Hello fans of Scratches! It's been quite an eventful year in which a long cycle is finally closing with the launch of ASYLUM.

You may be interested to learn that The ASYLUM Files, a sprawling document featuring the original script is now available as a free download. The file is a companion to the game (and suffice to say, filled with spoilers!) which also contains a number of references about Scratches that you might enjoy. It's already been a fun trip down the memory lane for many fans:

Also, as part of the Steam Scream festival, ASYLUM is at an all-time low 30% off too! So it's a great opportunity to go and pick up the game if you want to play another spooky adventure this Halloween season:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/230210/ASYLUM/That's it for this update, enjoy your horrific weekend 🎃

🎃 Spooky Season Update - Halloween Patch Notes 👻

A haunted breeze is in the air, and we've got a chilling new update just in time for Halloween! Check out what's new in this seasonal patch:

💦 New Pressure Washer Tool Added!

Scrub away stubborn stains with a brand-new, high-pressure cleaning tool.

🧹🕸 Halloween-Themed Tools

Special spooky gear and festive equipment are now available to match the eerie vibe!

🏚🌕 New Halloween Scene Unlocked

Explore a creepy, decorated scene filled with pumpkins, skeletons, and chaos. Clean up after some truly mischievous tricksters!

🎥🚫 Motion Sickness Improvements

We've made camera and movement adjustments to reduce motion-related discomfort.

🐞🛠 Bug Fixes

Various UI and gameplay issues have been resolved to improve your overall experience.

📝 Language Fixes

Localization has been improved for a more accurate and immersive experience across multiple languages.

This free demo features the first six episodes of the story, giving you a first look at the characters, the choices, and the drama that lies ahead. Every decision brings you closer to love... or to something much darker.

If you enjoy it, don’t forget to add it to your wishlist to support the project and stay tuned for the full release!

Stay Foxy,
The Love-Joint Team.

- Another new map added! Since the game is released and my workload is drastically reduced, I’m now able to start adding new content here and there. I know a common complaint was that the maps were repetitive, so I will be sprinkling in new maps between patches over time. After this week though, we won’t be patching almost daily like we have been. It will slow down to once per week, and then eventually to bi-weekly.

- Prussian cantonist composition now starts with a dragoon. Any composition which starts with just 1 brigade should have a greater focus on quality. Furthermore, most new players are going to be trying out Prussia as their first playthrough, and it’s not particularly fun when your cavalry is useless and is routed by most enemy units, it leaves a bad first impression. By starting the player out with 2 professional units and 2 unprofessional units, they have a more solid foundation to build off of. Prussian starting manpower is now 350 instead of 100 so that the starting depot battle doesn’t set you back.

- Prussia’s national buff “Junker Aristocracy” now doubles the officer veterancy gain rate instead of increasing by +50%. This should help you level up your officers into legendary commanders faster and gain access to powerful buffs like “fire by rank” quickly.
- British expeditionary force now starts with a light dragoon for the aforementioned reasons. Makes Britain look a lot more professional and because they only have 3 starting units, we really want the player to feel like they have a super reliable and high-quality force. British starting manpower is now 350 instead of 100 in order to replace depot battle losses. Britain’s starting carbine item replaced with excellent-quality light saddles (because the light dragoon already starts with a carbine).- A few little encounter fixes made for “gambler’s den” and “food needed”, you could press some choices without meeting the proper conditions, like this one where you could gamble despite not having the money for it:

- Russian cadet corps doctrine now reduces officer death chance instead of increasing experience gain
- British “Subsidy Jaegers” now start with a Potzdam musket instead of a rustic one.
- Fixed multiple colors being mis-aligned in the French color palettes between the flags that would generate and the colors available to the player
- The rate of losing your army while starving has been drastically reduced, starvation rate reduced by 60%. This means your army won’t be dead in 2-3 days without food anymore, you now have a little more time to crawl to a settlement and grab provisions.

- Cover can feel really weak and sometimes you don’t even notice if it’s doing anything. So I bumped up its base effectiveness from reducing -25% of incoming damage (when a unit is at 100% cover) to reducing -35% of incoming damage at 100% cover.
- Deployables now take 15 seconds before they are placed down instead of 10 seconds. Deployables are visually removed after 2 seconds of the charge impact instead of 5 seconds (which caused them to look buggy when the units engaged in melee) - Cavalry reload speed reduced by -5, British cavalry reload speed reduced by -10
- Slightly reduced carbine reload speed

- No more major changes for now! I wanted to include this category just to say that I’m happier where artillery is at now and wanted to reassure players we wouldn’t be further nerfing them so frequently. We will keep an eye on the balance and make adjustments next week if needed, but for now I’m happy with them.
- Improved the formation drawing, the Dutch artillery can now be drawn out as a full line

- Problems we’re aware of: I do know there are some problems with how the AI uses artillery (namely pushing units ahead of their main line) so that’s something we’re looking into next. I also still see the occasional glitch where artillery is becoming unresponsive, so we will continue looking into that. Finally, we will address canister shot being used to fire through multiple enemy units in next week’s patch. Once these updates have had a chance to settle in, we may also adjust artillery pricing to be more in-line with their new effectiveness.

- If you visit a barracks that has no units to recruit left we now have a little message that displays that.

- Improved the padding on the UI for the speed control settings at the bottom of the screen in battle
- The light white box that takes up a portion of the background on the victory screen has been fixed (you can see what it looks like in the screenshot)

- AI is less willing to death charge your front line when you have no cavalry. There’s an ultra-aggression state that gets enabled when they don’t detect cavalry but we’ve added more nuance to this. The next thing to work on is getting the cavalry to flank more often in a future update.
- AI cavalry will no longer try and protect shattered units (like hanging back to protect a shattered artillery unit)

- Italian localization added to the game!

---------------------- Join our Discord and be part of the next community playtest! ------------------------

• HALLOWEEN CONTENT

• PLAYERS SERVER LOBBY RETURN BUG FIXED

• NEW LANGUAGE UI MENU \[ EASY SELECTION ]

• LOBBY MENU LAYOUT UPDATE \[ CLEANER LAYOUT ]

• ROAD MAP UPDATED

• STEAM AUTHENTICATION

HALLOWEEN DECORATED ENVIRONMENTS Halloween decorations we have added back to the levels for this Halloween event. We hope you enjoy this Halloween with your friends.

For the duration of the Halloween Event, you can play as Halloween Characters.

To access the new costumes, you need to create a Lobby, then select your character and choose the Halloween outfits. Wicked Witch Character
Pumpkin Cardboard Character
Clown Skeleton Character

HALLOWEEN ACHIEVEMENTS

To unlock 2 New Halloween Achievements, you'll have to find 10 creepy Halloween Pickup Jack-o-lanterns hidden in both the Exorcist and Village Maps.

💀 REQUIEM is now on Steam!

Step into a psychological horror experience set in a mysterious graveyard.
Discover hidden letters, unlock coded chests, and uncover the truth behind the silence.

Every chest hides a secret, every letter reveals a fragment of the story...
Listen to the whispers within the darkness and face what’s buried deep in your mind.

🕯️ Add to your wishlist now: 👉 \[Steam link here] https://store.steampowered.com/app/4117570/Requiem/

And here it is, a full roadmap update built around all your amazing ideas and feedback! 💫

I’m proud to announce that Mall Simulator is going to be massive and will stay active for a long time thanks to you! 🤩

Everyone joining from day one will get a special launch discount and exclusive surprise content! Your incredible support for the Mall Simulator community means the world to me, and I’m sure that together, with your feedback, we’ll make this game bigger than ever! ❤️

15+ stores, dozens of machines and services, and hundreds of famous brands are waiting for you in Early Access! ⬇️

👕 Clothing ⚽ Sports 💻 Tech 🧸 Toys 🛒 Supermarket 💄 Cosmetics
🎬 Cinema 🍔 Burger Shop 🕹️ Arcade 🏠 Home Goods 🎮 Game Store
🥐 Bakery 💍 Jewelry 🌸 Florist 🍣 Sushi Bar 🥤 Vending Machines 💵 ATMs

and so much more ready to build from day one! 🔥🔥🔥

And if you haven’t already, make sure to add the game to your wishlist so you don’t miss the launch! 🔥⬇️⬇️⬇️

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3180150/Mall_Simulator

Let’s shape the game together, you and me! Join our Discord server and share all your excitement and feedback about Mall Simulator! ❤️

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report. 

Level: 

This week, we continued work on the A-quality blockout for Umbar and on detail meshes for Apoc. In parallel to that, we finished updating our landscape textures, which are now waiting to be implemented on the story mode world map. The world map terrain mesh is also progressing through its detail pass, and it's looking better and better.

Code:

This week, we implemented a group token system for our combat AI. This system ensures that only one NPC has full activity during a fight. All other NPCs will have reduced activity, so you don't get overwhelmed by too many enemies attacking at the same time.

We also continued work on the Tattoo system - a new Tattoo Shop UI is being developed for story mode to be able to add and remove tattoos at the cost of Pearls

Character:

Last week, we improved the eyebrow behaviour for all the female humans, this week we completed the procedure for all the male humans. We also started work on small lizard characters based on Djablo’s skeleton. These will be easier enemies who populate the lizard regions of Kerpal.

Animations:

In the animation department, we implemented some more NPC routine animations for the lizards of Adûn this week: sitting, guarding, spear practising, chiseling plates, chiming ritual bells, and drilling for ores. We also implemented the item use animations for eating fruit, eating meat, eating meals, and drinking potions and mopped up some additional small tasks from the backlog like missing turn-in-place animations. 

Design:

We have fleshed out the cannibal leader boss design, looking to give him that brutal, intimidating vibe that'll make encounters epic. We have also been setting up the bandit character classes, defining things like what loot they drop and what gear and weapons they use. We are making solid progress on the first balancing pass for all the combat-related values, as well, i.e. weapon stats, enemy stats and player stats. On top of that, we worked on a do-over of the main quest in the Lake village. Max can now gather information about the Kerpali from several characters, which will hopefully be a better version of the first contact quest.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team