Hey folks!

I added in a bunch of new stuff for the big demo update a month ago, and have gotten some nice feedback from it. On the other hand, because of the rush to get it out before the Summer Sales happened, the previous build also had incomplete keyboard controls.

To fix this, and to see if nothing could be done for people who want to play with keyboard + mouse, without sacrificing the mood of the game, I've worked on reinstating full keyboard controls (two hands on keyboard, one wasd for movement, one near arrow keys for aiming) and also providing a keyboard + mouse alternative (wasd for movement, mouse for aiming and shooting).

Some further work was also done on movement, along with some animation tweaks and general code cleanup.

So if you wanted to play the game with keyboard controls, now is your chance! Feel free to give me some feedback through the feedback form linked in the main menu. :-)

A new direction

Since launching the demo at Screamfest, I've made some pretty significant changes to the gameplay and mood of the game.

Before, I got the feedback that Yesterdreamt was trying to be two games at once, unforgiving and slow but also very accessible with quick reactive movement.

A few months ago I chose to go all-in on the original vision of the game being a "Horrorvania". A metroidvania in terms of utility-gated exploration (and soulslike opening of shortcuts) combined with tense moments of the cosmic horror genre. My pillars for this were "heavy movement, limited ammo and sanity as a precious resource".

I realize this new direction might make the game less appealing for some, but I hope the clearer direction for the game to be itself makes it more fun and cohesive to play. Hopefully I'm on the right track to bring a new and interesting flavor in of Soulsvania.

(You will need a controller to play the game)

Changelog

• Heavy movement

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• Reworked sanity system

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• Ammo is much more limited

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• Because of this more emphasis on melee attacks

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• Melee attack changed to whip and now also aimable

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• Grittier visual mood

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• Much requested feature: Map added! (Not that useful in the demo, but obviously very useful in the full game)

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• Can now spend collected (in-game and in-world) currency (for instance to buy map)

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• NPC's!

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• New enemies

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• Streamlining of tutorials

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• Lots of changes to how camera works

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Hey folks!

Some of you have been waiting a long time for this, and it's finally here. Your first chance of getting Yesterdreamt into your hands! The demo is LIVE!*

This has been a long time in the making. The first bits of gameplay and the first world concepts were drafted in early 2021! A lot of iteration, both with systems and visual styles, and eventually the game started to reveal itself.

Yesterdreamt is a Metroidvania first, so a lot of focus on "utility-gated exploration" and fun movement mechanics. But it's cosmic horror-themed (hence launching during Steam Scream), so we're going for a slightly slower pacing, with deliberate player actions and a player character that will always need to be careful around enemies, even as they grow stronger and acquire magic spells.

If you like our take on a "souls-like Metroidvania", please consider wishlisting the game! It will make sure you get notified when the game releases, and also helps to support our development.

*Some of you may have noticed the demo going up yesterday. There was a rather quick report of a nasty bug that caused major framerate drops, so the game was updated today to give you hopefully a bug-free experience.