Hello everyone, this is the EndlessAlice development team.

It has been some time since our last developer log, and we’d like to share an update on our current progress and future direction.

We’ve recently completed a major round of bug fixes.

As mentioned in the previous patch note, several significant crash issues have been resolved, resulting in a more stable version of the game.

However, a few rare crash scenarios remain under investigation.

If you encounter any crashes, please report them to us along with your log files. Your feedback is crucial in helping us improve the overall stability of the game.

This update we’ve added a new paid DLC that includes a Bunny Girl costume set and a Mummy-themed Takehime.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1425000/view/700998877127378588?l=tchinese

Currently, Bunny Girls are available for Koraku and Takehime, with other characters scheduled for future updates.

The Takehime Mummy Skin is still under review and will be released soon.

As a gesture of appreciation, the Takehime Bunny Girl will be given to Early Access players as a reward.

Your early support has been invaluable and deeply meaningful to us.

Originally, these designs were planned for the Moon Festival and Halloween, but due to limited resources, development was delayed.

Once the 3D models are completed, the team still needs time for rigging and other technical adjustments, which can be time-consuming.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and continued support.

We promise that as our financial situation improves, we will expand the team.

We are also committed to maintaining a balanced approach between free and paid content, ensuring that paid features are released only when necessary to support continued development.

Our primary focus remains on refining the core game, and we have many free content updates planned for the future.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4074020/EndlessAlice_Takehime_Bunny_Girlhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/4139190/EndlessAlice_Koraku_Bunny_Girl

The Shibako 666 Skin has been very well received, and we are currently working on 666-themed versions for other characters.

What kind of achievements do you think should unlock these skins next?

Perhaps defeating 666 Shoguns could be one of them?

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1425000/view/530984728991368265?l=tchinese

As mentioned before, much of our recent effort has been devoted to improving game stability, so new content has progressed more slowly.

We are planning to release the Final Boss, Mia, and a new game mode by the end of this year or early next year.

The new mode will be inspired by the Warcraft 3 custom map “Protect Athena Statue”, which we had partially developed earlier.

We paused that work to address stability issues but have now resumed development.

We hope to share it with everyone soon.

At this stage, we are unable to provide a development roadmap.

Our progress can vary significantly across each quarter, making it difficult to commit to specific release dates.

For instance, Koraku’s release was delayed several times.

If players are comfortable with a text-based and flexible roadmap without timelines, we can share more details about our future plans.

However, producing a polished visual roadmap would require resources that we would rather dedicate to development work.

Above all, thank you once again for supporting us even during the early access phase.

If possible, we’d really appreciate it if you could leave us a positive review — it would greatly help our visibility and sales.

We promise the game will only continue to get better!

Hey Galactic Survivalists!

We have an update for the v1.14 experimental branch with some more changes & fixes that are ready.

Here's how you can participate:

1. Open STEAM

2. Right-click on your game

3. Select Properties and open the ‘Betas’ tab.

4. Select ‘Experimental’ from the dropdown menu in the top right corner

5. Let the game update

IMPORTANT:  Please ALWAYS start the experimental version with a fresh save game! This is the only way to ensure that you get all the features and content and protect your existing game progress from any changes or problems or setbacks that may occur during the experimental phase! 

Where to report bugs?

• Problems with POI's and missions email here: 

https://mission@empyriongame.com

• Bug reporting: 

https://empyriononline.com/forums/bugs.34/

• Anything related to gameplay feedback and ideas:

https://empyriononline.com/forums/experimental-features-discussion.35/

We look forward to your feedback! 

Changes:

- Added Talon Credibility Token for completing Terminal Nexus Mission 3 as a reward. (Note: You can restory your reputation by finding a GIN Console, eg in a Trading Station, and contact an Ambassador!)

- Traders: Config: reduced BUY price of traders for all items by 50%, except specialized traders (that either only SELL or BUY). Reduced item stock for Sell/BUY for some weapons and tools.

- Traders: Config: Added documentation

- Upd Changed faction of Talonar Extractor station to avoid unintentional player reputation drop in battle

- Upd Nemoris Control Station: better indication for main entrance

- Upd Talonar Capital: increased the amount of enemies

- Upd Terminal Nexus: Updated some PDA messages and Dialogues

- Add Added OPV Legacy T1,T2,T3 Phages to Legacy Asteroid Fields and Homeworld Orbit (contains random loot with components for CPU Extenders; does not explode when core is destroyed; Check if loot is too low or too generous)(thx to ravien)

- upd Terminal Nexus: Improved Talonar Scout vessel (added more power generator, reduced CPU load)

- upd Terminal Nexus: Significantly increased anti-hull/device bonus of Talonar Scout vessel fixed guns.

- Upd Various POI and Playfield updates related to Main Story Missions

- Added DEBUG HELP chapter to PDA for better maintenance and bugfixing via https://mission@empyriongame.com

Fixes:

- 01512 & 01500: Delay+XOR signal causing attached device to get stuck enabled

- 01086: Drones spawned from neutral PDA-spawned OPV attack player

- 01524: Block shape window GUI can glitch when choosing another page

- 01053: PDA IgnoreOtherTarget does not work for OPV 

- 01667: When in control of a turret & zoomed in the movement is not smooth

- Fixed TerminalNexus Mission 3 did not complete: Missing parameter when talking to Tharkan after leaving the Cerebrator.

- Omicron setup to deny vessels from landing on the planet was

• Fixed an issue where performance could become sluggish depending on the scenario's progress.
  
• Fixed an issue where repeated use of the camera function caused performance to slow down.
  
• Fixed an issue where some invalid strings were permitted during name input.
  
• Other direction and script revisions

If you encounter any issues, please report them on the Bug Report Board.

We’re honored to reveal that Akira Yamaoka, the legendary composer behind Silent Hill, has joined forces with the Total Chaos team to score an original track for the game.

Titled “Catharsis,” this haunting, rhythmically-driven piece weaves dread and distortion into every note. It sets the tone for a game already oozing with atmosphere and psychological decay.

Total Chaos is a standalone survival horror experience set on the ruined island of Fort Oasis. Scavenge to survive, craft makeshift weapons, and descend deeper into a nightmare that warps time, memory, and identity.

The island awaits.

Wishlist Total Chaos now. Play the demo and prepare to lose yourself in the dark.

Follow @PlayTotalChaos, @Apogee_Ent, and join our Discord.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2208350/Total_Chaos/

-Fix missing footstep sounds in the Small Sand map.

Today, we chat with Meagan Leflar, Lead UI/UX! She led the UI/UX team, which was a crucial aspect of the game in regards to our player-plattering design philosophy!

 

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey that brought you to work on Hell is Us? 

Like many, my journey with video games started young. I fondly remember sitting on my grandparents’ living room floor playing Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past on their Super Nintendo, and many weekend mornings playing N64 and PS2 games in the basement with my brother when we were growing up.
  

As a video game creator, my journey into video games started at Carleton University. For the final project of my bachelor's degree in Information Technology, I worked with a team of brilliant women to create a game that used a Brain-Computer Interface. Yes, it was a video game that you could control with your mind! The Emotiv EEG headset that we used could also track the user’s emotional state and could read facial expressions. For example, you could move pillars with your mind to solve puzzles, and we had a cute side-quest that was triggered by winking at a mermaid.  

This led me to dig deeper into player motivations and user-centered design, earning my master's degree in Human Computer Interaction, along with some minor publications. Once I emerged from academia, I worked as a game programmer on assorted small projects for companies including Hasbro, Warner Brothers, and Disney.  

I got my in at Rogue Factor as a generalist programmer at the tail end of Mordheim: City of the Damned, almost 10 years ago now. They joked that they took me on because I was passionate about working on User Interfaces, and no other programmer on the team wanted to do it. And passionate about working on User Interfaces, I was (and still am)! I spent years learning and absorbing all I could, and championing UX within the team, and was eventually promoted to Lead UI/UX in time to tackle the player-plattering challenges of Hell is Us!  

 

One of the core pillars of the design of Hell is Us is player-plattering, (no maps, no quest markers, minimal information) etc. Which, of course, means reduces any artificial information on-screen. As UI/UX designer, what were the challenges that you faced? 

Game UX Design differs from standard UX Design in that with games you need to deliberately allow certain friction in the experience to create the “fun”. In an application used for health care, for example, you want to completely reduce friction and user error. However, in the context of games, lack of challenge can create boredom. Part of our work in developing this player-plattering approach was to make those deliberate decisions about what support to offer the player and what to leave out, when and why. 

To this end, we spent time prototyping and evaluating what tools we did want to give the player to track their quests and progress through the game world and story. While we wanted the player to use their own critical thinking and observation skills to solve the puzzles and complete quests, we still wanted players to be able to stop playing the game for a while and pick it up again later without being lost. This process ultimately led to the development of the Investigation screen in the Datapad, which allows players to track the main story by displaying information that Remi has gathered in a mind-map chart. 

Playtesting was also an important part of the process for developing and evaluating the player-plattering approach in Hell is Us. We wanted to validate that our design worked; that players were able to figure things out and that the UI offered sufficient support. We started with less UI support for the player and added more where we noticed the overall experience was suffering. An example of this was the Exploration screen.  

The Exploration screen helps players track side adventures such as closing Timeloops, performing Good Deeds, and solving Mysteries (which are puzzles and enigmas scattered around Hadea). This screen was added to the Datapad was after a playtest where we realized that there was game content that most players may never discover if we did not offer them a UI that defines “the size of their sandbox” as we liked to put it. Originally the intention was to leave “Secrets” (what we called side quests) completely up to the player to track but, in the end, we decided that it was important for players to know what was out there to go find and interact with.  

Of course, the Datapad UI was only one piece of this player-plattering puzzle. Quest design/writing, level design and level art also played very important roles in creating a world and a story that players could navigate pleasantly without the heavy UI support that gamers have grown accustomed. Early in production, Jonathan Jacques Belletete coined the phrase the “ancre rouge” or “red anchor”. When he was first pitching the player-plattering concept to the team, he weaved a tale featuring a massive red anchor as a landmark that helped the player navigate the area and follow clues during the quest. This careful handling of landmarks continued to be a key part of the player-plattering approach throughout development, especially considering the player had no overhead UI map with which to navigate. 

 

Most of the information is given to the player via Remi’s Katoche Datapad that updates with datums whenever he comes across a new person, object, location or key piece of information. Can you tell us about how the design of the Datapad came about? 

Originally, we called Remi’s Katoche Datapad the “Palm Pilot” and we styled it after that very retro handheld device. We went as far as to download an emulator and investigate how the interactions worked on an old school palm pilot. Some palm pilot influences can still be seen in our inverted window headers and our rounded footer buttons. We also explored Macintosh and Windows computer OSs from the 90s for inspiration. In the end, we went with a more modern-but-still-retro approach with the final design and interactions. What we have now is meant to feel futuristic-retro with the comforts and conveniences of a more modern game interface. Though a few artists have tried their hand at it over the years, the art of our current Datapad UI is courtesy of our UI Artist Romain Fumey. 

We knew very early on that we wanted the Datapad to be a diegetic UI - meaning that the interface exists in 3D space for the game character. This presented some interesting challenges such as: working with restricted screen space (due to the thick frame of the 3D device), how to handle the opening and closing Datapad animations during different game states (such as in combat, or while interacting with objects), and how to connect our 2D UI Framework and the 3D model of the Datapad.  

After some trial and error, the technical approach that we took to create the effect of the diegetic Datapad involved a little bit of illusion and slight of hand. The boot up animation is played on a 3D widget that is attached to the 3D model. This boot up animation plays while the animation of the Datapad approaching the camera plays. Once the Datapad is stationary, the full UI is 2D and drawn overtop of the 3D Datapad using math to calculate the correct position and size. With a materials and lighting pass, we managed to create a convincing effect that we hope added to the immersion of the game! 

The Investigation screen of the Datapad, originally tilted internally the “Database” is probably the UI that has seen the most iteration in Hell is Us. Very early on, we had players create their own boards for investigations instead of producing it for them, but found people would over-estimate what they thought they would remember and under-use this tool. We also explored more complex mind map structures for investigations that looked more like a murder investigation board. The panning and zooming features in the Investigation charts are a remnant of that era of the “Database”. In the end, we decided simplicity was king and landed on the design we have in the game now.  

I am grateful to our Rogue Factor programmers, past and present, who patiently helped with the UI during our many iterations (looking at you Charles-Étienne Dion, Simon Bérubé, Ricardo Liganor, and Martin Daigle!). Game development is an inherently iterative process and that means designs must morph and change to find the right experience.  

 

Whenever you are in need of inspiration, where do you look for it? 

Some of my favourite resources include:

https://interfaceingame.com/games/, https://www.gameuidatabase.com/, and Celia Hodent’s book The Gamer’s Brain.  

I’ll also spend some time playing games or watching playthroughs on YouTube. I’m one of those people who immediately starts brainstorming designs whenever I play games, and it’s always interesting to see what UI designs and interactions that recent games are trying out.  

Classic adventure games and investigative games were an inspiration for the Player Plattering approaches we explored with Hell is Us. I played Sherlock Holmes games (I particularly liked Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter), and Jonathan Jacques Belletete often cited the classic Blade Runner game as a source for us to consider. 

 

In Hell is Us, what are you most proud about? 

While Hell is Us is not the first game that I have programmed a UI framework for, it is the first game that I designed the UI for from start to finish. I am incredibly proud of my team and the UI that we were able to build for Hell is Us.  

 

What kind of gamer are you? Is there a specific game you always go back to? 

For those who know the Quantic Foundry gamer motivation profiles, I’m an Architect Bard. For those of you who don’t know the Quantic Foundry gamer motivation profiles, you should check them out! They’re handy.  https://quanticfoundry.com/gamer-types/

  

I love games with a good story, like The Witcher 3 and the Uncharted series, and I really enjoy puzzles in games. If a game is spooky, atmospheric, with a good story and interesting puzzles – I'll probably be into it! More recently, I’ve gotten into survival games. Valheim got its hooks into me solidly. 

Changes:

• Steam Deck support (check Steam Deck compatibility in the settings menu)
  
• Camera and controller options
  
• Rubber duck with a cold
  
• Small improvements & bug fixes

Hi royals,

It has come to our attention that the last build broke the tutorial. Now we all know that you're all very intelligent (perhaps more intelligent than players of other games, but we don't have the numbers) and you certainly never needed a tutorial in the first place, but nonetheless we have finally taken the time to fix the crash.

That's the only change on this version. If anything else breaks, please let us know on our Discord!

Cheers, wishing you a regal day, evening or night.

-PUNKCAKE Délicieux

We’re still on a high after releasing our mega Shifting Lodge Update for Halloween and we've much back at it working on even more exciting things for you all.

It meant a lot to us to release our first big drop after entering EA in August, and we’ve loved watching your vids on YouTube and all of the live stream reactions too. Your enthusiasm and kindness has not gone unnoticed!

If you didn’t get around to reading all the ins and outs of our massive update yet you can do it here. It’s juicy:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1724030/view/536616765394780530?l=english

And not only that, here’s a flavour of the update itself with groups of friends playing out game, including a new vid from ManlyBadassHero!

https://youtu.be/TGz0AWRtptE?si=qdEg8gJH8fJdogrj

https://youtu.be/bukJTxwdV1Y?si=X2p-JuvNbOpheW26And of course there have been lovely things people have been saying in our reviews - this one in particular caught our eye!

“The atmosphere, the art, the sound design, everything about this game is just so outstanding and captures that in person table feel in a way I have not seen other games even come close to.

“It was a little confusing at first, but just give is a try and you'll pick it up fast I promise. One of my favorite things about games like this are how accessible it is for folks that don't have:

1. Hardcore gaming hardware

2. Enough money to sink a small boat

3. Endless free time

4. Tons of experience with games like this

“TAKE THE DEAL”

Thank you all for the positive reviews - They really help, And as always, cheers for joining us on our Early Access journey. Our community has been wonderful with sharing all sorts of feedback for things like QoL ideas, accessibility suggestions and general feedback about our game.

While we can't implement everything there's plenty that we can consider, and it's really been validating to have our community echo ideas that we've already had planned. Great minds, eh?

We're hard at work on Scenario Two and are continuing to squash those bugs and make lots of tweaks for you. But in the meantime, join us on Discord and chat with our team. We’re very active there!

~ Úna-Minh

Hello friends! Back in the day when many people had to stay at home in isolation due to COVID-19, we decided to add another Let's Play Together competition in the middle of the week, just for fun-with different crazy levels and (alas!) no prizes. We think it is clear by now this extra LPT is a permanent addition too :)

The rules are the same: log in to our Discord server, keep it running, play a competitive level, complete it with 5 stars and have fun!
Visit our Discord server (#lets-play-together channel) to learn more.

This week's level is

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3596455247Just open the game - there's a link right on the main menu screen.

Good luck everyone!