HorrorVale News

Greetings our Spooky Scary Citizens of HorrorVale!


This is Dustin Andrews, Lead Designer of HorrorVale with some important updates regarding the release of our game on Steam.

Some of you may or may not have noticed there's now a Price listed on the Steam page if you don't already own the game. Or maybe you just now learned of it from this post. Either way, you're probably confused, so let's get the big questions out of the way.

Q. Does this mean the game is released!?

A. No, it does not. In fact, if you haven't already seen our various posts about it on Steam and other platforms, the game has unfortunately been delayed until an undetermined (but soon) date.


Q. Wait, does this mean I have to pay to play the demo now!?

A. If you don't already own it... Yes. The build available here is the same one it's always been, so if someone wants to play it, they'll need to buy the game. This isn't something we really wanted to do yet, but it'll make sense when you continue reading.


Now you might be wondering why this change was made, and also not when the game released!
In order to explain why this change has happened, let's go back in time a bit.

Back in 2019, when we first set up the Steam page for HorrorVale, we wanted to provide a free playable demo version of the game for people to check out, so we listed the game under Early Access. It just makes sense. Let people have a go at the game for free, and then when the game fully release you have to pay to play it.

Fun Fact: This is not how Steam Early Access works.

Steam grants all users who add a game to their library a License, even if it's a free download. This license grants them ownership of the game. This means that anyone who got the License for Free, would also keep that License when the game transitions into a Paid product.

So, when we found this out a few years back we were panicking. We already had several thousand free licenses granted, which would mean all those people would get the game for free when it released.
So, we contacted Steam about it attempting to find a solution. They essentially told us that besides that route, the only other option would be to sell the rest of the game as a DLC package, because rescinding free licenses was not something Steam could do.

We weren't happy with this, but we went forward with that and for the years afterwards, this was the plan. To sell the rest of the game as DLC while still providing Act 1 for free.

Truthfully, we can't really place blame on Steam for this. We were first time devs setting up our first Steam page in 2019 and clicked some things without properly understanding what those things meant.

Time passed, and several fans and members of the community expressed concern about the DLC plan. In particular, some suggested to just leave the Act 1 page, and create a new page for the Full Game. To us this would be a much more ideal scenario, so we contacted Steam about it.
Unfortunately, we were given more or less the same answer as before. It turns out Steam has some weird rules about having "two versions of the same game" on the platform.
(At the very least we've learned a lot about the platform in the process)
Incidentally, we also asked around in the community more about the DLC plan, and a few people said that if they went to the page and saw the other Acts as a seperate package, they would outright be deterred from playing the game because they'd assume it wasn't finished.

And so, we had two options:

A. To make the game as is a paid product and incidentally give everyone who ever downloaded it a free copy...

or

B. To sell the game as DLC, potentially confuse consumers, and create potential problems with Achievements and actual DLC if we ever wanted to go down that route.

In short: A) Give out a bunch of free copies of the game, or B) Confuse everyone.


Ultimately, after all this time we decided the actual best course of action was Option A.
It came down to how what paths these options could lead to in the future.

With Option A, while there would be a significant loss in potential sales, there'd at the very least be a chance to recoup those, and additionally there would be a tremendous amount of free users who would play the game and talk about it. Perhaps even some people who had no intention of ever buying it in the first place. It is also by far the best option for the fans. It's a rough solution that could lead in a good result.

With Option B, there is no chance of a good result. Because even if sales were good, we would be stuck with this uncomfortable burden of the game being essentially split into two. It's a rough solution that will never lead to a good result.

So... What does this mean?

It means exactly what you see on the front page of HorrorVale.
If you have ever downloaded the Act 1 Demo here on Steam, you will have a free copy of the full version of the game when it releases!
...It also unfortunately means that no one will be able to play the Act 1 Demo moving forward unless they pay for it! At least the Full Game's release isn't too far away!

We don't want to continue to dwell on this issue, so moving forward after this post we'll be focusing hardcore on preparing for the game's release, including promotion and of course finishing the dang thing!

Thanks for all your support and patience as we get HorrorVale ready for you to play.

-Dustin Andrews
Lead Designer of HorrorVale

Hello all.
Lead Designer of HorrorVale, Dustin here.

Since we're coming up on the release of "HorrorVale" later this year, I wanted to post a brief overview of some problems some players may face when playing HorrorVale.

Unfortunately, these are all problems prevalent with the game's engine itself, so they're things we can't really work around.

For the most part, many of you will be aware that the game is developed in "RPG Maker", more specifically the "VX Ace" version. At the minimum, RPG Maker games aren't exactly... Hardware intensive games. At the minimum.

It could be said that in several places HorrorVale is pushing RPG Maker "to its limits".
Many RPG Maker developers are probably aware that the more stuff you have going on in the game, the more events, the more pictures, etc, that lag can occur.

LAG

On machines with 2GB or lower in RAM (which you mainly find in old laptops), you too may experience some lag in large maps. Most egregious of all however is that it can effect in-game cut-scenes.

There are many cut-scenes in the game that feature hand drawn art that zooms and pans around like a little slideshow. Many of these cut-scenes also are accompanied by sound and music that's been perfectly composed to align with what's going on in the cut-scene.

However, this can fall apart completely if the computer's hardware isn't up to snuff.
The reason being, that timing in the game is not determined by seconds, but by frames. Which means that... If the game is dropping frames on your computer, then the cut-scenes will last longer, and will also desync with the audio. In some cases this causes the audio to loop repeatedly which can be pretty jarring.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this is just "how RPG Maker works", it's not something we can really get around. It's incredibly frustrating to me personally to work on a scene I think is really important and then knowing that some players won't experience that scene in the intended way.

One workaround I thought of would be to create some kind of unlisted playlist on YouTube featuring all the cutscenes, so if someone wants to they can go watch the cut-scene as intended on YouTube. Not ideal... But at least people who care about it can see them.

There do exist several "lag reducing" scripts for RPG Maker, but rarely do they actually help much and in a few cases we've tried ones that have actually broken the game completely.

Cut-scenes can also desync on perfectly good machines as well, because if you tab out of the game or accidentally click off the window, RPG Maker stops running completely... Except for any sound or music playing. Which means that just clicking off by accident during an important scene can completely desync it.

Another thing we have no control over. Very unfortunate. Having the game somehow pause when tabbing out would probably be very difficult if impossible, but at the very least I wish there was a way to have it keep running when it's not an active window so it wouldn't be an issue.

CRASHING

Another major issue that can occur on low-end machines is that occasionally, when opening Layla's "Party Menu" to shuffle around your party, crashes can occur.
I've never personally experienced this, but testers on lower end machines have. We've used various methods to attempt to mitigate this, and we're currently looking into other options now, but it is very possible it could still happen to certain players on release. It's for this reason that I recommend saving before using Layla if you're playing on a computer with less than 4GB of RAM.
Hopefully before release or sometime after we can find a work around for this.
The running theory is that this occurs because the game is loading in all the party member icons and then unloading them all very quickly and in some cases can't keep up with it.

All in all, we want to do everything in our power to mitigate issues like this, but in certain cases we might not be able to and wanted to clearly communicate those issues to players who may experience them.

Thanks for giving this a read, and we can't wait for you to experience the Underworld this October!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

After years of development, HorrorVale is nearing completion.

Now check out this brand new trailer to see the long awaited Release Date, featuring the "HorrorVale Theme" by Grant Kirkhope!

For those who don't follow every single development update, we've uploaded a video that goes over all the progress done on HorrorVale from the completion of Act 2 till the completion of Act 3.

An Act 4 video will follow at a later date.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]