Salutations from malodorous, fungus-laden crevices of the abhorrent Hanwell Mental Institute. I have combined these assorted words to convey some degree of meaning and bring you a report of recent occurrences. There's been an influx of anxious inquiries since we announced that beta-testing of ASYLUM had commenced with fresh new eyeballs and bodily appendages. And yes, there be news. Here's the quick lowdown:

• People are truly liking it so far! They highlighted its atmosphere, what it feels like to explore the vast and intricate design of the decaying building, and the compelling story.
• No major issues were reported, other than technical annoyances to be expected during this period. The build we distributed is more stable than anticipated, and most feedback we received pertained to quality of life improvements, which the team is tackling en masse.
• There are design quirks we still need to sort out, notably characters being underused in latter stages of the experience. As in, they have little intervention in plot points and too few dialogue lines. I agree with this balancing issue, and it's wonderful to hear folks cared enough about our asylum denizens that they wanted more from them.
• Before you ask, no, we're not ready to disclose a release date. Yet. So please don't expect one in this update. When we announce it, rest assured you'll know. All I'm going to say right now is that we're very seriously gauging a launch window.

I'll elaborate more on the tasks at hand next, but overall, things are looking fantastic!

Elaboration

So it's a pretty intense period in which decisions and approvals have that 'final, but really final' feel. The Senscape team is doing an exceptional job, and I couldn't be happier with the progress we're achieving every week. We recently onboarded new team members to apply a nice coat of polish to characters, lighting, animation and cutscenes. These are some of the same folks that worked on the hours of cinematics from Silent Hill: Ascension, and they're bringing plenty of experience in their respective areas. We even have a dedicated producer now who is flooding me with Jiras eeevery single day, but hey, I asked for it. I need to be kept on track too.
You could say we're entering in post-production mode. The gorgeous atmosphere, which testers enjoyed so much, is receiving profound attention in our QA, with scenes being color graded, brightness levels properly adjusted, ambient sounds everywhere, and lots of neat visual effects to boost the mood. Fans of Scratches will be glad to hear that we added masks to every window in the Hanwell building, so that at one point in the game we have rain and lightning outside. We almost scrapped the feature since it was a lot of work remember, ASYLUM is stubbornly old-fashioned and all environments are pre-rendered but it's worth it. I mean, no game can claim to be the true successor to Scratches without a gloomy, rainy night and suitably mysterious music, right?
Another area of focus has been animations, since quite a few of them were wonky and even the character rigs needed a bit of extra love (and don't get me started on the fingers). The cutscenes are more impactful now, and I'm happy to report we're nearly done with them. You might remember from earlier updates that I mentioned these were going to involve a good deal of work, and we're now close to wrapping them up. See, we ARE making progress! Honestly, it's kind of surreal after all this time. Some of the more crucial moments in the story, the ones that were devised years ago, are reaching the place they were meant to be. I look at them with a big grin on my face and think to myself "yeah, this is good for launch". One more note I'd like to add: testers have reported a healthy game length, averaging 10-12 hours. Some spent less, others more. That's in line with our estimations, and there's still some content missing (notably achievements and easter eggs we're keeping secret). Overall, folks reported the game length feels "just right".

It's in the details

We can't thank enough the dedication from the folks who are currently playing the game, and we did listen to their feedback, which ranged from puzzle design to interface. For instance, one area we have been improving in the beta is the diegetic game menu. We've always wanted to treat this familiar aspect in all types of games these days with our own touch of flair, but that doesn't mean it should be impractical. So we addressed save game management while keeping that sort of journal approach, and added a feature to log conversations with NPCs, among other tweaks. It does add to the overall experience since folks sometimes reported missing key information in dialogues. This is a win for customer service. Also, I like how this addictive menu has been dubbed by one of our most dedicated fans as "flippity-flappity pages". You nailed it, yo.
Another one is a 'zoom' feature which is quite neat to use overall, but was in truth implemented with handhelds in mind. All we can confirm for now is instant Steam Deck support at launch. As a BIG fan of the device, where most of my gaming is performed these days, I'm eager to support it properly. It's currently the only way I have to gradually finish games from my Steam collection, and I'd be making tons of progress if it wasn't for Vampire Survivors. Of course, this also means that gamepad support is good to go as well!
As for me, in addition to leaving bucketloads of notes in the endless stream of Jira tickets that torment me every day, my next area of focus will be in-depth script revision. The big pending that I have left is to review every line of text in the game and further develop some documents you find scattered around, as well as key sections in the journal. Backers noted that a few moments in the game needed more nudging and feedback from the protagonist to avoid aimless wandering, which is another valuable note. This is my top priority, and as soon as it's settled we'll be ready to... drum roll... record the voices. Since this question was brought up in our Discord a while ago, adventure game fans will be delighted to hear that Josh Mandel is very much still attached to the project and ready to start working with us. I'm sure a few of you are going to ask, but remember that we're currently testing with a subset of Kickstarter backers (about 300 people have access, but not everyone is playing), so we're pretty much covered with the QA and not accepting new testers at this stage.
We're reaching the end of this update, but I'm going to keep the line open with more frequent signs of life as things keep ramping up. A lot has been said about ASYLUM, and believe me, I understand the frustration (it's been a looong time coming). Yet everyone here is ready to wrap things up and launch a game we along with you will be proud to have been developing/waiting for the past few years. Until next time. Agustn