Why a Complete Overhaul?
Hey there friends! It’s been a while since we last shared a blog about our upcoming sci-fi survival horror bodycam game Chasmal Fear. Although we were active more or less on our socials (especially X), we decided to focus most of our time on something that would completely change the feel and look of Chasmal Fear. Moreover, this decision was brought by the player community, by players, streamers, and everyone who tried our demo on Steam Next Fest in February.
Now, this decision was not made because the game was performing badly. The demo itself performed quite great! Over 5500+ Wishlists during the festival, we surpassed 10,000 Wishlists now and entered the Popular Upcoming and Top Wishlists lists on Steam.
The main reason was - when we started Chasmal Fear, we said that we’ll listen to the player community, and time and time again with our past games, it turned out that listening to what the players want can bring the game to the next level.
Before we started anything, the first thing we did was go through all of our socials, do polls, read comments, check forums, Reddit, Steam discussions, and write everything down in an Excel sheet, categorizing them by priority. Then, we talked about which things are more or less aligned with our vision for the game and what can be added to improve it.
That’s how this idea came to be (an idea that made us work as if there was a crunch period, but it was worth it!).
This new “change” consisted of going through the entire demo, from lighting to optimization, to level design, sounds, music, VFX, jumpscares, and most importantly: New monster models and mocap animations. We’ll talk about more about it down below.
The Changes (starting with rebranding)
Looking at our socials, covers, and everything in between, we realized that these photos and videos/trailers are quite old and do not necessarily represent the game itself anymore. That’s why we decided to carefully think it through and do some new concept art, covers, photos, and videos as soon as possible.
The social media pages were all changed, including the Steam Store page material with the new look.
The Demo!
Ugh, I hope I’ll be able to remember all the changes we made to the demo. There were so many things changed, added, and tweaked that even we barely remember what was done. But, let’s start and see how it goes (you’ll forgive us if you’re surprised to find something in the new demo that is not written here):
- Added NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 support
- Added AMD FidelityFX support
- Inverted mouse option
- Added option to turn off/on camera lag (inertia and slow down of player camera and arms)
- Option to turn off the bodycam effect
- Changed the IES (texture) of the flashlight and tweaked intensity
- Optimized Async loading between areas (goodbye you damn fps drop!)
- Added a filtered pass on the overall camera to improve graphics while having even better performance
- Significantly reduced the number of draw calls (for those who do not know what that is: tells the graphics what to draw, how to draw - and it can be a real culprit for frames per second)
- Completely rebuilt lighting throughout the entire demo
- Added 200+ horror sounds
- Added 10 music tracks (Ambiental)
- Added monster event variations throughout all levels
- Added environmental sounds like hull creaking
- Improved projectile spawn (bullets)
- Added over 50+ mocap animations and blendspaces that trigger randomly for the monsters
- Monsters tweak: they’re now faster, more dangerous
- Reduced the number of monsters & spawn time during the Metro area (to make the game easier)
- Added attack growl sounds (aggro sounds) and increased monster hit sounds
- Monsters also have footsteps sounds now
- Monsters now randomly choose “way of movement”, as well as their size varies in a certain range to make it more diverse
- 2 Completely new models for the melee monsters (the old one was removed)
- Reduced Bodycam FishEye Effect by 30% (for those who want to play in a bodycam style)
- Increased the hand movement (it’s not as slow as before)
- Polished reload animations to be faster
- Improved input lag (now actions are performed way faster)
- Fixed weapon switch causing the weapon to get stuck in Ammo Inspect mode
- Monsters can now crawl under obstacles (no longer can you crawl through and shoot them while they just stand there)
- New CODEC added to the laptop video
- Added player footstep sounds to several different materials
- Added Damage Hit Widget to the player
- Smoothed out the weapon switching, all weapons ammo inspect and pickup animations
- Added small helpers in particular areas where we felt players were taking too long to find the way
- Reduced “sea” brightness when looking out windows
- Added new jumpscare events throughout the game with a chance to occur (or not)
- Did texture optimization and atlas merging
- Small-level design tweaks
- Some of the monsters have been either relocated or removed
- Quality of life change: now players can pick up ammo with any weapon equipped
- Optimized dynamic lights
- Player death sound added
- Reduced Range Monster’s spit effect lifetime
- Minor tweaks to the main menu scene
- Fixed glass reflection
- Added additional audio log
- Changed Loading Screen’s font
Hopefully, we got all of the changes (although there might be a few others). Now, in addition to all of these changes done for the Steam Demo, we also added:
Full Game Content
Working on the full game is an immense pleasure, knowing the reception of the demo was so positive. Besides the fixes, we were also focused on the following:
- Continuing to work new levels for the full game
- Work on the multiplayer (co-op) support
- Started the concept art for new monster types
- Continuing with polishing and writing the full game plot
Participating in 2 New Festivals
Although it’s still early for some of the events to say anything about it, however, we’re happy to share with you guys that Chasmal Fear is participating in 2 other festivals, including:
- Steam FPS Fest
- ChinaJoy X Game Connection Indie Game Festival
Thank you!
Lastly, we’d love to say once more: thank you! Thank you to those who played the demo, the players who wishlisted our game and supported us, and the gamers who provided feedback, ideas, and suggestions. Your support means the world to us being a small two-member indie game studio. It wouldn’t have been possible without the player community!
If you haven’t wishlisted the game yet and you’re a fan of survival horror, action, fps shooters, or simply wanna try out a bodycam game, check this link and Wishlist Chasmal Fear on Steam:
