Hi everyone!

I wanted to wish you all the best in 2021, a peaceful and less eventful year, good health, and less COVID-19 or similar bugs.

I wanted to set an example so I've fixed a couple of recently reported bugs - hence the patch.

1. Cell phone doesn't ring on the way to Ctibor's Oak prematurely.

2. If you decide not to go after Lea in Chapter 5 (after emerging from the bunker), you could witness an improperly loaded world and you could fall down the cracks of reality and into the void. I fixed that and you are free to explore Spoiler: it's the last time you can actually finish certain quests.

3. I've added a gentle one-time warning if you decided to do no. 2, so you don't get lost if you don't intend for such an exploration.

Once again thank you so much for being awesome and I hope you'll keep supporting our ministudio.

Jan

Dear players,

thank you for sending me your saved games. I was able to replicate some of the elusive issues and they are fixed now in v 1.7.7s

• fixed potential show stopper in Chapter 11 where trap beneath the wall wouldn't disappear after load.
  
• fixed Guitarist and Folklorist achievements which didn't pop on some machines
  
• adjusted karmic levels for final 4 endings
  
• fixed final dialogues for players with the lowest karma
  
• a couple of insignificant small fixes

Hope you'll like them!
Jan

Hi everyone,

just a super-quick fix. I got an echo, that if you have a very fast machine and don't clamp FPS, you'd get instakilled by a black ground trap (the one with the limbs). This can be a showstopper for the 10th chapter sequence, where you can't avoid at least one hit.

I fixed that with this new version. Since I don't have a fast computer myself, I hope some of you can confirm that you no longer get the instakill. :)

Enjoy,
Jan

Hi everyone,

I published a big update yesterday and I want to thank you for such nice words about it.

One of the questions let me think, though. If there are chapter saves, will collectibles persist? I thought about that and found out it's actually a great suggestion! I woke up early today to implement profile-wide collectibles. After a day filled with coding and testing, I think it's a good answer to the question above.


A: In Someday You'll Return you have available three profiles (eg. for showing the game to friends without disturbing your progress). The new version now keeps collectibles separately, so if you are a collectible hunter, you can reload earlier chapters and fill your collectibles from there. The collectibles are now available for the whole profile (they add up).


A: No!!! I found a way how to seamlessly transport your collectibles to a new system. Here is what you should do. Load your last savegame (usually with Continue) and progress to a point where you see a saving. This will create the profile-scoped collectible. If you accidentally loaded a wrong save, don't worry - your collectibles are still in the saved games, so find the right save file and repeat. :)


#Lerks! Think of #Lerks as Dark Souls among collectibles. You have to collect all #Lerks in a single progression, no going back.

(the true reason is that I am not tracking them individually, so I have no way to check how many of them you collected if you reloaded an older game).


Another of you reported two issues

The first was the inactive door to Lojza's hideout. I looked into it and found a chain of events that would indeed introduce this bug. I fixed that.

The second was a void fall in Bunker in Chapter 5. Fixed as well...

I think that's enough and I hope you'll enjoy this added feature. I'll let you all play in peace now. :)

Jan

Dear friends,

After over one month of intense work, I am bringing you all a significant update to "Someday You'll Return". It's an update I wanted to do since we've launched the game back in May but couldn't do it for more than one reason.

Let's roll back to May. After an extreme time with no sleep and Covid-19 amplified crunch, we've managed to launch the game, and what followed, as you all know, was two months of improvement and patching of the game that brought our game to the state many of you played and enjoyed.

"Someday You'll Return" is a very important game to me - more than any game we've created till this date. It's very personal in a strange way, and I want to be sure that it is in the shape I want it to be, despite the current worldwide situation.

So what was happening this last month?
I sat down and, after months, did a full play-through of the game. The game is not short, and I was not rushing it, resulting in a few days of play and jotting down one too many notes. The result is this version 1.7.0s (s stands for Steam version), which I am proud to publish today.


When I started my play-through, the first thing that hit me was that the in-game audio got somewhere during the final crunch quite broken.

It's something that you couldn't have even known because audio bugs are tough to trace. Everyone can understand if a character stands in the wall or gets stuck in the terrain. But the fact that music or sound effect doesn't trigger or doesn't adapt, or is too low volume, that you don't have a chance to hear it? How could you know if there should be silence or sound? To my horror, I found out that a considerable amount of audio is simply wrong. So I went and fixed over a hundred of such audio "bugs."

How could this happen? I don't know. I only know that I was dealing with thousands of issues in the final crunch and didn't have time or clean ears for a play-through, which I did right now.

But I didn't stop with this. I found places, which with my now clean ears, really asked for more audio-wise. I sat down and composed a lot of new music for the game and carefully implemented it to break the dull places where nothing was happening audio-wise while still being true to my original intention to perceive music as sounding objects over the forest silence.
I have to say that I am now pleased with the result, and this heavy boulder fell from my shoulders.
Speaking of audio, I've also found quite some sounds which I forgot to put in at all. They are in now.
The last category of my fixes in that domain is sounds, which are OK in isolation, but they get old fast when you play the game. One representative is "wall climbing finisher." I tried to civilize these sounds, so they don't turn into a cartoon fast.

I hope very much that you will appreciate how much this all changed.


One of the brand new features I've put in is Chapter Save. The game now saves automatically at the beginning of each chapter. You can access Chapter Saves in the Load Menu, and they are profile-sensitive. Of course, they will work best if you start a new game. The game can't recreate older chapter saves from your game-in–progress. But since the game autosave rotation made it impossible to go back in time, I believe that this new feature is an excellent answer to your needs to replay certain parts of the game.


I've fixed many bugs, small or big, some of them even critical. Ranging from proper controller (stylus, climbing) behavior if you invert axis to actual show-stopping bugs that I managed to identify, I've encountered many things on my big play-through. I fixed everything which was in my capabilities to fix without risking to break something else.


We are living in strange times. Our country is now the leader in COVID-19 infection-rate. I feel honored and privileged that I could have brought such an experience to you all. The game is weird in many ways and goes against the typical expectation for the main hero. Daniel doesn't have a pleasant personality, which you get to know from the get-go. I felt it's important to tell such a tale, and now, when I get a lot of emails from people, who understand why we've decided to go against the flow and bring you this kind of a story, I am happy that those five years were totally worth it.

I wanted to thank you all for supporting our tiny studio. We are deeply grateful for every single player who decided to support us and played our game despite the current insecure situation.

Stay safe!

Jan

Dear community,

we've been hard at work this June 2020 to do a lot of things. You already know about trading cards, but it was just a small teaser for much more important changes.

I marked this update as important because it brings some really cool stuff in the game.


Lojza, that elusive guy, from whom you got an SMS at the beginning of the game? Many of you asked us about him and were genuinely interested in his fate. In this update, we are bringing you his moment to shine!

When we cut the content in patch 1.1, we promised you’d be able to find some of the locations in the game as optional stuff. But we went the extra mile to bring back the location in a modified form AND an optional story with it. Lojza’s story is consequence-driven, so not everyone would experience it and you’d probably have to start from the beginning. Since our game has 5 different endings, it might be worth it, though.

So in short, prepare to step in a whole optional location - which you can leave anytime - and learn more about Daniel and Lojza in this update.


If you play the game after this update, some of you may notice, that sometimes there is a weird radio static in the world. It’s not a bug and your radio has something to do with it. Those places are off the beaten path and you might want to check your radio (you know you can tune it, right?). There’s a lot to listen to, and I am sure you all are going to appreciate it.

Apart from these changes we have of course many more improvements and fixes.


[Improvements]
- Last (and often hated) escape scene greatly simplified and the goal was made more clear

[Fixes]
- The locked box in chapter 11 is always works
- Stela's journal page in a secret spot can now be discovered
- Fixed journal decryption effect
- Decrypted journal page might disappear if the player quit the game at an unfortunate time
- Some typos here and there


[Audio]
- Fixed pain indications when a player gets hurt
- An improved scene with a locked box in the camp
- Fixed sound of gas levers
- Fixed sound of pipe flames


[Achievement Fixes]
- Added check for collectible achievements when entering the collectibles tab to help to reach them from the Savegame.
- The Beast
- The Last Tramp
- Guitarist
- The Collector
- Stela’s Diary

Please note, that I checked that the code works, but didn’t get these achievements myself to be able to check that it works for you all. I sincerely hope that I’ll stop seeing 0%. Of course, there’s Vigilante, but that one is very hard to get and I don’t blame you if you can’t find the missing #lerks. So far the most we’ve got reported is 98, so keep hunting.


Real truth is that our plans are entirely based upon the fact if we manage to keep going. CBE software operates since 2006 and released quite a few games. Someday You’ll Return was a big dream to make something very special and unique. We abandoned the path of safe smaller development and dove into murky waters of a large project being just 2 (now 3) and now our fate is based entirely upon the fact if the game sells enough to pay the bills.

If we manage to keep CBE afloat, we have some ongoing things which we are trying to solve (Ultrawide nightmare, completely redoing controller support just to name a few).

But we have other important things in store as well:

- We would like to add more languages. At this point, our plan would be to do at least German, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian and Japanese
- I would like to prepare a proper soundtrack. There are so many great Moravian songs but also other music in the game (especially now with the Radio update :))
- We would like to bring in “tourist mode” where you can just walk around and maybe take pictures?
- We have prepared some stuff for New Game+ (including one more secret ending) which we didn’t have a chance/budget to implement.
- And of course, someday we would love to bring the game to consoles as well.

We are really committed as a super-tiny independent team to bring you an unforgettable experience. Despite our nonexistent budget, we’re still here keeping on improving the game as much as we are possible.

Some of you ask us how can you help. There are three things you can do for us.

1. If you enjoyed the game, despite its shortcomings, leave us a positive review. You wouldn’t believe how much this helps and how much it also helps our morale. We knew that this is not a game for everyone and hearing your positive voice helps us immensely.

2. As you’ve noticed, we’ve launched the game into a summer sale right now. Help us spread the news. Tell your friends, share the information about the game. We can’t fight the companies with multi-million budgets, yet we have something much more precious - we have you all!

3. Leave us your user score or review at Metacritic. Let others know that the game has its good sides.

So how does this sound? Will you help us spread the news?

Thank you for such great support and wishing you a great summer,

Jan

Hi Everyone,

Since the launch, we've received countless emails asking for Trading Cards in Someday You'll Return. Last time we made these was for our other games J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars or Vampires: Guide them to Safety?

However, things actually changed and the process got a bit more difficult with a more strict approval - what worked back then was refused now. Yesterday we've finally went through the process successfully and the Trading Cards, badges, emoticons, and custom backgrounds are now all in!

I hope you'll like them - especially with trading cards we tried to do something nice - while we work on new features and some fixes.

Thanks for being here with us!

Jan

Hello everyone,

I promised you a little update 1.2.1 and somehow … it turns out to be not so small after all.

Without much ado, here is what happened:

[critical]

•Fixed Castle Gate serialization
•Fixed light profile when loaded start of the 4th chapter (this issue might have looked like broken graphics)

[improvements]

• Added FPS cap selection in Advanced Visual menu
• Resolution picker takes into account supported video card resolutions and actual desktop resolution
• While swimming, the player can now correctly see that they are actually drowning
• Washing hands is not always “Refreshing”
• Added game version number to Main Menu
• Totem spots more recognizable in a blocked path detour after meeting Old Woman in Chapter 6
• Daniel lightly comments putting a doll together to indicate it’s done

[fixes]

• Lea will not re-appear if the player goes exploring after she enters the bunker
• Heartbreaker totem gets completion meter in chapter 10
• Angel has a completion meter
• Forgotten Legend Collectible is an actual collectible
• Texture for "Žeň sa milý, žeň sa" guitar song collectible
• Fixed Water station wheeled platform is inactive when needed to be
• Stela diary page 6 is now correctly encrypted
• Gamma Correction is correctly loaded upon game start
• Screen Resolution picker in menu keeps the correct value
• Game remembers last selected resolution

[achievements fixed]

• The Dark Past
• Explorer
• Pure Soul
• Badge Collector
• Collector
• Stela's Diary
• Of Stela and Alexander
• Folklorist fix fixed

[audio]

• Multiple sounds for totem pull and throw
• Fixed heart purification sounds for all phases

Once again, thank you for your help with spotting things and I hope this patch helps you enjoy the game more!

Dear community,

patch 1.2 is finally here and we are bringing you the promised new features. I just want to talk a bit about motivation for that.

Over the last days, we’ve received so much positive feedback from many of you. We would like to thank you so much for your kind words! You can’t understand how much did this help to our tiny three-man team.

There is however one feature that wasn’t accepted too well – the stealth sequences. Watching streams, we’ve found out that some of the players have little to no problem to go through them while others can really struggle. We’ve been thinking about how to improve this and eventually decided to give you all a choice.

Patch 1.2 includes a brand new potion, which is called “Devil’s Pact”. This potion, for the price of losing a little bit of positive karma, cloaks you for 30 minutes from the fog children. Of course, you shouldn’t still try to approach them (they will see through the veil if you come close enough), but if you let them be, they will ignore you and you can make your way through stealth areas very easily. If you want to play these scenes in our original way, simply don’t drink the potion and you will experience our version. It’s entirely up to you and your choice. This feature influences many in-game systems but we’ve been testing days and nights and we hope you will enjoy this quite substantial addition to the game.

Another new feature is a “quality of life” improvement. If you press caps lock, you will toggle a Run lock feature (always run). Please keep in mind, that the game sometimes prevents you from running, so the Run lock is not synchronized to the “caps lock” green LED on your keyboard. Whenever you want to lock running, simply hit the key and you are all set.

Now here is a list of other fixes the patch brings:

Feature: Game now saves at the beginning of the Lea bench scene

Feature: After the bench scene, Lea should wait for Daniel before running deeper into the woods

Feature: Simplification of a tunnel bunker climbing wall

Feature: Devil‘s Pact herbs added to relevant locations

Critical: Potential game-breaking bug after quitting the game in the first bunker just after entering the bottom part.

Critical: Potential game-breaking bug if players don’t lock both latches at the cottage window

Critical: Potential game-breaking bug during the last rockfall if players fell into a trap during the escape scene

Critical: Game no longer hangs if the player enters connected slide from the bottom part

Critical: Fixed armoire movement in the morning after the cottage night

Critical: Fixed rare game-loading bug, which might cause many random issues

Critical: Fixed rare bug by ensuring underground level loading in the chapel

Fix: Lea now waits prior to a bunker before starting the dialogue

Fix: To-Do task correctly appears while searching for Lea

Fix: Lucky Leaf Camp box is now among collectibles

Fix: Completion level meter fixed when assembling a doll

Fix: Fixed karma when handing a doll over

Fix: Lea should not run in circles unless she really wants to

Fix: You can’t enter the Lea scene while calling with Eleanora

Fix: Adjusted walk speed while calling with someone

Fix: Call screen no longer occasionally disappears while being on the phone

Fix: After exiting the cave with Lea, you can no longer re-enter

Fix: Textures should be now readable even with lower settings (we are still investigating the cause)

Audio: Set voice-overs as a stream. Hopefully, it should help with VO cutting.

Audio: Fixed fly-buzzing attenuation

Audio: Fixed volume in the final cave scene with Lea

Audio: Fixed volume in the third bunker scene

Audio: Fixed garden door opening sound

Achievements: Fixed Guitarist achievement

Achievements: Fixed Folklorist achievement

Achievements: Fixed Complete Doll achievement

Achievements: Fixed Broken Doll achievement

Hotfix 1.1.2 is live

I was testing the audio issues this weekend and discovered a problem, which probably originates in the audio engine itself so I am now intensively communicating with FMOD to solve this ASAP. I tried to ensure the working conditions by some sanity checks and I sincerely hope there will be an improvement, but I will conduct further testing to see if the development environment finally matches the shipping version. I didn't want you all to wait, because there are other fixes as well so I deployed this patch.

[Critical]

• in rare cases Daniel wouldn't jump down in the spider cave, causing an unwinnable state
  
• fixed parameter reset upon New Game.
  
• fixed fall zone close to a clearing where players could have fallen into the void
  
• fixed light profile change in the fourth chapter, which could be perceived as a "destroyed graphics". If this ever happens again (your graphics start looking very bland, it's the similar cause and please let me know)
  
• Fixed save of acoustical environment

[Achievements]

• Fixed achievement Broken Doll
  
• Fixed achievement Complete Doll
  
• Fixed achievement What a Bedtime Story!

[Fixes]

• Fixed VSYNC to react right away and not after restart

[Improvements]

• Castle doll now has a completion meter

[Audio[

• Fixed defunct sound of sliding in a mud
  
• Fixed defunct sound of ladder climbing
  
• Fixed spatial sound of a wooden bridge crash
  
• Fixed explosion sound in a burning house