Hey, everyone! It has been almost three months since we invited the first wave of testers. The general feedback has been very positive, but there were a few elements which needed to be fixed or improved. So we've been diligently working on that: fixing problems, one by one, and raising the quality of our beloved game.
Massive wall of tasks in front of us

Development Progress

Here's a summary of the improvements we've accomplished over the last 2-3 months:

Combat

- improved input, especially for mouse and keyboard - improved game feel, added more effects - added more advanced melee weapon animations and adjusted all timings - added animations for ranged weapon attacks and reloading

Stealth

- made stealth better readable by adding border to visual cones and overlapping - updated line of sight handling - allowed other game actions while in stealth, like switching weapon and targeting - added free look functionality - fixed lots of situations where interactions would break stealth but should not - allowed pickpocketing of enemies, improved pickpocketing gameplay and UI - allowed backstabbing friendly NPCs

NPCs

- improved combat behaviors, e.g. using movement while reloading - improved handling of NPCs pursuing player, e.g. when to allow a player to leave the area - updated animations of all non-human characters - fixed lots of bugs in behaviors, including door situations

Content

- added lots of new audio - added equippable headwear for player characters - updated some area artworks - added a few more NPCs and items - small level design improvements everywhere

Render pipeline

- removed full-screen render texture, converting all non-standard sprite scene objects to individual pixelart grid solutions, to have smooth scrolling and sharp character presentation while maintaining the scene art consistency (took us weeks to convert, but it was absolutely worth it) - fixed even more pixelart related issues - added more shaders and stuff

Balancing

- made normal difficulty more accessible, hard difficulty more intense - improved variety and quantity of gaining experience points - adjusted attribute and skill points, added character level limitations - adjusted weapon gameplay values - adjusted item selling values - added optional challenges for the campaign run

Co-op

- improved camera handling, area switching and spawning situations - added inventory functionality to exchanging items between both players - lots of usability improvements, like having a shared quest items inventory, tutorial items granted to both players etc. - fixed lots of co-op specific bugs

Additional improvements

- added more "juice" to every interaction - implemented platform features like achievements - added more features for [unannounced] - improved world map - made it possible to save inside procedurally generated world map encounters - added autosaving on floor changes etc. - improved tutorials - fixed some performance issues - lots of UI and input improvements - added more user config options

Framework

- added modding of gameplay values - added modding of all text entries - added testbot which gives the game a testrun for every new version - improved error handling and error messaging to user
New player headwear, already looted by NPC

Looking ahead

As you can see, we've been very busy. Still no promises for the release date. But if we can channel the productive energy we had for the foundational work, usability and low level gameplay into improving the story, the quests and the more abstract elements of game play, then the Early Access version is bound to be in a very good state. We'll be inviting more testers in the coming weeks. If you haven't done so, you can apply through this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fmr5-biTbCHMcSw3Amc0KSqvRAXgk9UboMsACfVCHOw If you have any questions or feedback, write us here, on the Steam forums, or on our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/deathtrash

Wishlist Death Trash!

And please wishlist Death Trash, follow the game, and tell other people about it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/941460/Death_Trash/ - Stephan