Blind Descent News

Hello, everyone!

It's been two months since our last update, as we've been hard at work on the demo and didn't have much to share during that period. We recently concluded a private demo event for our active Discord community members, which wrapped up just yesterday. We received some really good reactions from the participants, and their invaluable feedback will be instrumental in enhancing Blind Descent even further. We truly appreciate and value our community's input.

Having completed the demo, we've reached a significant milestone. It's been a long journey, but now we're prepared to move on to the next phase: pitching our game to publishers. Over the coming months, this will be our primary focus. As a result, we may not be able to provide monthly updates every month, since we won't be working on the base game for some time. However, we'll make sure to keep you informed whenever there's important news to share.

Thanks for your support, and have an amazing day!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/GeQ926zEyn
Twitter: @theblinddescent
Website: https://blinddescent.net/

Hey, everyone!

This month, we were extremely busy with trying to complete the demo. We were aiming for late December or early January, but unfortunately the amount of required work exceed our expectations. We are truly sorry that we have to postpone the closed demo event to February. This will give us enough time to complete the missing parts and fix the game-breaking bugs. Due to complex nature of gameplay systems and so many unintegrated assets we've created in the past two years, it caused tremendous amount of workload that we couldn't foresee. Everything is getting together pretty well so far and it's great to see that we are getting the gameplay feeling that we aimed for, but the game is not ready for a true gameplay experience for now and requires additional time. A demo test at this point wouldn't go so far, so we decided to postpone it. It's more like a construction site that requires cleanup and this is what we will do in the meantime.

To enlighten these difficult and complex gameplay mechanics, we would like to show one of them for the first time: Inventory Management.

In Blind Descent, we wanted to provide an immersive adventure experience. This is why we went with a 3D inventory system, where you can see everything you have in a 3D dimensional space. You will be able to put your things on the shelves or wardrobes, and this will populate your house and give you a better sense of home and where you belong to. But creating a 3D inventory system is hard. We have to put some extra work on user experience and item creation. Interactions between objects, how we store them, how we pick them up and many more become way more complex than traditional UI-based inventories, but we believe they are worth the effort. We look forward to giving you a taste of it during our closed demo event and hearing your feedback about your experience as well!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Carrying items on your hand is another way to interact with objects. Some items may be too large to be stored in a backpack. In such cases, you can carry them by hand or place them on a cart. This means the preparation of extra animations and integrations. But when all this comes together, it's a truly satisfying and consistent gameplay experience that we have aimed for.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The environment, the creatures, plants, resources, consumables, drinks and so on. There are so many layers of things that affect each other. But this is what creates an immersive survival game experience. It's really hard to build an ambitious project like this, but we are getting there and we are excited to see what you think about the gameplay once you participate our closed demo event. It will be a huge milestone for us and it will change the way we have worked so far. We are truly sorry for the delay, but we are working hard and we hope to bring a good demo experience that you will hopefully enjoy.

Thank you so much for your patience, and merry Christmas!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/GeQ926zEyn
Twitter: @theblinddescent
Website: https://blinddescent.net/

Hey, everyone!

In the previous monthly update, we mentioned about our demo plans. This is exactly what we've been working on this month, and we've done a lot of bugfixes, quality of life improvements and so on. We were also trying to get the new environment assets to work with the weather conditions, such as making leaves wet when it's rainy, or applying wind effects when there is a thunderstorm.

Everything is going well, but for now there is not so much new content that we can share here like we did before. We are mostly working on improving things and creating the gameplay rather than adding new mechanics, so that keeps the list short. This month will be crucial for us to see where we are, and hopefully we will reveal more details in the next monthly update about the upcoming demo.

Here's last month's progress and next month's plans:

✏️ COMPLETED PAST MONTH

- Environment assets are now working well with weather conditions
- Quality of life improvements in many areas
- Major bugfixes
- More work on the level design
- Gameplay experience integration

📌 PLANS FOR NEXT MONTH

- More work on the gameplay experience
- More work on level design
- More bugfixes

If you are interested in participating in the demo, please join our Discord channel to see more details about it. It will be a closed demo where we only invite active Discord members.

Thank you for being here, and have a great day!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/GeQ926zEyn
Twitter: @theblinddescent
Website: https://blinddescent.net/

Hey, everyone!

We have some important news for this month. We have almost completed all the gameplay mechanics required for the Vertical slice. A vertical slice is a kind of demo that reflects a small portion of the full gameplay experience. We plan to complete this demo by the end of this year and start looking for investment or publishing deals. This will give us more resources to develop Blind Descent.

The other important news is that we want to have a closed demo event with anyone with a First Settler role on our Discord. This closed demo event will happen at the end of December or early January. So if you would like to test the game, share your feedback and help us improve our vertical slice, this will be possible within two months. This help would mean a lot to us and help us improve our chances to make a high-quality demo. We are looking forward to sharing more details about this in the future!

Here's last month's progress and next month's plans:

✏️ COMPLETED PAST MONTH

- Tannery system implementation
- Tree chopping and log-slicing feature improvements
- Improvements in dialogue system
- Sap collector is implemented
- Portable Ladder System is implemented
- Lantern system is implemented
- Sweep net tool is implemented
- Punching combat is implemented
- 3D assets for the vertical demo are completed
- More work on level design

📌 PLANS FOR NEXT MONTH

- More work on the gameplay experience
- More work on level design

Thank you for being here, and have a great day!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/GeQ926zEyn
Twitter: @theblinddescent
Website: https://blinddescent.net/

Hey, everyone!

We are back on track again, and it feels great to be working on the development side of the project. This month, we've made some serious improvements to our shaders, which will contribute to the visual quality of the game in the long run. We've also been recreating parts of the map with newly created high-quality 3D assets.

However, we have an important task ahead of us: Creating the core gameplay loop.

Since Blind Descent wants to bring so many different things together, this creates a massive amount of different gameplay features and asset requirements. We managed to create the majority of these assets for early gameplay, but some of them are still missing and we need to complete them in order to create the core gameplay loop. Completing the core loop will be a huge milestone, but we still have work ahead of us.

Here's last month's progress and next month's plans:

✏️ COMPLETED PAST MONTH

- Major improvements in landscape material
- Major improvements in shaders, which improve overall visual quality
- Remaking certain parts of the map with new high-quality assets
- Bugfixes in the inventory system
- Bugfixes on crafting system
- Bugfixes and feature improvements for the combat and damage systems.
- Input Action Display System Integration, which is basically displaying input actions available to the player, such as showing "Press F to pay respect.".
- First party 3D assets for the core gameplay loop

📌 PLANS FOR NEXT MONTH

- Completing missing 3D assets for the core gameplay loop.
- Implementing Tannery System
- Implementing Sap Collector
- Implementing Water Filter
- Implementing Portable Ladder System
- Grenade Crafting and Explosion Improvements
- Improvements to AI Spawn Systems
- Improvements in the dialogue system

Thank you for being here, and have a great day!

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/GeQ926zEyn
Twitter: @theblinddescent
Website: https://blinddescent.net/