we aren't yet done working out how their mechanics will work, but the existing tooltips are all accurate. * Real-time mode added * Mono audio mode added in Options menu for those having rare no-audio issues * 22 customization options for each game are now available * Overhauled new game page will show you in great detail exactly what your starting position will be
With Arc 9 done and the story complete up to the grand finale, you may be asking yourself: What does that finale look like? And how will this game look on full release? Well, we have some thoughts to share with you on that.
The finale itself
Our Discord has been buzzing a lot more than usual about where the finale is going, and what it might entail. Without spoiling anything about the story, we want to say three things: [olist]
Art revamp
As we briefly touched on in the 0.9.0 update post, we have gotten much better at working with our artists as the overall style and aesthetic of Endless Dark has become more clear during the EA period. We have our early adopters to thank for a lot of that. The genuine feedback and earnest thoughts you give us are more valuable than gold. So, in order to make good on that faith, we will be re-evaluating every tile and graphic in the game, based on our better understanding of our own style. This effort will also touch a few other headings, not the least of which is the next one...
Meta-consequences
0.9.1 and 0.9.2 have already added a few hints as to what our intentions are for this. Choices should have consequences, even and especially if you don't expect them. Some of these things will require new art, some of these things may require more utility sections of the ship (like the recently added Incinerator). But in general, if something seems like it should have a long term effect, it ought to. Has anyone ever made the rust painting in Creeping Corrosion? What if it left a mural of rust for you? There will be more examples of mechanical meta-consequences, too, some of which will relate to the progress of your memory core. And then, also, there's the obvious one.
Roguelite mode
We've teased this when you acquire the memory core since our first release. Do you want the ultimate in consequences? How about being responsible for the Memory Core? One of the primary things we conveniently forget at the moment is that there are numerous ways to lose the Memory Core, which is the only reason the Custodian is not booted as a blank, nave clone every game. We intend to keep forgetting that, in general, because it's just not fun to play 15 games and lose all your progress to a combination of inattentiveness and bad luck. Or, even worse, because you dared to challenge yourself in a game designed to be challenging. That's now how we roll. But we've been very diligent about keeping promises, so Roguelite mode is happening, and its implementation is really quite simple. [olist]
Difficulty and scoring
Endless Dark was always meant to be a challenging game, and that threads through into the scores you all have been getting for most of your runs. The score is deeply intertwined with the narrative, and the headings we use for the score are very specifically chosen. However, it prompted a larger discussion among the team about difficulty, and how you use it. The discussion ended with trials of the difficulty toggles screen you've already seen in game, which we got tons of great feedback about. We're getting ready to close that feedback loop. We're going to keep the basic concepts we have in place, and keep expanding on the difficulty toggles we have. Those toggles will have a couple of 'developer recommended' presets so you don't have to think about them too much if you don't want to. But ultimately, we like you being in control of the difficulty, and we like you being able to turn off something that's ticking you off. And there WILL be some things that will tick you off. The beautiful thing about the toggles we've come up with is that we can make some new and radical changes to the game that you as a player can simply choose not to interact with if you don't like it. As an example: Ever though about Endless Dark, REAL TIME MODE?
Sound awful to you? Good news! You never have to play it like this. Sound awesome to you? Good news! You can play it like this as much as you want! The added wrinkle: By 1.0, your difficulty decisions will give you a score multiplier, if your score ends up being positive. These positive scores will be persisted on your bot profile, so it will be a matter of record how many points you've accrued as Robbie, Annie, or FRANK. Negative scores will be discarded, in normal mode, for the same narrative reasons that make a positive score so difficult to get in the first place. In roguelite mode, however, those negative scores will count. There may be other scoring tweaks that happen on the road to 1.0 as we keep getting feedback from players, but these principles are going to continue to guide what we do. Also, the visual representation of difficulty kinda rules:
Actual proper Steam integration
Anyone who's opened up the game recently knows that we have achievements in game. Those will be made into proper Steam achievements, including the negative memories that can make your game harder. It also shouldn't be a surprise that our art team has come up with some outstanding trading card material. So that absolutely needs to happen. We have spoken off and on about Workshop integration in our Discord. To make a clear statement on it, we firmly believe that Workshop integration is extremely valuable, and really important for a game that, under the hood, has a decent bit of modular design already. Every event we make is the same data structure that a modder could easily copy, most of the functions we use to make them work is in a file we literally named "modapi.lua", and even our main narrative arcs are nothing more than chains of working events, most of which only call functions in modapi.lua. Despite these early good decisions to make modding easier, adding Workshop support is liable to be a lot of extra work. So for 1.0, we will only be investigating what we can and cannot do with Workshop support, with the hope of adding it after 1.0's launch. In an ideal world, we would give you the keys to pretty much everything we are doing and letting our engine tell dozens of other stories. That is what we are going to strive to deliver. But we don't know enough at this time to promise that.
Soundtrack release
A decent number of people have asked about the release of our soundtrack. For good reason, too - our composer, Ish Fuseini, is an absolute dean at what he does. Ultimately, this is another Actual Proper Steam Integration thing that we will have sorted out by 1.0. Ish deserves accolades and proper release of his spectacular work bringing the atmosphere to life in Endless Dark.
Schedule
Seeing all of this, you may be a little stunned. How long will all of this take, with everything that's clearly in the hopper? Well, the good news is that for most of what we've been talking about in this post, the hardest, slowest work was done in the massive amount of effort we've put in over the last 9 months or so. The finale itself will still be a big lift, but many of the other major points are easier than they might seem, simply because we've spent a ton of time tinkering with what works and what doesn't. So, the target date (WHICH IS SUBJECT TO DELAYS AND CHANGES), is March 2024.
With all arcs complete, I had some time to sit down and add some features I wanted as well as look at performance improvements. To that end, 0.9.2 brings a huge performance lift - as much as 50% - in framerates. A lot of logic behind the scenes changed, so if you notice unusual behavior, please come join us on Discord and tell soulmata all about it. NEW FEATURES: * NEW ROOM - INCINERATOR. Used for some ship persistence and insanity tasks, the INCINERATOR will need to be fired if your previous run resulted in any number of passengers dying. * SHIP PERSISTENCE - Certain ship states - particularly system damage states - are now preserved between runs. If you leave a lot of stuff broken, the next Custodian will still have to clean up your mess. This can be toggled on/off as a game setting. * Spacing yourself by any means will also kill all passengers and reflect such in your scoring BUGFIXES: * A wide variety of logic changes to improve performance, boosting framerates as much as 50-60% * A few typo and continuity fixes
A bugfix and performance update, following issues spotting during live streams. * Arc selection and game settings are now respected if you change difficulty * Certain narrative arc tasks will be ignored by scrambled HUD to avoid an arc softlock because you can't read * Numerous task and progression issues with arc 4 corrected * Arc 3's secret door will be restored if you choose to replay it, allowing progression again * A few map fixes, decorations, and changed lighting to better illuminate certain halls * Large performance issue related to determining the player's map position addressed (about a 10% change) * Hallucinating that everything is a door will include the tops of the cryo pods * Observation Window shutter will continue retracting when you open the action menu * Tooltips no longer render during transitions, showing you old or incomplete data A big shout out to Tomato "pre-nerf wins" Gaming (twitch.tv/tomato) for helping us identify a lot of these improvements.
Today's update is a giant step forward on a lot of fronts; the game has hit a ton of new milestones and we're eager to share them with everyone.
2 New Narrative Arcs
You may have noticed that this is a bump of 2 major versions, not just 1. That's because we got 2 narrative arcs done for you, which brings us to the full complement of 9 out of 9. Arc 8 - Misjump - is an object lesson on why precision matters. In arc 7, we explored the ship's AI. In arc 8, we explore the ship's mission. Despite everything, the ship is still moving forward, and it still has its orders. How many more lifetimes can your duty possibly span? Arc 9 - Obsolete - is the arc many of you have been long asking for. As robots, Robbie, Annie, and FRANK should have been built better. Built different. Built above all of these petty struggles and horrors that plague them every cycle of their all-too-short existences. Why were they built to suffer? Who is to blame for this atrocity? With all 9 arcs complete, all that remains is the finale. You, and the Custodian, will take control of the situation and do precisely what you feel is right. Think long and hard about what that is, until the finale - and 1.0!
Self-improvement mini-arcs
Since the launch of 0.3.0, we have been asking: What can change the nature of a machine? This patch, we give you the power to answer - at least to some extent. When gazing out of observation, you now have the option to begin a mini-arc, focused on one of the flaws of your Custodian. With diligence and commitment, you can help the Custodian recognize and overcome one of their faults. Change is difficult, however, and taking it too quickly can result in permanent damage. But perhaps going a little crazy is worth the payoff? Isn't a little insanity worth Robbie giving himself a break?
Or maybe that's too difficult. Maybe change is simply a bridge too far. Maybe the universe is already too far gone. It CAN be comforting to revel in your flaws, do things the same broken way as you've always done them. The routine can be comforting. During these arcs, you can also refuse to change in order to blow off stress. Maybe this saves you from the last psychotic break that would finish you.
But hopefully you can live with yourself afterward.
Meta-progression and story rewards
Have you ever felt like your actions didn't have enough consequences? Yeah, us too. Now, every narrative arc you complete will give all of your successor Custodians some sort of bonus, reflecting the state of the ship you left, and the impressions your previous lives leave. What is best? That usually depends on your perspective. Change your mind? No problem - just replay the associated arc, and take the path you didn't travel before. All the story rewards carry over into Sandbox and Endless mode, and can be optionally disabled by one of the numerous new difficulty selections (which we'll say more about in a minute).
Nightmares
We quietly trialed this feature in the previous patch, and are now rolling it out more fully. At higher levels of psychosis, you will start having terrible visions. Momentary lapses of attention spiraling into, as your Nerve Staplers refer to it, 'cancerous introspection'. Or perhaps you fail to power down entirely, and your trapped consciousness seeks to rationalize its situation. Whatever the cause of these distressing terrors, the first few are properly here. There will be more. (But you can also turn them off in the new difficulty selections.)
First phase of ship revamps
As we have continued through Early Access, we have gotten much better at working with our art team, in no small part because of the delightfully detailed input everyone has given us. Put simply, we are now capable of making much higher quality assets to represent the ship. You can expect to see more of these upgrades as we march toward 1.0.
New ship area
As part of the above art upgrades, we are also adding areas to the ship as the writing mentions them, and we get the quality assets they deserve. You can see the first addition like this between Command and Cryo in this update.
Be, uh, be careful in there.
More difficulty options
As the game gets closer to complete, we keep listening to things people like, what they don't, and which of those opinions might change from day to day. For all of these last category, we continue to add difficulty options.
These options don't always affect difficulty directly, but all are designed to tailor to the experience you want to see out of the game. New in this patch are: Decaying Ship - If on, two permanent Decaying Ship modifiers will be added as the game progresses, making each playthrough progressively more complicated. These modifiers are independent of any story actions, and are specifically meant to be flies in your proverbial honey. Nightmares - If on, the newly fleshed out NIGHTMARES feature will be enabled. Turning this off has no effect on difficulty, as the nightmares do not have mechanical effects. Bounded Weather - If on, the game will keep track of how many weather zones it randomly rolls for your game, and will reroll the weather map if too many are generated. Turning it off removes this upper limit. Story Meta Rewards - If on, you will have access to the persistent rewards you earn in narrative arcs, regardless of what mode you are in. Turning this off will remove all of these rewards, as though you have not completed a story arc yet. You can expect to see more of these as we march toward 1.0, along with a better way to tell exactly how hard you're making the game.
Other milestones, and road to 1.0
With this update, Endless Dark has broken 200,000 written words across all of its events. While both core team members are published writers, neither of us expected to be writing quite so much for this project. Our inspiration is constantly stoked by those of you sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. Thank you. In a similar vein, expect to see a news post coming soon detailing all of our thoughts and ambitions for the finale, 1.0, and what comes after 1.0. Thank you again for loving Endless Dark. Quirky indie games like this one exist entirely because of the support of open-minded and big-hearted fans, and we are honored every day by the community we continue to foster and grow.
We keep marching forward, and we're thankful all of you are here with us.
New Narrative Arc
As with every major version release, we have more narrative for you. Act 3 starts with Stop Button Problem. You've learned a lot about the ship that you live in - and supposedly work with. Much more than you knew when you started trying to talk to it in Phasma Ex Machina. Using everything you've learned, can you come to understand your triple-purpose home, prison, and overlord? Those who have been following us in our Discord and other outlets know that we have been promising a full and satisfying ending to the Endless Dark story. Buckle in - Stop Button Problem is where we begin to deliver that. YOU ARE OWNER OF ALL THAT OCCURS HEREAFTER.
New Crisis Arc
The 6th - and final - Crisis Arc for endless mode is also in this release. In Hard Reboot, something starts making changes to your workspace without your consent. Is this a malformed initiative that the sleepy ship will eventually handle, or a long-buried rogue process that must be set right? If you don't guess right, glitches might become the rule. FRANK is strong against this new crisis. This new crisis arc is another promise kept - the endless mode now can deal 120 different permutations of crises, which unfold over a very different cycle. It was important to us to make Endless Dark not just a compelling story, but also a compelling game. With Endless Mode's own content topping 30,000 words, it is very much its own thing that you can play over and over again.
New Random Events
With the release of act 3, we are again adding another 20 random events. This brings us up to 100 in the game. At an average of 10 or so events per narrative game, you should still be seeing new events all the way through the story. This is another promise kept - we have always said we believe in having enough content to last the entire game, with minimal redos. Statistically, we are there. We will probably keep adding a few new random events as we push forward, though; the people sending in their contributions have been truly awesome, and the resonance with the Endless Dark universe has been astounding. Keep up with us on our Discord!
Art Updates
Our awesome pixel artist has been hard at work making the ship look more unique and distinguished. The first round of these art updates goes in with this release!
Psychosis Tasks
You asked for it - we did it. As your psychosis increases, you will now see new actions appear on several systems. These unhinged actions are generally counter to your initial goals - but, at a certain point, you have to wonder. Are they YOUR goals? Do you CARE?
Deep Lore Arc
You know that seductive 1% chance of "something else" happening as you gaze from observation? Well, it just got a lot more interesting. Now, when you hit that rare chance, you will get a part of the deep back story to the Endless Dark tale. Everything is clearly already old when you arrive in your first Narrative Arc. So what happened, in that stretch of time? Why is it like this? The Deep Lore arc consists of 10 events, and you can unlock each event over multiple games. After you unlock your first one, you will also unlock a Memory that will make unlocking more even easier. Oh, and we upped that 1% chance to a 5% chance. Playtesting told us it was too frustrating otherwise. As always, please consider dropping us a review on Steam and joining our Discord. We love to hear from you!
Full Patch Notes:
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Major new content:
- Added new narrative arc: Stop Button Problem
- Added scenes for Stop Button Problem
- Added new Crisis Arc: Hard Reboot. FRANK is strong against this crisis.
- Added Deep Lore arc - gazing from Observation can now reveal memories long ago buried. Player content and balance:
- 20 new random events, bringing the total to 100.
- Art updates for many walls and floors throughout the ship
- Increased base Memory selections from 1 to 2.
- Upped rare event chance on Observation from 1% to 5%.
- Added Psychosis tasks to many systems for when you start going crazy. Some bots just want to watch the ship burn.
- Added a Psychosis event that can happen sometimes on turn start.
- Usual boatload of typo and small bug fixes.
* Several accessibility improvements following pank's stream * Several bugfixes following pank's stream * Tile rework in progress * A new game settings menu will appear when starting a new game
On the road to having Steam achievements, I wanted to make them more than just a little popup and a picture saying you did this or that. I wanted achievements to be built into the lore of the game and part of the meta - and thus, instead of achievements, you have MEMORIES.
Memories are just that, the Custodian remembering bits of their past incarnations, and applying them to their current campaign for effects. Memories and achievements are entirely identical - you unlock them by doing a specific thing in game, and then, in future games, can activate that Memory for some small bonus. The number of Memories you can have active at once grows slowly over time, and a few DANGEROUS memories will allow you to turn on more memories at once in exchange for some penalty.
Along with that come TOASTS! The traditional way most games notify you about stuff any more is through toasts, but doing that in a way that meshed with Endless Dark was a little interesting. I decided to keep a separation between the Custodian and the Toast - a toast notification is data that is sent to the player, not the Custodian, and the Custodian will therefore never react to a toast. So far, only a few things will provide a Toast - unlocking a memory, building modules, passengers unaliving, and a few other things, while we work out what the best combination between informative and not intrusive.
Full patch notes for 0.6.3:
* 25 MEMORIES/ACHIEVEMENTS are now available to unlock through in-game actions
* MEMORIES can be activated in later runs to change the behavior of the game
* Toast Notifications will now appear for a variety of events
* The bot no longer spins randomly in New Game selection
* Selecting narrative arcs also now shows you which bots have completed which arcs
* An overhauled Paperdoll now shows you your full inventory including schematics and modules
* Paperdoll now adds another column if you have a huge number of effects
* A few minor bugfixes
Patch 0.6.2 is here, and it extends the new game screen from 0.6.1. Now, the new game screen will not only let you select any arc you wish, but also inform you which bots have completed which arcs. If you have already completed an arc, the game currently assumes you did it with ROBBIE. However, there's also now a new cli command you can use to force-complete any arc immediately as whatever bot you are playing
* Game now tracks which bots have completed which arcs
* complete_arc (1-10) console command will immediately complete a given arc as your current bot
Previously, narrative progress has been strictly linear from arcs 1 through 4, followed by the choice of which order to tackle 4, 5, and 6 in. There are strong narrative reasons to do them in this order, but the only technical ones were the modules available to you. No longer is such a constraint a thing, and now, when starting a new game, you can choose from any released arc to start immediately. If an arc requires a specific module, the game will ensure you are given the schematic for it on launch.
While you still get the best story by completing the arcs order (or at least, in order from 1 through 3), if you want to replay a specific arc or skip one altogether, that choice is now yours. You can repeat this any time you wish!
Additionally, a few minor typos and issues from 0.6 were corrected, and all narrative arcs begin on turn 8 instead of turn 10.
It's our second major update, and it is a DOOZY. As is traditional, let's start with the new blood:
FRANK
FRANK (the all-caps are important) does not like you. In fact, he's generally angry that you exist. But he does not want you to leave him alone, per se. He will be angry regardless. You just give him a reason to be angry. FRANK is cursed with a very deep awareness of his fundamental nature. Which is a fancy way of saying that, of all the Custodians, FRANK was made from second-hand parts at a bargain basement price, and he knows it. The universe has seen fit to awaken FRANK for another cycle, and he WILL make it everyone's problem. With this awareness, however, comes a certain freedom - why bother keeping up appearances when you know the terrible secret of space? FRANK represents an explosive response to stress, and will blame every last one of his copious problems on someone or something else. Which also means he takes solace in not solving those problems. Far from gaining stress when the ship is not in working order, FRANK actually loses stress for ignoring repairs, and comes pre-equipped with a pneumatic hammer to augment his robo-strength for making breakers and doors see things HIS way. However, his fractured world view must be constantly reinforced; he will gain Stress if he does not sabotage a system every turn. Furthermore, FRANK has a... particular relationship with the passengers of the ship.
While other Custodians may regard the passengers as their charge, or even their sacred duty, FRANK regards them with open hostility. He gains Stress every turn for each passenger that is alive, and sheds it when they die - whether by his hand, or by happenstance. FRANK is strong against one Crisis Arc in Endless Mode, and will be strong against the arc that will release sometime in the next few weeks. He also has over 15 unique interactions with random events, and has his own art for every narrative arc. FRANK's release is particularly exciting for us because he represents the first of our 1.0 promises completed. Three very unique Custodians, all of whom respond and react very differently.
New Narrative Arc
We also have a new narrative arc for you - Into The Underworks. We've figured out some critical things about ship's central computer, and about the passengers. Now, what about the ship itself? Into The Underworks represents the completion of act 2 of our over-arching plot. Act 3 will begin with the release of 0.7.0, and again change the tenor of the writing entirely. Please look forward to the ongoing adventures of the Custodians!
New Crisis Arc
This release also has the 5th Crisis Arc for Endless Mode - when terrible failures begin brewing, and everyone insists it's not your job, how should you respond? Pay close attention, and figure out if the recurring power problems with the ship are actually in hand, or if the ship just can't ask for help from the expert. Robbie is strong against this new crisis arc.
New Insanities
This release also includes a slew of new unique insanities, bringing us up to 40 in total, and includes a number of new starting insanities for Annie. This represents another promise kept for us; with this many unique, flavorful insanities, the mental state of your Custodian is very unlikely to ever be the same in two separate games. You should be able to play the entire story, and a fair bit besides, without seeing the same insanities too often, and never the same combination of insanities.
New Pressure mechanic
One very valuable piece of feedback from our players was that, while we use a Director to moderate the RNG, the game can still feel very hopeless if lots of bad things happen at once. While Endless Dark is absolutely supposed to feel like a struggle, hopelessness is not something we want in our game. Enter: Pressure.
As bad things happen, Pressure will build up. If things ease up, Pressure will go back down. However, if lots of bad things happen all at once, you will receive an Inspiration to help you get over the hump. You can only get Pressure inspirations every few turns, so don't go chasing them, but if you feel yourself in a death spiral, Pressure will give you a reason to grit your teeth and keep going. There is hope just over that hill.
Sandbox mode
Another player request, Sandbox mode is now a toggle when starting a new game. An explicitly calmer mode, Sandbox mode:
- Uses a much slower difficulty increase arc; you can expect a much longer, calmer game, though it will eventually hit so hard you cannot keep up.
- Enables all modules for manufacture and use.
- Disables all narrative and crisis arcs.
- Disables the distance limit.
- Slows down, but does not disable, random events.
UI Upgrades
The Navigation bar is now much more useful than it was before:
In addition to being much easier to read your progress, you can now predict the space weather much, much further in advance than you previously were able to. Naturally, this bar still goes blank if Navigation is offline, and it cannot predict when a Gravitational Anomaly will show up - so pay attention, and don't rely on it to always be there! In addition, tooltips have been updated to present information much more aggressively. Passenger deaths are now reported as decision effects, and the overall effect of their deaths is properly reported, as well. Compare what happens when FRANK lets 3 passengers die in the Gamma Burst event:
To Robbie doing the same:
You will also get similar updates if passengers are expected to die on turn ending.
Accessibility Upgrades
A few sliders have been added and more revamped to provide better support for players with Irlen Syndrome and similar brightness sensitivities (which are very different from light sensitivities, we've learned!) Check out the new 'Ambient brightness', 'Bot lamp intensity' and 'Ship Light Intensity' options to come up with a balance that suits you best.
Special Shout-outs
We knew when we started making Endless Dark that we were doing something offbeat, strange, and unique. We were not sure how many people would react to what we were doing. So, we are incredibly thankful for everyone who has embraced our project of spirit and curiosity, and wanted to give two very special shout-outs to two streamers who have had so much face-melting fun with our game: Tomato "ROBBIE, NO!!" Gaming: https://www.twitch.tv/tomato The little pink squid on the internet, Pankraru: https://www.twitch.tv/pankraru For those of you who might not stream, please consider dropping us a review on Steam and joining our Discord. We love to hear from you!
Full Patch Notes:
-
Major new content:
- Added new Custodian (FRANK) - FRANK gains extra fatigue when repairing, and stress from living passengers. He must also sabotage 1 system per turn, or gain more stress. However, he loses stress from sabotage, and loses large amounts of stress when passengers die.
- Added new narrative arc: Into The Underworks
- Added scenes for Turing Complete
- Added new Crisis Arc: Frayed Wires. Robbie is strong against this crisis.
- Added Sandbox mode. This mode uses the Endless Mode difficulty progression, but does not queue up any Crisis Arcs, which normally pump up the difficulty as they function. Should be a very relaxed mode.
- Added Pressure mechanic. This keeps track of everything that has happened recently, and if you get hit too hard, it gives you an inspiration to help mitigate the bad RNG. UI updates
- Updated tooltips to more explicitly call out effects of passenger death, and when passengers are expected to die.
- Updated the notification of passenger death to be less aggressive toward the player.
- Updated Navigation bar to show radiation belts, dust clouds, and EMP storms.
- Moved Glitch notifications to the bottom task bar, rather than making them a task (since you can't actually do anything but wait them out) Player content and balance:
- 12 new insanities, bringing total up to 40.
- Reduced the amount of fatigue for opening/closing breakers (should make breaker surges less punishing)
- Enabled the Director to use Glitches as Tension building devices (reduces how many breaker surges it uses)
- Reduced the cost of almost all subroutines; most inflict Fatigue now, rather than Stress.
- Buffed engine overclock to +20% speed
- Buffed Robbie's Emergency Repair; now gets +20% chance to work for each busted system, up from 10%.
- Changed Consensus Protocols to be uninstallable if it is the first thing you do on a turn
- Fixed a few music tracks that were much louder than intended
- Fixed a bug that was causing only about a third of the selected soundtrack to be eligible for play
- Added brightness sliders to allow brightness-sensitive players to make a lightscape that doesn't give them migraines
- Fixed a potential softlock in Turing Complete
- Dozens of event typo fixes
- Fixed multiple instances of random events erroneously applying decision costs twice
End of update bonus:
"So Rob-man, I put two and two together there, and, heheh.... ....I decided that you're tickin' me off."
* The first iteration of a fully interactive tutorial is now enabled by default * Three new types of insanity added * Observation Window can now trigger a Glitch Storm * Prototype for endgame scoring now functional, positive scores are technically possible * Fixed an issue with A NEW YOU that would allow you to use the wrong door
* Fixed a softlock bug where on a new profile you would not have any module slots to install Radiation Hardening in during Contingency * Fixed an audio playlist issue that resulted in high psychosis music almost never playing * Various typos and other fixes
Patch 0.5.3 will add a little bit more variety into ship failures, especially early game. Breaker Surges being too common, we have introduced a new mechanic: Glitches. These will fill in some early game gaps and be a regular tool for the Director, and will temporarily change the behavior of a system. Each Glitch lasts only a single turn, and will cause a system to misbehave in various ways. Currently, six glitches are supported:
- Neural Feedback will cause a system to inflict Psychosis if used
- Packet Collision will cause Reliability to lower if the system is on
- Stuck Loop will cause all actions on the system to take much longer
- Frozen Console will scramble the HUD for only that system
- Grounding Failure will cause the system to shut down other systems if used
- Unstable Power will cause the system to randomly shut down when used
* Fixed bug that caused saves to be deleted if you used Save to Menu * Fixed bug that caused the Robot's Run insanity to conclude immediately instead of the following turn * Inconsistencies and a showstopping door lock bug in A NEW YOU fixed * Radzones, EMP Zones, and Dust Zones now have additional impact, which is described in their tooltips
* Fix 2 reported crashes due to nil references
It's our first major update of Early Access! First things first, let's say hello to our new Custodian: Annie!
Blessed with a very strong sense of self, Annie lacks many of the obsessive hang-ups that Robbie has, and gains much less stress when the ship is not just-so. The ship doesn't need to be just-so, because SHE is just-so. Always, and forever. Of course, this self-confidence quickly turns into introspection as stress builds up...which isn't good for a Custodian trapped in an iron shell in deep space.
Annie represents an implosive response to stress, and retreats inside her rich fantasies as things get bad. She starts with a permanent insanity, and can choose to make any insanities she acquires permanent as well. Even better - don't like an insanity you got? You can change it! Annie can choose to shuffle non-permanent insanities at the Observation window.
What weaker minds call insanities, though, Annie simply calls the burden of perfection. She loses Stress at the end of every turn for every insanity she has active - and loses still more the more Psychosis she has. However, any Stress left over will cause Annie to retreat further into her inner universe, gaining Psychosis at the beginning of the next turn.
Annie has a doubled chance to gain an insanity per turn, and cannot install the ECC module. Not that she needs it - why would there be any errors to correct in such a clearly perfect specimen?
Annie is far from the only thing in this update, though, so without further ado, onto the juicy patch notes!
Content
- Two new Narrative Arcs - Phasma Ex Machina and Turing Complete.
- The second act of the game, which includes the new Narrative Arcs and the yet-to-be-released Underworks arc, are less linear than the first three. On turn 6, you will receive a popup to choose which arc you wish to attempt.
- You are responsible for all that occurs hereafter.
- Added 1 new Crisis Arc to Endless Mode (Defragged Memoirs)
- Annie is strong against an existing Crisis Arc (Cold Coffins)
- Added 20 new random events.
- Added 10 Annie-specific choices for random events.
- Added Annie-specific choices on all current narrative arcs.
- Added scenes for Annie on all current narrative arcs.
- Added 10 new various insanities.
- Added 5 new insanities exclusive to Annie.
- Updated some minor semantics about existing insanities (ex: Illusory doors from the insanity may now appear on top of you sometimes.)
- Added 5 new Inspirations.
- New interactions with certain ship doodads - lockers, for example, now have a 10% chance to have a part in them when you search them the first time.
- First part of the new Interactive Tutorial
- At current, the tutorial is not being triggered by the menu item; we are evaluating with playtesters where it makes the most sense to fire. You may manually fire the new tutorial experience by hitting the tilde (~) key and typing "run tutorial_begin", without the quotes.
- The Interactive Tutorial is not fully done yet and we welcome feedback on topics to cover in it - post in the Discussions, or join our Discord! (https://discord.gg/GzNMeCtf8T)
- Added Ship Disasters
- Spills and leaks will now self-propagate if not cleaned. Ignoring them for too long will turn into a larger scale disaster, such as a structural collapse or an oil slick. Not all disasters are wholly negative, though...
Visuals and Audio
- Many new decorations, both in new areas of the ship and revamped old ones.
- Updated Cryo with new pod designs and light styles.
- Major sound revamp; lots of new environmental sounds, both directional and regional to your position on the ship.
Fixes
- Fixed a major issue with Contingency that caused the reactor power to not be fully restored at the end of the arc.
- Fixed Cooldown events that say they are repairing and overclocking a system; they will now always do exactly that, regardless of the state of the system or the ship.
- Fixed a dozen random events pushing LUA code into the savegame.
- Added a warning in the game about corrupt saves if LUA code is detected in the save.
- In the future, Endless Dark will refuse to load such corrupted saves, but for now it will only warn.
- Added a function to test ongoing random effects, and to check all events in the game for potential crashing bugs.
- Fixed dozens of potential crashes in the logic of random and narrative events thanks to this new infrastructure.
- Increased dead zones for controller inputs to make them less wonky.
- Fixed a very nasty encoding bug that was causing some UTF-8 characters to crash the game.
- Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if it ran out of random events to show the player.
- Fixed a nasty bug that made it FAR more likely than intended for the player to contract an insanity per turn due to their psychosis level. Please be aware that Annie innately doubles your chance to contract an insanity per turn, so her insanity incidence is still quite high. Robbie will now be far more stable than he was, however.
Changes and Balancing
- Robbie's Emergency Repair now gets a success bonus the more systems are damaged or broken; at 3 systems on the fritz, it's about as reliable as a plain repair, which can save him a lot of Parts.
- Robbie can also use Emergency Repair through a system lock.
- Adjusted Tension gain from having dead passengers, and corrected Tension growth. The game will hit a little harder in the early turns, but overall will grow substantially slower as the game goes on. This should remove some of the pressure to rush all the time.
- Removed the Director's ability to launch an extra random event to add Tension to the game. It will now tend to spawn more minor issues (like stuck doors or spills) instead.
- The game will now put your last save into a save.bak to make it easier to send in your save games for analysis by the Little Light team.
A pretty hefty update today! NEW FEATURE: Automatic opening doors. If it's safe to do so, all doors in the game will now open automatically as you approach them. This feature can be toggled on and off at will via the Command station, and it disables itself during certain insanities or if Command is damaged. NEW FEATURE: Environmental hazards. The previous small spills you could ignore forever will now not only get worse, but eventually become a catastrophe if you do not intervene. Oil leaks become slicks that make you sticky, and water will eventually cause a hallway to collapse BALANCE: Stress upkeep for all modules has been reduced substantially BALANCE: Fatigue costs for many actions were lowered BUGFIX: Disabled and locked systems will no longer flash on the minimap BUGFIX: Numerous event fixes and an audio fix that was preventing sound in some cases
Some big changes today, including some sorely-needed "ease up" events for when things are really going bad! First off, new features: * INSPIRATIONS: Certain conditions will now trigger an offer to receive an "Inspiration", which will provide a temporary boost to the custodian. DETERMINED ENGINEER, for instance, fires when the player fails a repair due to stress, and will make all repairs guaranteed successes for 2 turns. * COOLDOWNS: More heavy hitting than Inspirations, COOLDOWNS are big anvil events that arrive in the mid to late game when you have been struggling for an extended period of time, and will offer some significant boost to your run. * SHIP STATUS BAR: Now all systems will have an entry in the ship status bar, and have full tooltips that explain what state they are in, why, and what impact that state has. * Overclocking Command will now increase Custodian speed Bugfixes: * Hit detection for leaks is greatly improved * Numerous fixes for breakers * Sync issue insanity will no longer teleport you while performing an action
* Feedback-driven accessibility improvements * Crisis Capacitor bugfix * New stress break option
* 4 more types of insanity, bringing the total to 20 * Observation Window overhaul, now has 11 different outcomes * Numerous passenger-related events now offer different rewards
* Crash fix when failing a repair * Audio improvements * Numerous typos fixed * Radiation Hardening log spam fix
* Sound effects for doors and a lot more ambient metal fatigue
* Many actions now have sound effects attached * Robbie now beeps menacingly when betraying you * Fixed bug causing insanity effects to repeat without seeing them all * Fixed typos in various events and logs
* Crash fix when Robbie betrays you and powers off the reactor * Better error handling when the game cannot load an object * Main Menu shows you what version of save your game came from * Fade in / fade out is smoother, with fewer popping lights
LIVE!
We are live in Early Access! Super excited for everyone to dive in to our first build and experience what we've been grinding so hard at. This release includes:
- 3 major story arcs
- 3 crisis arcs for endless mode
- 60 random events to spice things up
- A fully functional Director to moderate pressure
- 16 insanities to contract as you slowly lose your mind
- Full playable layouts with mouse only, keyboard only, gamepad only, or keyboard and mouse
STAY CONNECTED:
Discord: https://discord.gg/GzNMeCtf8T Twitter: https://twitter.com/EndlessDarkGame Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/endlessdark/
Endless Dark
Little Light Studios, LLC
Little Light Studios, LLC
2023-02-22
Action Indie Strategy Casual Adventure Simulation F2P Sports MMO Racing Singleplayer Multiplayer Coop EA
Game News Posts 38
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🕹️ Partial Controller Support
🎮 Full Controller Support
Very Positive
(66 reviews)
https://victorycraft.studio/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290890
[82.6 M]
You, the Custodian, are a sentient machine onboard a sleeper colony ship, charged with keeping it intact. No combat, enemies, or NPCs await you - only a myriad of system failures and the decay of your own sanity as you whittle away the decades in isolation. Hundreds of story events and a deep narrative keep each iteration of you intrigued. Customize your own chassis, repair the ship, and keep your passengers alive long enough to win... something. Can you uncover the intent behind your own creation before you slip into robo-dementia?
STORY MODE
The ship is shadowy in more ways than one. Ancient agreements and long-forgotten understandings conspire against you to keep you in your place. Doing your work. For however long the long-absent conspirators wanted.Explore a deep narrative that evolves over multiple playthroughs, and choose how you deal with each new revelation. Not all truths will set you free, and some things are better left unsaid.
ENDLESS MODE
For a more mechanical challenge, try the optional endless mode. In this mode, the only objective is to propel the ship as far as you can before you inevitably lose your passengers, your mind, or both. Contend with the confusing oddities of the ship and its myriad catastrophes with a specially written CRISIS CYCLE. Three impending crises, promising grievous and irreparable damage, will be shown to you. Use your intuition, born of your intimate awareness of your vessel, to discern which two crises are lies, and which one is the true threat! Choose wisely - the Crisis will not be gentle if you fail to prepare for it.PLAYABLE...
Endless Dark has been designed from the start to be eminently playable for Custodians with their own histories. The game has a specially chosen color palate to be visible for numerous kinds of colorblindness, even full monochromacy. Large, clear text makes messages readable at a glance. All Custodians need only bring their willingness to do, explore, and grow.Busy Custodians also need not fear; distinct, bite-sized turns with effortless autosave allows for drop-in, drop-out play.
Control things your way; the game is fully playable with a gamepad only, keyboard only, or mouse and keyboard.
...AND REPLAYABLE
With over 50,000 words (and growing!) of random events, spread over dozens of dilemmas, and a finely tuned Director that applies just the right amount of pressure, Endless Dark is designed to never present the same situation twice. Fight and overcome, or struggle and succumb, the next time will always be different.- OS: Ubuntu 18+Memory: 4 GB RAMGraphics: HardwareStorage: 400 MB available spaceSound Card: Any
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Hardware
- Storage: 400 MB available space
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